Lord's Supper

Sermon for Sunday, June 7

Mark 14:17-26

‘When it was evening, he came with the twelve. And when they had taken their places and were eating, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.” They began to be distressed and to say to him one after another, “Surely not I?” He said to them, “It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the bowl with me. For the Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that one by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would be better that that one not to have been born.”

While they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.”’

And so we eat the bread and remember him. (Eat)

Jesus’ body is the church.

Jesus broke the bread and gave it to the disciples. He commanded them to take it, to eat it. When I was a kid, we used to say “you are what you eat.” I would think about that when I ate cupcakes for sure, but my imagination also wandered to other things: would I gain super speed if I ate Cheetah meat? Why would I want to be a cow or a chicken? Why on earth would anyone want to be cabbage? Indeed, in the mythologies of some ancient cultures it was believed that eating meat from certain animals would bestow a person with qualities of that animal. There is nothing magical about the Lord’s supper, but it does represent our partaking of Christ.

When Jesus gave his body to the disciples as the bread, it represented a lot, but I want to talk about two things. First, it represented that he was about to give his body on the cross. The broken bread represents his wounded body. It was necessary that he die, in order to save the world from sin. Jesus’s death, in just the next chapter of Mark’s gospel, marks a turning point in world history. Mark records “the curtain of the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” This signified that the presence of God was no longer to be found in any particular place. In Christ, God is present to each of us, and we celebrate this by eating this bread, which represents his body, taking that very presence inside us.

The second thing the bread represented was that his disciples become his body. And just like the bread, they are about to be broken apart. First, these disciples with whom Jesus shares this meal are the folks who disappoint him worst out of anyone. One of them, as Jesus says, will betray him. The others, likewise, will abandon him in his hour of greatest struggle. And Jesus knows this! Just a little later in the evening, he will tell his closest friend Peter, “You’re going to deny that you even know me three times before dawn tomorrow.” But Jesus says to this betrayer, the abandoners, and the denier: “Here, take my body. It’s for you.”

Other than Judas the betrayer, those failed disciples will be the foundation of the church. See, Jesus tells Peter in the Garden that night: “pray that you will not come into the time of trial.” And maybe Peter does pray that prayer. But he does wind up in a trial, a test, that night. And he does fail. He fails miserably. But Jesus... let me tell you how many great sentences start out “but Jesus!” But Jesus didn’t give up on Peter. He didn’t give up on James and John. He didn’t give up on Bartholomew. He didn’t even give up on Doubting Thomas. But Jesus restored them, each one! After they scattered, broken and defeated as failures on the night of his betrayal, they came back together and became the first church.

And then they broke up again. But instead of drifting, this time they split up with a purpose. The twelve went in a bunch of different directions, carrying the name of Jesus with them. First a lot of them left Jerusalem and went to Antioch. Paul came later and he took the church to Turkey and farther. According to tradition, Thomas went all the way from Israel to India and started winning converts there. This is what happens when you break the body of Christ. And here we are today, worshipping in Hurt, Virginia, on the other side of the world, while I have friends and acquaintances worshipping today in California, Switzerland, Ghana, and Malaysia. We are one Body, but we are broken apart so that we can serve in many places.

Teresa of Avila, a Spanish Nun in the 16th century wrote:

Christ has no body but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

Compassion on this world,

Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,

Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,

Yours are the eyes, you are his body.

Christ has no body now but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

compassion on this world.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

Christ’s body was broken for us. We who eat this bread are Christ’s body. When we split, we split for the world. Let’s be about His work.

After they ate the bread, Mark continues:

‘Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it. He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”’

And so we drink and remember him. (Drink)

Jesus’s blood is the covenant.

A covenant is like a contract. It’s an agreement between two parties. We have an agreement, an understanding with God. In any other circumstances that should terrify us. As it is we should approach with a holy fear. You see, the thing about God’s contracts is that God does all the work. Even in the Old Testament, when God makes a covenant it’s not usually “I will do this if you will do that.” Instead, God says, “I will do this, therefore you do that.” To each of us, Jesus Christ (God Incarnate) says: “I have made the covenant. So follow me.” The covenant is like a bridge. We all know what it is to do without a bridge, at this point. There’s no bridge from Main Street, Altavista to Main Street, Hurt right now, and we are all missing that link. But we can get around. Before Jesus, there was no way to get from here to God. So Jesus built a bridge for us!

God’s New Covenant in Jesus’s blood actually has two bridges. First, it connects us to God. As I said, at the death of Jesus, the temple curtain was torn in two. There is no separation between us and God! The apostle Paul says, “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the the love of God in Christ Jesus.” In the New Covenant, nothing can separate us from God. What a marvelous bridge!

The second bridge is that the New Covenant connects us to each other. God puts us in this new family, in fellowship with everyone who calls on the name of the Lord. In spite of everything that divides us, we have unity when we look to our kinship in Christ. One of the places we see this is when people are hurting, Christians come together. We’ll work with anybody to feed the hungry, to respond to deep human needs. It’s in these times we need to pray that the words of the old song are true for us:

We are One in the Spirit We are One in the Lord

We are One in the Spirit We are One in the Lord

And we pray that all unity may some day be restored.

And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love

Yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

We who drink this cup are beneficiaries of the covenant. We drank the cup together, to celebrate that Christ has called us together. We are saved together. We are united in love by the blood of Christ.