Bread and Cup
If you think you’ve read this sermon before, you might be right! This is an updated version of the sermon I preached on 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 during our worship, but especially in our 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.
I love looking for the holiness in everyday things.
Maybe this is something that you like to do as well. Maybe your soul delights in a particularly beautiful flower or lights up when you hear a baby laugh. Maybe you find a great deal of satisfaction in a particularly well-made machine or a perfectly-played song. Maybe the morning sunlight or a good cup of coffee can set your day off right, with the sacred all around you.
If so, I think you’re going to like the next couple of weeks in worship.
See, there are five symbols that Christians have used throughout the centuries in our worship services and in our sanctuaries. They are light, word, water, bread, and cup. Light, word, water, bread, and cup. In fact, if you look around right now, you can probably see all five of them in this space. [Here, we looked around and named them in the space.]
Listen, I love worship and I care deeply about this time we spend together. I want the whole service to come alive for all of us, even the parts we don’t initially connect with. And for me, someone who loves seeing holiness in everyday things, these symbols, these ordinary objects we all see day in and day out, light, word, water, bread, and cup, seeing these symbols in a holy space makes the space come alive for me.
I see the birth of galaxies in the lighting of the candles.
I hear the drumbeat of freedom and the unfailing heartbeat of love in the words we read and sing and hear.
I see the joy of oceans, teeming with life from the smallest plankton to the biggest whale, in baptismal font.
I see all of human history in the simplicity of bread. I see all of God’s work and wonders in the cup.
Everything in this space tells the story of our salvation, the promise of a life full of love and praise, but in light, word, water, bread, and cup, we see the ordinary things we all share made something more, something profound, something blessed.
So, for our first Sunday together, let’s turn to the bread and the cup.
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.
Meals are a much more fundamental part of Jewish rituals than they are Christian ones, I think. Don’t get me wrong, we put on a good potluck, 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 always 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 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.
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. 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, just as so much in our world is broken, and we receive it, just as we first received the gift of life, beautiful even in a broken world.
This is Jesus’ body, broken for you and for many. Take it. Eat it. Receive the new life that you need so that you can give to others.
And then, there is the cup. Jesus tells us that the wine in the cup is his blood, the blood of a new covenant.
Now, 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 false idols will sell you. Money, Riches, Fame, Security, none of those idols compare to being in relationship with the living God. Honor those who came before you. Don’t murder, don’t misuse people, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t covet. Don’t let your rage overpower you—take only an eye for an eye, not a life, as the other people around you do.
This is how the people of Israel covenanted to live with the Almighty as their God.
Covenants are often sealed with blood. Covenants, when they’re broken, are often 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.
If the bread is broken, just as this world is, then the cup is what makes us whole, a promise of healing that begins, as I heard yesterday at a friend’s ordination service, the moment that the torn edge of the bread meets the juice. A new promise of healing. A new hope.
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 of healing and life abundant given to you and in return, give your promises to God.
But there’s something more than happens at the table, something that we, as Methodists, have preserved well in our theology. We believe in something called real presence.
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, in the promise and sustenance of new life.
This is why, in the communion liturgy, 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 other? Scripture calls us to join together and let there be nothing separating 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 entire 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 all those who have raised me in the faith and all those I’ll help to raise. 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 you 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 gather 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 or doctrinal 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 that 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. It is the beauty of this broken world and its healing, all in one.
May we come and receive.
Amen.