One Bread, One Body
This morning, we are embarking on the last official “stop” along our discipleship journey. We are exploring, this week and next, what it means to be a disciple who anticipates a future life in the presence of God.
This theme coincides with communion –by design. Communion is a foretaste of the Kin-dom of God. We call on the one-ness of the gathered community – Make us one with Christ, one with each other and one in ministry to all the world until Christ comes in final victory and we feast at his heavenly banquet.
This is a new milestone Sunday for us at Faith United Methodist Church as we gather in another “new” way as a community.
Today, for the first time since March, communion is led from this table which has been part of our gathered community for decades. It has been the physical and holy center of our worshiping life. We have been physically present with one another at this table.
But we’re not actually gathering around it or before it physically today.
Perhaps there is no greater irony than talking about the oneness of the body of Christ in a season of distance. But stick with me here.
I think in this season of distance from all that we know and cherish – physical presence, familiar surroundings, rhythms that we know in our flesh – we are called on to use our imagination in a whole new way. And imagination is one way that we begin to see what it is that we cannot physically SEE with our eyes sometimes.
At this table, we are called to be aware of those who gather at similar tables – in different parts of the world, in different kinds of worship, with different ideals, in different times – at different points in history.
We’re called to gather with the disciples in the days that immediately followed Jesus’ death – when confusion and disbelief and disappointment might have been palatable.
We’re called to gather with those early Christians who gathered in secret for fear of punishment and death at the hands of Rome.
We’re called to gather with those who have scraped together bits of bread and water from war rations while gathering in bombed-out sanctuaries where lighted candles would give them away.
We’re called to gather with those who live in places where grapes don’t ever grow and bread is never leavened.
We’re called to gather with those who never receive the bread and cup but watch the priest receive on their behalf.
We’re called to gather with those who wait for elements to be brought to the hospital bed, mostly an impossibility in the time of pandemic.
We’re called to gather with those who take bread from the table to feed their neighbors or the birds.
We’re called to gather with those who hear or see the scriptures and speak or sign responses in languages far different from ours.
We’re called to gather with those who will vote differently, pray differently and understand the bible differently than we do.
And we’re called to be aware of how people will continue to gather at tables – in years to come.
As I wrote these words this week, we were launching a spacecraft to Mars. It is not beyond imagining to wonder whether there will be bread broken and wine blessed elsewhere in the universe one day.
We’re called to gather in this moment with the precious vision of generations gathering from this point forward.
Until Christ comes in final victory and we feast at his heavenly banquet.
In a few minutes, we’ll gather at the table to receive from the common cup and the common loaf.
But wait….we are at many tables. Tucked safely in our homes,
…we have many bits and kinds of bread.
…we aren’t even drinking the same brand of grape juice.
…we might be using our finest crystal or a coffee mug and a paper towel.
As we live into this, our reality, can we, in our imagination, fueled by the Holy Spirit, call to mind the feeding of thousands in a field? Where fish showed up and loaves showed up from various pockets and baskets and bags and places. Bits of difference showing up and satisfying the shared hunger of so many.
When we call on our imagination to help us see things in a new way, we are practicing a skillset that helps us to embody our Faith. I am reminded of the text we studied in August of last year – who knew we would be living so much into it today. From Hebrews 11 –
11 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
2 Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval.
3 By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God,
so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.
With our spiritual imagination, we practice eternal life. We practice living every day in the full presence of God. We practice knowing what it will mean to be in God’s presence in ways that do not cease. We practice calling on the Holy Spirit to be poured out on us and these gifts so that in consuming them, we receive a new oneness with Christ.
I don’t think we are particularly good at imagining the fullness of the Kin-dom of God. We like to imagine all of the people we WANT to see and none of the people who are a burr under our saddle.
As the author of our chapter for this point on the adventure writes:
“As disciples who have been saved by grace, we do not neglect earthly life. We use it to practice for eternal life.”
As disciples, we have been saved by grace. And as such, we cannot neglect that this is true for those around us, including those who we’ve never been at the table with. Practicing eternal life is about imagining life in the presence of God AND with those others.
And so as we gather in our places of worship at home, we are gathered by the power of the Holy Spirit who I believe is whispering into our imagination – who is not here?
Who is missing?
Who must we invite, cajole, encourage?
Who have we turned away by our actions, intentional or otherwise?
On Whom have we shut the door?
In Paul’s second letter to the church at Corinth he says this:
15 Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.
We gather at this table in what we call “the great thanksgiving,” and we are called to keep making room for more and more people, in more and more ways, day by day, so that grace may increase thanksgiving…to the Glory of God.
I began here: Perhaps there is no greater irony than talking about the oneness of the body of Christ in a season of distance.
But…
Perhaps, there is no greater TRUTH than talking about – and practicing - the oneness of the body of Christ in a season of distance.
Because as a body, we practice oneness in acts of love and sharing, we practice living in the presence of God in each moment that we choose to see the Christ-light in one another. And we draw close to those who we find along the way – a way different that we might typically travel on a Sunday morning. But we draw close. We share a little bread. A little wine. And we practice and experience a foretaste of the Kin-dom of God.
May it be so.
Amen.
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