January 25, 2009 Sermon

Proclaiming Jesus' Death
I Corinthians 11:17-34

In the South they tell of the man who went around hitting himself in the head with a 2x4. When asked why he would do such a thing he replied, “Because it feels so good when I stop!” The Apostle Paul wrote I Corinthians. He sent it as a letter (actually, probably several letters that church leaders later cobbled together) to a congregation in some conflict. We have reached the eleventh chapter. We have studied passages Paul wrote to resolve issue after issue. We can imagine he did not want to write such negative letters. It might have felt a little like hitting himself in the head. Yet he felt compelled to make his arguments. The Corinthian congregation was young and vulnerable. It needed his guidance.

Today we read one of the last critical corrections Paul wrote to the Corinthians. Today we read about how they celebrated—and understood—communion improperly. But today we also reach a turning point in I Corinthians. For the rest of the letter Paul devoted himself to making passionate and beautiful statements about the Holy Spirit, love, worship and the resurrection. It must have felt good finally to make a few positive points! We focus on the most important of the statements Paul made about communion: that with it, we “proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.”

Paul opened the key paragraph on communion with the words, “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you.” By this he meant he had received a revelation about communion directly from the Lord. We do not know how or when this happened. We know only that Paul made the claim. We should take this quite seriously. Much of what we understand about communion comes from this paragraph. How do we know we can rely on its truth? Many people through the centuries have claimed to have heard straight from God. Such a list would include Paul, Joan d'Arc, Jim Jones (of Jonestown fame) and of course Oral Roberts, who in 1987 claimed that God had told him that unless he could get people to give at least eight million dollars to his medical missionaries ministries God would “take him home”. Roberts did not raise the eight million. God has not yet taken him home.

Yet we must not lightly dismiss the Apostle Paul's claim to have received a special revelation. The record of his works and character appears in the New Testament book of Acts. Based on that information we could call Paul temperamental and even a bit maniacal in his dedication to preaching about Jesus Christ. One thing we could not call Paul, however, is dishonest. Plus, his claim to having heard directly from God appears in scripture. We believe the Bible, while written by fallible human beings, has the authority of God's Holy Spirit behind it. If you cannot believe in Paul's authority alone, believe in God's. What follows about communion is the real deal.

Paul began with the fact that Jesus celebrated the first communion “on the night when he was betrayed.” From the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke we know Jesus had gathered his disciples to observe Passover. This ritual commemorated Israelites’ escape from Egypt many centuries before. The Lord God Almighty had sent plagues to intimidate the Pharaoh into letting them go free. But Pharaoh was stubborn; he held onto his slaves until God sent the Angel of Death to take the eldest son of each house. The Israelites, having been warned of this most terrible plague, sacrificed lambs and painted their blood on their doorposts. The angel passed over those houses marked with the blood of lambs. Afterwards the Lord instructed the people to remember these events with a festival of unleavened bread. For six days they would eat bread raised with yeast in the usual way. But on the seventh day they would eat unleavened bread. This would remind them of their escape from Egypt, when they had no time to prepare food slowly.

All those many years later, Jesus the Jew and his Jewish followers sat down for a Passover meal. They would have used unleavened bread. As Paul tells us, “(Jesus) took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'This is my body, that is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.'” Jesus clearly implied that he was to become the sacrificial lamb whose blood would rescue all who believed in Him. Paul clearly agreed. Jesus' body would break on the cross. He would die. We celebrate communion to remember this. When we remember that Jesus died for us we remember that He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. God desires our obedience. God desires that we not break the laws of God, that we not sin. But sin we do. Praise God, therefore, that Jesus has marked us with blood and that Death passes us over!

Simone Weil was born a Jew into the horrors of Europe in the mid-twentieth century. A young woman of rare sensitivity and intellect, she converted to Christianity not to escape the death camps, but because she had a powerful experience of the love of Christ. She wrote that she could not make it all the way through the Lord's Prayer if she paid careful attention to the words as she tried to recite them. Often the part that tripped her up was, “And forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” She never took communion because, she wrote, she could not completely forgive the Nazis. The amazing grace of God, who forgave even the Nazis, who forgives even us, froze her in her spiritual tracks.

I studied Simone Weil in seminary. One of my classmates had done some prison time. He was a genuine tough guy. We were all relieved when he decided not to play on the seminary flag football team. We competed in the university league against college students. They were younger, but we won most of our games. We had a quarterback who had played semi-pro football and a lineman who had played varsity at the University of Virginia. Plus seminarians can get really, really mean when they play sports. I do not exaggerate. But as strong a team as we had, we were all a little afraid of this ex-con in our midst. He came to a couple of practices. I played running back. One of my jobs was blocking to protect that valuable quarterback of ours. When this guy rushed the quarterback he hit me harder than I have ever been hit at any level of any sport. And he did it again and again. But then he decided to quit. Playing football brought out the beast deep within, he said, and he had worked too hard to subdue that beast.

When we studied Simone Weil's words about how God's gracious forgiveness prevented her from being able to say the Lord's Prayer, this tough ex-con broke into tears. Right there in the classroom he started sobbing, his body heaving. After he had composed himself he said something like, “I know exactly what she means. I can never get over the sins I have committed.” Jesus died to forgive our sins—all our sins, no matter how many nor how terrible they may be. Jesus bled to wash away the consequence of our sins, which according to God's law, would be death. We celebrate communion to remember that Jesus died, and he died for a reason. That reason is that we are too far gone to save ourselves, and God loves us so much, he sent his only Son to die in our place.

That Son revealed new meaning for the Passover cup just as surely as he had for the Passover bread. As they concluded their ritual meal Jesus “took the cup also... saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.'” The Passover ritual includes several ceremonial cups. This final one is called the Cup of Praise. As the head of household pours it, he leads the singing of a Psalm, usually any of Psalms 115-118 or 136. Jesus would quote from one of these, 116, during his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, later that night, as he waited to be arrested. When the head of the household finishes his cup, he says, “Next year in Jerusalem.” This refers to the Jews' belief that the Messiah has not yet come, but that perhaps, by next year, he will have arrived and all the world will submit to his rule from Jerusalem.

Jesus and his disciples shared their Passover meal in Jerusalem. He knew that He was and is the Messiah. They were coming to believe Him with varying degrees of certainty. But he was and is an odd sort of Messiah. He does not rule with earthly power. He rules the hearts and minds of those who believe in Him. And when he lived on this earth as one of us, he did a most ungodly thing: he died. He died on the cross. Communion, he tells us, “proclaims the Lord's death until He comes.” Instead of drinking one last cup to commemorate our hope that the Messiah might come in the future, He led them in drinking one last cup to proclaim he had come and would die in just a few hours.

Now, when we celebrate communion, this is what we're supposed to think about? Jesus' death? Yes it is. In fact, we ought to ponder Jesus' death more often than we probably do. Certainly we should ponder his resurrection. Certainly we should keep in mind that His death did not mark the end of His life and work on our behalf. But we ought to stop every so often and ponder the love that led God to die for us. Christianity is the only religion I know of in the history of the world that worships a god who loves unlovable people so much that god willingly died for them. Christians worship Christ, Jesus Christ, who was born as a human being, suffered as a human being, and died as a human being.

Just think about that for one moment. Does it not stop you in your spiritual tracks? Jesus loves us. Jesus died. For us. Praise God!