I recently was asked to oversee a communion service during one Sunday morning at my church and I asked if it would be appropriate to say a few words before we actually took of the bread and the cup. I was assured that I had liberty to say what I felt God had impressed upon my heart and so I began pull together my thoughts on what I was going to say. After communion was over and for a few days after, I had many positive comments on the few words that I had spoken, so I thought I would post them here in case anyone was interested in reading them.
In preparing to oversee the communion, I asked a simple question – What is Communion? I basically wanted to know what was Communion all about and what does it really mean. So I went to the story of the first communion in Luke 22. There we see that Jesus asks his disciples to “do this in remembrance of me” – of course the “this” that Jesus is referring to is the act of partaking of the bread and the cup.
Traditionally, we take “remembrance” to mean the remembrance of Jesus’ death and sacrifice on the cross. I do not argue this view at all and believe it to be a wholly proper view of remembering Jesus during communion. After all, in I Corinthians 11 this is one way that Paul instructs us to remember Jesus in taking Communion. If it had not been for Jesus’ death and sacrifice, no one would have their sins forgiven today. So this is a completely appropriate form of “remembrance” during Communion.
But my next question quickly became “Is this all that we should remember?” Isn’t there much more about Jesus that we can and maybe even should remember? Don’t misunderstand what I am saying – there is no way to overestimate the importance of the death and sacrifice, but I am equally sure that there are other remembrances of Jesus that are just as important.
When you think about it, the death and sacrifice would have never happened had it not been for the agape love that Jesus had in his heart for all of us. It was his agape for us that motivated him through his entire life here on earth, including his death.
For the past few Monday nights, there has been a group of us called the Climbing Companions that meets at the church to discuss the expression of God’s kingdom through fellowship with each other. A central theme to our discussions has been relationships – with God, each other, and ourselves.
When I took a hard look at the first communion, I was immediately struck by what a great snapshot this was of all these relationships together at one moment in time. We see Jesus, so full of his agape love, preparing to die for his disciples and for us. At the same time, we see the disciples receiving this agape from Jesus and sharing it with one another. Yes – they had their moments of humanness, as we all do, but sharing Jesus’ agape was the essence of what was happening.
When I took a moment to think about the relationships represented in this picture, it was immediately clear how the act of this first communion followed the teachings of Jesus during his ministry. His teaching of the 2 greatest commandments- 1) love God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and 2) love your neighbor as yourself – fit very nicely within the frame of this first communion.
So, can I be so bold as to suggest that this is at least part of what Communion is all about - the receiving and sharing of the God’s agape love? The next time we take the bread and the cup with each other in Communion, can we remember Jesus by “ingesting” his agape love into us so that we can share it with whomever needs it – whether they be within our church or outside of it wherever we find them? Can Communion be about remembering Jesus by fulfilling his 2 greatest commandments?
Communion – the receiving and sharing of God’s agape love.
© Gregory M. Watson, 2008 (see Copyright Page for details)
