37Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” 38Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” 40And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” 41So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. 42They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
Have you seen
those commercials for Olive Garden, where the people eating are
impossibly happy and laughing way louder than anyone has ever laughed
in a real Olive Garden? The ones where the people read the menu the
same way a child reads a toy catalog, and they find everything the
incredibly-happy waitress says to be hysterical?
The first
communions weren't always like that. If we read 1 Corinthians, we
discover that the rich people often arrived first, eating all the
good food before the poor people showed up. They would get into
fights. It was hardly the stuff of a holy community after which we'd
want to model ourselves.
But there was
something special about those communions—they gathered together for
a feast. It was important for them to sit down at table together and
share in a feast. It was one of the pillars of the community of the
faithful. They devoted themselves to teaching, to fellowship, to
breaking of bread and to prayers. It was vital for them to sit and
eat together. Why?
Because something
happens at the table. When we sit down at the table to eat a meal
with someone, it's a different type of environment, and we'll talk
about things that really matter, about ourselves, about life.
There's a book I read recently called The Amazing Power of Family
Meals. It was about how much
our society has lost because families don't eat together anymore, and
when they do they are often each eating a different food and engaged
in a different electronic device. The book talked about how much
kids learn at the dinner table, and how important it is for families
to eat together.
But it's not just families that eat together. When a couple goes out
on a date, what do they go do most often? They go out to dinner, or
to lunch. They go sit at a table together and share a meal, and
they're brought closer by the experience. When Rachel and I were
dating we'd go spend hours at a restaurant, and we learned so much
about each other during those meals.
At the table, we are fed, body and soul, by the food and the
companionship. Community is formed. It's why so many of the stories
from the Gospels revolve around meals Jesus ate with one community or
another. He was constantly gathered with other people—teaching
them, healing them, sharing with them, growing closer. The Pharisees
were angry with some of the people Jesus ate with, believing them to
be unclean or too sinful. But Jesus knew that people were changed
over the course of a meal.
As a lasting gift to the church, Jesus gave us the communion meal.
It's the last supper he ate with his disciples on that first Maundy
Thursday, the passover meal he shared in that intimate upper room.
We don't have much record of what happened, but I imagine it was a
lengthy meal, filled with laughter as well as sorrow. It was there
that he gave us this sacrament.
He gave us the sacrament, a meal, as a gift, so that we might
continue to gather around the table—only now, we would gather
around the Lord's Table. He took the ordinary, bread and wine,
staples of every meal, and turned it into the extraordinary, his body
and blood, food for the soul that would be to us a reminder of his
incredible sacrifice, of his healing power, of his love for us. The
meal would be to us a reminder of the transformation of each of us
that takes place only in him. For just as we can't celebrate
communion without Christ, we can't be redeemed without his blood.
This meal isn't intended to end when we say our prayer at the
conclusion of communion. It's supposed to be a new beginning, a
reminder, a meal that points beyond itself to the eternal truth of
redemption in Christ. It's all supposed to lead us deeper into
fellowship with Christ, and Christ has always intended that, as we
read in the beginning of our service, to lead us deeper into
fellowship with one another.
Communion isn't an individual thing. The table is meant to gather us
together as a group. We're intended to be closer to one another at
the conclusion of a meal. I always remember how Wayne Bledsoe would
talk about eating meals when he traveled. He traveled a lot, and
Wayne was one who knew how important community was. When he went
into restaurants and saw other businessmen eating alone, he'd ask if
they wanted company, and I don't know of anyone who ever turned down
Wayne's company. They shared a meal together, and they shared
fellowship in the breaking of bread. For a moment, there was
community. Perhaps they never saw each other again, but I guarantee
that people still remember the witness he offered in eating with
them. I promise it still means something to some of them today.
This is what happens when we broaden our view of what Christ does in
communion. When we view gathering at the table as a chance to
celebrate God's grace, we begin to see our own humble dinner tables a
little differently, because we recognize that through them, Christ
has changed those meals, too. Christ has changed everything about us
because of the sacrifice he offers on the cross, because of his love,
and therefore the meals we eat at home and on the road are
opportunities to rejoice in the fellowship and love of Christ. We
begin to see the breaking of bread as a chance to reach out in love
to one another.
So I'd like to invite you to something. At the beginning of Lent,
this season of preparation, we invite you to the discipline of Lent,
to preparing yourself for Easter. I'd like to invite you to a season
of communion. Who can you share a meal with? Who do you know in
your life who could use a companion for a meal? Who might love some
company? Whom would you like to grow closer with, to know better?
How can you break bread with someone over the coming weeks, and
recognize that meal as something more than just an opportunity to eat
food together, but rather as a sharing in fellowship, just as the
early church did—not something perfect, but something human,
something that God might transform into something extraordinary?
Let us pray.
