"A CUP FOR ALL"

By The Rev. Peter Grandy
August 3, 2003

I Corinthians 11:23-26

Oh Ye Gigs and Juleps is a delightful diary written by a ten-year-old girl growing up in the early 1900’s. It was placed in an attic trunk and discovered some 60 years later, and finally published. I’ve read this section once before, but since it’s one of my favorites, I’d like to read it again as an introduction to this morning’s Communion meditation. It’s a wonderful child’s view of the sacraments.

“Sacraments,” she writes, “are what you do at church. What you do at home is something else. Cooking and sewing and running the Bissell sweeper and eating and sleeping and praying and scrubbing yourself are not sacraments. When you are little and ugly, someone carries you into church, they pour water on your head and that’s a sacrament. When you are twelve, you walk back in yourself with you best dress and shoes on and you walk up to the Bishop and he stands up and you kneel down and he mashes you on your head and you’re an Episcopal. Then everyone kisses you and you are supposed to increase in spirit. Only I left out the bread and wine, that’s a sacrament too. I tasted some of that bread in the choir room and it tasted just like goldfish wafers.”

Well, I guess from a child’s point of view, the sacraments, and especially Communion, can be pretty baffling. But I think that might also be true for us adults as well, which is why it’s good at times to talk a little bit about the history
and meaning of the Sacrament of Communion, which is what I’d like to do this morning.

The word “sacrament” comes from the Latin word Sacramentum, which is the equivalent of our phrase “a pledge of allegiance.” The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper thus implies a pledge of allegiance, a reaffirming of our allegiance to Christ, remembering what his life and death were all about.

The Sacrament we celebrate today has various names: it is called the Mass, Eucharist, Communion, Love Feast, or Lord’s Supper.

And the practices of communion vary widely: The Moravians celebrate Communion as a love feast, a regular meat and potato meal, with expressions of fellowship and love. The Church of the Brethren observes the rite of foot-washing before Communion. And some churches, like the Quakers, Salvation Army, and Christian Scientists, do not celebrate Communion at all.

There are also differences in the elements used. Some churches use wafers, others regular loaves of bread, and the Seventh Day Adventists use soda crackers. In some traditions we dip the wafer into the cup, in the Catholic and Orthodox churches only the bread is given to the people, not the wine, which is reserved for the priest. Our congregational custom of cutting the bread into small squares actually originated in the sixteenth century
Reformation, as a protest against wafers. And of course our church uses both wafers and the bread.

For the cup, some churches use wine, some grape juice. At one time, I understand, the Church of England used beer. Banana juice is often used in Africa today, and the Mormons use water. Jim Kidd actually used Kool-Aid at a wedding once, when he wasn’t able to find any grape juice.

In the very early church, evidently there were many interpretations of Communion. Some of the early Christians celebrated it as an eschatological meal in anticipation of Christ’s second coming and the coming of the Kingdom of God, which they felt would occur soon, in their lifetime. Others interpreted it as a Passover meal, but with a new meaning attached to it, representing a new covenant with God. Remember that the first believers were, indeed, Jews. Others saw it as a sociological symbol, that in sharing the one bread, they celebrated the way God had brought them together … people who once were scattered, now celebrate their oneness in Christ. In a sense it was the church that was being celebrated here. And still others saw Communion as the “medicine of immortality,” as it was called, that Christ’s death was necessary to infuse the elements of Communion with the power to guarantee the forgiveness of sins and immortality.

And, of course, even today there is a lot of theology that surrounds this Sacrament, much more than I could possibly cover this morning. Briefly though, some see Communion as a memorial, that what we do in celebrating the Lord’s
Supper is to remember Jesus in a vivid way when we take the bread and the cup. Others, particularly Roman Catholics, most Orthodox, and some Anglo-Catholics, believe that in the “miracle” of the Eucharist, the bread and wine are actually transformed into the body and blood of Christ, and we literally partake of the body and blood. In between these two is a belief in what is called the “real presence,” that in the celebration of Communion, God uses this occasion to be especially present to us.

So these simple elements of Communion, the cup and the bread, seem large enough to include Christians of different persuasion and different practices over all these years since the time of Christ. And for many Christians, this Sacrament has been the most central and meaningful rite of the church. It is, in a sense, a symbolic ritual, which tries to express what words, sermons, and creeds cannot express … a congregational gesture by which we try to touch the very hem of our Lord’s garment.

But let me suggest for our reflection this morning that Communion is symbolic, that there is something that is seen and something that is unseen. We see the symbols of the bread and the cup, but at the same time we believe there is a special sense of Divine Presence, the presence of Christ’s Spirit. And that in the partaking of these elements this Christ Spirit is present to us in our own individual situation. What we see is the bread and the cup. But what we don’t see, and which is every bit as real, are the many hearts whose cares and worries grow less as God’s love in Jesus becomes real to them in the partaking of the bread and cup.

What we see is the bread and the cup. What we do not see are the many hearts in which new resolutions are being made to follow Jesus wherever he would have us go.

What we see is the bread and the cup. What we do not see are those here who might today accept the forgiveness of Christ, and who might begin the long process of forgiving themselves.

What we see is the bread and the cup. What we do not see are those who receive the cup and the bread in the midst of great grief and anxiety or illness or temptation; and who find strength here, and solace.

What we see is the bread and the cup. What we do not see are those, perhaps, in the midst of new joy: parenthood, marriage, some worthy and honest success; and take this cup with a true sense of thanksgiving.

What we see is the bread and the cup. What we don’t see are the many here who have nothing specially great or small to observe, but need what all of us need: Christ’s companionship through daily life, shared prayer, and the companionship of those gathered here. And that is what they receive in the sharing of the cup and the bread.

This is a cup for all occasions, wherever you are in life, whatever your condition, this cup was shed for you, and this bread broken for you.

There once was a simple ordinary upper room, up under the roof … a poor, barren place. There was a table in it, and there were some benches, and a water jar, a towel and a basin in behind the door…but not much else…a bare, homelike room. But the Lord Christ entered it and celebrated the first Communion, first Agape Meal, first Eucharist. And from that moment, it became the holiest of all, where souls innumerable ever since have the met the Lord God, face to face. And if we give him entrance into our very ordinary hearts, as we can today, we too will be sanctified and touched with glory.

Let us share in the Lord’s Supper.