Surfing the Inner N8

On Sunday at CrossWay we celebrated Communion, also known as the Lord’s Supper or the Eucharist (if you’re from a really fancy church!).

We looked at how there are many normal situations in which people don’t connect with each other–they don’t even talk.  For instance, the common etiquette on an elevator requires that you stare straight ahead and don’t talk.  Weird, but that’s how it is.  But if that elevator were to get stuck for an hour, you can be pretty sure there’d be a lot of getting to know each other.  Whenever things break down and normal experiences become unusual experiences that we share with other people, we connect with others and build a common bond with them.

In a similar way, the broken body of Christ brings His followers together through shared experiences.  By trusting in His work on the cross for us, believing that He died personally for our sins, we share in the experience of Jesus’ crucifixion.  We share in His resurrection by placing our hope in the eternal life He promises to those who place their faith in Him.  Jesus sends His followers out on the same mission He began–another common, shared experience that brings us together.  And when we participate in the local church, the family of God, the body of Christ–we share in a common experience as we build connections and relationships with other Christ followers.

Matthew 26:26-29 tells us about the origins of the Christian ordinance we know as the Lord’s Supper by recounting what we know as the Last Supper.  On His last night with His friends before He was killed, Jesus told them to remember His body broken for them and His blood shed for them.  The opposite of “remember” is not merely “to forget”; the opposite of “remember” can also be “dismember.”  The body of Christ has been dismembered, but we can re-member it by sharing in these experiences of crucifixion, resurrection, mission, and church.

We remember all these things, and re-member the broken body of Christ, through the reflection and celebration of Communion, which is another shared experience that ties together all these other shared experiences.  In taking Communion together, we connect with one another and unite with God and with other believers.