Bread and Cup

A sermon for Sunday, August 4, 2019

Would you pray with me?

Living God, we trust that you meet us here and now. Be with us as we come to find you in light, word, water, bread, and cup. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

We have arrived at our final sermon in our series on the five symbols we use in worship. We’ve talked about light, word, and water, and today’s a two-fer: bread and cup. We’ve talked about why we light candles in worship, why we keep Bibles around, why we use water, and today, we’ll talk about why we set a table and eat during church.

Now, I love communion. That’s why I saved bread and cup for last. But it wasn’t always this way. I still remember the look on my college pastor's face when I told him that I thought communion was pointless. "Baptism I get," I told him, "but I don't understand why we waste our time on communion." He was flabbergasted, to say the least. 

Now, I've been raised a Methodist my whole life, baptized and confirmed, but for a long time, communion was mostly an inconvenience for me. It was the Sunday once a quarter where church went over by at least 15 minutes, and when I did my usual move of sneaking out at the beginning of the last hymn to tell my mother in the nursery that it was time to get the kids ready for pickup, I would walk into a chaos. In those extra 15 minutes, the toddlers' pent up energy would bubble over and they would tear up the place. Communion Sunday for me meant dozens of extra toys to pick up and a late lunch. 

Now, when I went to college, communion started to mean something a little different because I started to volunteer as a communion server. I liked being useful for the communion part of the ceremony. I even learned--and this is important-- that if someone drops their bread in the cup, you don't go fishing after it, only to have to hold a grape-juice soaked bread in your hand while the rest of the line cycles by. Nope, you just let that bread float and get them a new piece of Jesus. 

But even after years of helping with communion, I still didn't understand why we had a snack during the service. I mean, I knew that we did it to remember Jesus, because he told us to, but outside of that, I didn't see much point to it. We remember Jesus every Sunday. It's kinda hard to forget him when we've got these big crosses up everywhere. Why waste time and money on grape juice and bakery bread?

Well, I could give you a long, theologically-dense and nuanced answer or I could give you the "mom" version of the answer ("Because Jesus told us to, that's why"), but what I really want to do is give you a few ways to understand the bread, cup, and what happens during communion. I want to talk about the bread of life, the cup of promise, and the presence of Christ. Some of it may sound new to you and some of it may fit right in with how you think about communion, but your job during the sermon this morning is to expand your idea of what communion might mean to you, whether you delight in coming forward to receive or whether you, like me, don’t really know why we do this.

So. Bread and cup are our symbols for this morning, but I think it’s important that we look at them separately, because that’s how Jesus’ first followers would have seen them. Let’s start with the bread.

Jesus’ last supper with the disciples was a Passover meal, the meal that Jewish people use to remember the flight from Egypt, when the angel of death, the bringer of the tenth and final plague, passed over the houses of the Hebrews who were enslaved in Egypt. (We find this story in Exodus 12.)

Now, meals are a much more fundamental part of Jewish ritual than they are for us Christians, I think. Don’t get me wrong, Methodists put on a good potluck and our community dinners here at Whittier are a sight to see, but as Christians, we don’t celebrate shabbat dinners together on Friday nights. We don’t feast together as a Christian community on our feast days.  We know how to gather over food, but we don’t understand why our gathering is sacred.

And so, we miss part of what Jesus means when he offers the bread and the cup after the meal. Because it was always understood that bread, when it’s mentioned in the Bible, means life. Bread is one of the simplest ways we as humans have learned to sustain ourselves. Nearly every culture has some form of bread that it’s developed over time, especially if it’s agrarian, if it’s learned how to farm. It might look different, but it’s there. And bread is a hearty food. It’s simple carbs, energy in a basic form, to give our bodies what we need to sustain work throughout the day.

That’s why the Hebrew people used unleavened bread on the night of the Passover. They already had bread in the making for the next day, because it was what they needed to survive the work they would be put through, but they didn’t have time to let it rise. The cycle of breadmaking was interrupted, the cycle of life was interrupted, on the day of the last plague in Egypt. When Jesus raises bread and breaks it, he is giving us the bread of interrupted life, the bread of life on the verge of freedom. When we eat this bread, we too are partaking in the bread of life interrupted, the bread of new life.

When we receive the bread, we’re receiving new life. We’re receiving what we need to in order to do the work that we’re called to do as Christians. This bread is the body of Christ, broken for us and for our salvation, yes, but it is also life-giving for us, broken so that we can share it. Jesus breaks into our lives, interrupts into our lives, and calls us to live differently. This is what we see over and over again in the gospels. Jesus doesn’t just leave us alone. He’s not a prophet with a word for us to follow but no way to follow it. Jesus gives us the bread of life interrupted, the bread of new life, so that we can be fed for the road ahead of us. And Jesus breaks the bread, that we might share it.

This is Jesus’ body, broken for you and for many. Take it. Eat it. Receive the sustenance, the new life, that you need so that you can give to others.

Bread of life, cup of promise.

The cup, in a way, is a little more straightforward, or, at least, our liturgy makes it feel straightforward. Jesus tells us that the wine in the cup is his blood, the blood of a new covenant, and we’re all pretty familiar with the history of blood and covenants.

Covenants are legally-binding agreements. What we find in Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers are a series of terms on which God agrees to interact with Israel. Honor me, God says, above everything else that you want to put your trust in. Your own power, your own smarts, your own wealth, your alliances. None of those matter as much as me, God says. Don’t get caught up with the lies those peddling false idols will sell you. Money, Riches, Fame, Security, none of those idols compare to being in relationship with the living God. (Exodus 20:1-4) Honor those who came before you. (Exodus 20:12) Don’t murder, don’t misuse people for sex, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t covet. (Exodus 20:13-17) Don’t let your rage overpower you—take only an eye for an eye, not a life, as the other people around you do. (Leviticus 24:19-21)

This is how the people of Israel covenanted to live with the Almighty as their God.

Covenants are sealed with blood. Covenants, when they’re broken, are mended with blood.

And so, the Church over the centuries has understood Jesus’ death on the cross as the beginning of a new covenant, sealed with his blood. The Church understands that Jesus brings us into another way of being with God, another set of promises between us and God.

God promises us life and life abundant.

God promises us freedom and power to resist all that’s wrong in this world.

God promises us community.

God promises to bring together people from all over this world who seek to live as Jesus taught us to live, people who want to love God and love their neighbors as themselves, people who have an unlimited idea of who their neighbor is and seek to be a neighbor to everyone who crosses their path.

In receiving the cup, we receive these promises from God. Not only that, but we renew our promise to live as Jesus taught us to live. That’s part of why we confess our sins before we come forward to receive, so that we can come with a clean slate to take part in God’s promise.

This is Jesus’ blood, the blood of the new covenant, poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of the things we have done that have broken our covenant. Receive it. Receive God’s new promises to you and in return, give your promises to God.

Bread of life, cup of promise, presence of Jesus.

Now, this part does get theological. Not apologizing, just giving you a heads up. We Methodists, despite having gotten used to doing communion once a quarter, actually have a lovely theology about communion. We don’t get into the weeds of the debate over whether the bread and cup become the actual body and blood of Christ, as the Catholics believe, or whether Christ is above and below and in front of behind and to the left and right and in the bread and cup, as Lutherans do. We don’t do transubstantiation or consubstantiation. We believe in real presence. (Read more by clicking here.)

Real presence means that when we have communion, Jesus shows up.  

When we receive the bread of life and the cup of promise, Jesus is here in a way that we don’t experience at any other time. Communion is where we meet Jesus. Jesus meets us in the bread and in the cup.

That is what I was missing when I sassed off to my college pastor ten years ago. I did not know that Jesus was just as present here as he is in the sunlight of a beautiful morning or the story of the woman who reaches out for the hem of his cloak or the water of the mountain’s bending rivers. I did not know that just as we can be reminded of God in a visceral way through light, word, and water, Jesus meets us here, in bread and cup, in the promise and sustenance of new life.

This too is why we repent before we come to the table. Who wants to meet Jesus when they’re holding a grudge against their sibling in Christ? Who wants to meet Jesus with regrets on their hearts? Who wants to come meet Jesus while still dragging the guilt of their mistakes and the harm they’ve caused others behind them? This is what Paul is arguing against when he talks to the Corinthians. Don’t gather together as if one sibling in Christ doesn’t matter to you. Instead, join together and let there be no excuse for bad blood between you, for in this meal, you meet Christ.

More than that, this is when we get to interact with the other members of the Body of Christ, not just those who are here with us this morning but also those who are far from us and those who have gone on before. Those saints who led you to faith join you each time you come to the table. More than that, those who will one day think of you as saints meet you here as well. The Body of Christ gathers at the table, before being broken once again to be sent back out into the world, blessed by covenant of God’s grace.

And I believe that this is true. I believe that when I receive communion, I am not only connected to my savior, but I’m connected to the twelve who followed him, to the women who supported him and told about him, to Paul and the early generations who spread the gospel, to the saints throughout the centuries, even to the present day. I’m connected to my first-grade Sunday School teacher, who died last week, and to the kids that I picked up after in the nursery. I’m connected to my grandmother and grandfather who did all they could to raise three powerful women who had families of their own and I’m connected to families that I haven’t even met yet. I’m connected to my college pastor who opened my eyes to new ways of understanding the faith and I’m connected to those who I hope to speak a new word to in the days to come. I’m connected to you all this morning and to every new soul who will walk into this church and experience Christ through the love and care that y’all give. In receiving the bread and the cup, I am connected to the Body of Christ in a real and powerful way. And so are you.

The body of Christ, the bread of life interrupted, the bread of new life.

The blood of Christ, the cup of new promises.  

The presence of Jesus and all who are gathered with him.

I want you to remember these things when you come forward in a few minutes. Because what happens at the table is not some esoteric theological debate. It is the gift of life that gives you the strength you need to live as Christ calls you to live. It is the promise God will be with you and that you will seek to be with God. It is the presence of the living God and all who Christ has touched.

It is new life and all you need to live it.

Amen.