James T. Cleland - Communion Meditation (March 5, 1961)
MP3
Loading the media player...
Transcript
- Download transcript as:
-
Text
-
PDF
-
WebVTT (includes timecodes)
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
| - | Let the words of my mouth | 0:09 |
| and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable | 0:13 | |
| in thy sight, | 0:17 | |
| O Lord our strength | 0:19 | |
| and our redeemer. | 0:22 | |
| Amen. | 0:25 | |
| We are gathered together | 0:34 | |
| at the table of the Lord Jesus Christ, | 0:36 | |
| the Son of God. | 0:40 | |
| He is the host | 0:44 | |
| and we are the guests. | 0:47 | |
| We are most of us well acquainted with the service, | 0:51 | |
| but do we understand it? | 0:57 | |
| Have we so thought about it | 1:01 | |
| that we derive | 1:03 | |
| spiritual sustenance from it | 1:06 | |
| for our benefit? | 1:10 | |
| Here are three facts for us to keep in mind | 1:13 | |
| so that we may not be | 1:17 | |
| awkward visitors here, | 1:20 | |
| but rather happy guests, | 1:23 | |
| glad to be invited | 1:28 | |
| and blessed when we depart. | 1:31 | |
| Now first, | 1:35 | |
| this service is an act of God. | 1:38 | |
| He is responsible for it. | 1:43 | |
| He is at the center of it. | 1:47 | |
| He is in charge of it. | 1:50 | |
| Now that doesn't entirely make sense, does it? | 1:55 | |
| Surely, we prepared the bread and the wine. | 1:59 | |
| It was we who dressed in our Sunday clothes and came here. | 2:05 | |
| We have done the singing and the praying | 2:12 | |
| and we shall do more of it. | 2:14 | |
| Now there's truth in the puzzled reaction | 2:18 | |
| but it misses the whole reason for our being here. | 2:23 | |
| The sum and the substance of a sacrament | 2:28 | |
| is that it is something which God does. | 2:31 | |
| God gave his Word, | 2:38 | |
| his healthy message of hope. | 2:41 | |
| He also gave the Lord's Supper, | 2:45 | |
| his table, | 2:49 | |
| where we are fed to our spiritual nourishment. | 2:50 | |
| Now that's not easy for us to grasp | 2:54 | |
| and more difficult for us to accept. | 2:57 | |
| We want to be the ones who do things. | 3:01 | |
| Our whole American way of life teaches us to be activists, | 3:05 | |
| do-gooders, | 3:12 | |
| with the danger that in short order we become busybodies. | 3:14 | |
| Now don't become too excited and rednecked over this. | 3:20 | |
| There's plenty for us to do as Christians, | 3:24 | |
| but let us discern everything in its proper place. | 3:26 | |
| In the sacrament, | 3:31 | |
| as indeed in every activity of the church, | 3:34 | |
| God acts first. | 3:37 | |
| We react. | 3:39 | |
| He moves. | 3:43 | |
| Then we move in response. | 3:45 | |
| This has been caught in one of the communion hymns. | 3:49 | |
| "My God, | 3:53 | |
| and is thy table spread? | 3:55 | |
| And does thy cup | 4:00 | |
| with love overflow? | 4:03 | |
| Thither be all thy children led, | 4:06 | |
| and let them all its sweetness know." | 4:09 | |
| First thing we do at communion is relax, | 4:14 | |
| sit down, | 4:18 | |
| say thank you | 4:21 | |
| for inviting us. | 4:24 | |
| Sacrament is something which God initiates. | 4:27 | |
| Secondly, this service is a visible act of God. | 4:33 | |
| We're accustomed to the fact that God uses words | 4:39 | |
| to convey his nature and his will to us | 4:43 | |
| in the reading of the Scripture | 4:46 | |
| and, this may surprise you, | 4:49 | |
| in the sermon. | 4:52 | |
| The sermon is theoretically not a man blathering | 4:55 | |
| but God speaking. | 4:59 | |
| This thought carries weighty import | 5:03 | |
| both for the pulpit and for the pew. | 5:05 | |
| But man has other senses. | 5:09 | |
| He sees and tastes as well as hears. | 5:11 | |
| And in the Lord's Supper, | 5:15 | |
| God, through Christ, acts out his spoken words | 5:17 | |
| so that we may see them. | 5:24 | |
| The visible message is in no way different in content | 5:27 | |
| from the teaching of Jesus or from the preached gospel. | 5:31 | |
| To share your bread and wine | 5:36 | |
| depict to us | 5:40 | |
| love, | 5:42 | |
| fellowship, | 5:45 | |
| sacrifice, | 5:48 | |
| and the kingdom. | 5:50 | |
| The news grasped in the mind's eye is all about God | 5:52 | |
| and Jesus | 5:59 | |
| and those who follow him. | 6:01 | |
| Now just as meaning may be grasped in a handshake, | 6:04 | |
| so profound significance may be sensed | 6:10 | |
| in drinking from a common cup, | 6:12 | |
| for Christianity, in its great wisdom, | 6:17 | |
| has refused to separate the spiritual from the material. | 6:19 | |
| So long as we live on earth, | 6:27 | |
| the only way we shall recognize the spiritual | 6:31 | |
| is to see it embodied in the material. | 6:36 | |
| That is why it's called a sacrament, | 6:42 | |
| the outward and visible sign, | 6:44 | |
| the indication, the suggestion | 6:47 | |
| of an inward and spiritual grace, | 6:49 | |
| favor, | 6:53 | |
| loveliness. | 6:55 | |
| Now this should not surprise us who see in the flag | 6:56 | |
| more than an oblong of bunting, | 7:00 | |
| or in the wedding ring, | 7:04 | |
| more than a circle of metal. | 7:06 | |
| In the bread and wine, | 7:10 | |
| we see Jesus. | 7:15 | |
| Now we need not believe that the bread and the wine | 7:18 | |
| become the actual body and blood of our Lord. | 7:21 | |
| Jesus talked about being a door | 7:26 | |
| and a road | 7:29 | |
| and a vine. | 7:31 | |
| But we don't have to take him literally, | 7:33 | |
| though we should always take him seriously. | 7:34 | |
| Years before he was born, | 7:38 | |
| his most distinguished ancestor, King David, | 7:41 | |
| talked in this fashion too. | 7:46 | |
| He was hiding in the cave of Adullam | 7:49 | |
| to avoid the Philistine raiding parties. | 7:52 | |
| He was thinking of his birthplace | 7:55 | |
| and quite understandably, he muttered out loud, | 7:57 | |
| "Oh, that someone would give me a drink of water | 8:01 | |
| from the well of Bethlehem, | 8:05 | |
| the well that's by the gate." | 8:08 | |
| Three of his men, overhearing him, | 8:12 | |
| did just that. | 8:16 | |
| They daringly infiltrated the Philistine lines, | 8:19 | |
| laid hands on a skin full of Bethlehem water, | 8:24 | |
| brought it to the king. | 8:29 | |
| You know what he did? | 8:32 | |
| He acted as a priest. | 8:35 | |
| He took the water | 8:38 | |
| and poured it out | 8:41 | |
| to the Lord. | 8:44 | |
| How would you have felt | 8:47 | |
| if you had been one of these three men | 8:48 | |
| who had fulfilled David's longing | 8:52 | |
| at the risk of their lives? | 8:57 | |
| Angry? | 9:00 | |
| Insulted? | 9:03 | |
| David explained it in words so memorable | 9:06 | |
| that 3,000 years later, we're talking about them. | 9:09 | |
| He told them very simply, | 9:14 | |
| "This isn't water. | 9:15 | |
| This is blood, | 9:19 | |
| your blood." | 9:22 | |
| Now for a Jew, blood belongs to God and to nobody else. | 9:25 | |
| And so David gave it to God. | 9:30 | |
| But one of us says, but it wasn't blood! | 9:35 | |
| Well, if we insist on that, | 9:38 | |
| then we missed the whole point of the story. | 9:40 | |
| But if we nod our heads in agreement and say, | 9:44 | |
| yeah, I understand | 9:47 | |
| that water was blood, | 9:50 | |
| then we understand what both David and Jesus | 9:54 | |
| were driving at. | 9:58 | |
| This bread and wine on the table | 10:01 | |
| are symbolic of the visible acts performed by Jesus, | 10:03 | |
| Son of God and Son of David, | 10:08 | |
| to symbolize the love and hoped-for fellowship | 10:11 | |
| which he had preached and lived in Galilee and in Judea. | 10:15 | |
| This was and is his body and his blood. | 10:20 | |
| This is our Lord. | 10:26 | |
| Directly and very briefly, | 10:31 | |
| this service is a received act of God. | 10:33 | |
| Some of us were maybe a little worried | 10:39 | |
| because so much stress was placed upon what God did | 10:41 | |
| and so little upon what we do. | 10:43 | |
| Where we must do something, | 10:46 | |
| we must receive the sacrament. | 10:50 | |
| It's useless by itself lying on the table, | 10:56 | |
| no matter how beautiful the order of service, | 11:00 | |
| no matter how well appointed the table, | 11:04 | |
| no matter how sincere the prayer of consecration. | 11:08 | |
| The nourishment must be consumed | 11:14 | |
| by you, | 11:18 | |
| by me, | 11:20 | |
| otherwise it will not work to our benefit, | 11:22 | |
| otherwise God is not the giver. | 11:26 | |
| You know, many folks think that the one channel of grace | 11:31 | |
| in the Reformed Church | 11:34 | |
| is the reading and the preaching of the Word. | 11:37 | |
| But the reformers never said that. | 11:43 | |
| They said, one channel, not the one. | 11:47 | |
| They said, one channel is the reading, | 11:51 | |
| preaching, and hearing of the Word. | 11:56 | |
| No congregation, | 12:02 | |
| no sermon. | 12:04 | |
| There cannot be a valid sermon without a listener. | 12:06 | |
| But these men said something else. | 12:11 | |
| They said, the Lord's Supper | 12:14 | |
| is also a channel of grace, a channel of the Word, | 12:16 | |
| and it cannot be valid | 12:21 | |
| unless both bread and wine | 12:25 | |
| are received by the congregation. | 12:28 | |
| The Word of course may be preached | 12:33 | |
| without the Lord's Supper being celebrated. | 12:35 | |
| But the Supper is the Word | 12:37 | |
| seen as well as listened to, | 12:40 | |
| tasted as well as heard. | 12:42 | |
| And it is the congregation | 12:44 | |
| which does the tasting and the seeing, | 12:46 | |
| and it is you who bring this riddle to fulfillment. | 12:49 | |
| "Thy body, | 12:57 | |
| broken for my sake, | 12:59 | |
| my bread from heaven shall be. | 13:02 | |
| Thy testamental cup | 13:05 | |
| I take, | 13:09 | |
| and thus remember thee." | 13:11 | |
| We complete God's action | 13:15 | |
| by receiving it with understanding and gratitude. | 13:18 | |
| We are associates of his in the sacrament. | 13:24 | |
| The Lord's Supper then is God's doing. | 13:30 | |
| It is God's doing | 13:36 | |
| well pleasing in our eyes. | 13:38 | |
| It is God's doing | 13:43 | |
| well pleasing in our eyes | 13:45 | |
| and for us to receive. | 13:48 | |
| Therefore, let us draw near with faith | 13:53 | |
| and take this holy sacrament to our comfort, | 13:59 | |
| that as an old divine said so well, | 14:06 | |
| "Christ | 14:11 | |
| may make a better residence | 14:12 | |
| in us." | 14:16 | |
| Amen. | 14:20 | |
| Let us pray. | 14:22 | |
| O God, whose blessed Son did manifest himself | 14:27 | |
| to his disciples in the breaking of bread, | 14:31 | |
| open the eyes of our faith | 14:36 | |
| that we may behold him | 14:40 | |
| and thee at this table | 14:43 | |
| spread for our benefit | 14:46 | |
| through him who is the bread of life | 14:50 | |
| and the royal wine of heaven, | 14:54 | |
| even Jesus Christ, | 14:58 | |
| thy Son, | 15:02 | |
| our Lord. | 15:04 | |
| Amen. | 15:07 |