Obstacles as Opportunities: Preamble

Obstacles as Opportunities: Preamble.  The harvest is in. The barns are full. Turkey and deer find plenty of leavings in the corn fields to pack on winter weight before the cold sets in. Before rushing too quickly into singing carols like, “O Come All Ye Faithful,” congregations sing hymns like, “Come ye thankful people come / raise the song of harvest home. / All is safely gathered in / ere the winter storms begin.” Wood stoves and fallen leaves scent the air with nostalgia, that is, except for the air around the church building. The farmers around here are flinging slurry on their fields. If you need a definition of agricultural slurry, I trust you will find the answer on your first attempt. But suffice it to say, Norman Rockwell didn’t paint any canvases about spreading manure “ere the winter storms begin.”

In a sense, manure is often viewed as an obstacle to breathing deeply this otherwise perfect November air. It stinks literally and metaphorically, as if it were somehow unfair of the farmers to ruin Autumn for the rest of us. To the farmers, however, I presume that manure smells more like an opportunity for next spring’s crop than an obstacle to enjoying this year’s delights. Manure improves the soil. In due time, everyone benefits from improved soil, farmer or friend, though it stinks for a while. 

End-of-year at Grace Community Church brings a healthy rhythm, reviewing the past year and previewing the next year. Like most churches, we check the numbers, draft a budget, assess our strengths and weaknesses, consider course corrections, recommend additions and subtractions in programing, set the theme for emphasis in teaching and preaching, and establish some metrics by which we will measure if we are successful in the new year.

As we look back at 2024 and stare ahead into 2025, the Elders see struggle, mostly financial, ahead of us. Despite keeping to a very frugal budget in 2024, we have zeroed our church savings account, bleeding $500 per week all year long. Unless the Lord intervenes in the first part of 2025 with a windfall, we will have to make some difficult decisions regarding missions giving, rent, and payroll. But our Lord is the Intervener! Therefore, our first challenge in addressing this struggle is our mindset. Will we frame our financial limitations as an obstacle or an opportunity? Viewed as an obstacle, any course correction will feel punitive, even stinky, which is unfortunate and unnecessary. Viewed as an opportunity, which it is, all course corrections carry the optimism of an optimized harvest by this time next year.

Without struggle, we tend to coast. Any coasting I’ve ever known has been downhill. But with struggle, we have opportunities to climb: to respond by faith, to review our vision and mission, to renew our strength “mounting up with wings like eagles” (Isa. 40:31), and to reinvigorate our prayers as we “grow the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18).

An Overview of the Lord's Supper (Part Two)

 An Overview of the Lord’s Supper (Part Two).  Compared to the central position that the Lord’s Supper holds in regular Christian worship, surprisingly few verses outside the four gospel accounts mention its observance. Though often pressed into a Communion application, John 6 does not mention the Communion ceremony.

Jesus explained to the Jewish crowds who had just eaten the miraculous meal of the loaves and fish, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves” (John 6:26). Instead of portraying Communion, Jesus pointed to himself. “I am the Bread of Life, whoever comes to me shall not hunger” (John 6:35). “Everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:40). The crowd understood what Jesus was saying about himself, he came from heaven (John 6:42), but misunderstood his imagery: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (John 6:52). They confused the subject with its metaphor.

The subject of John 6 is the person of Christ, not the work of Christ, per se. The metaphor of believing was eating. “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:53-54). Yet, the repeated phrase, “raise him up on the last day” (vv. 40, 54), clarifies the confusion. Belief in the Son is the point, not the eating of Communion. Ritual doesn’t impart eternal life, only belief in Jesus does.

One of the two passages outside the four gospel accounts that rightly mentions the Lord’s Supper is Acts 2:42-27. In it, the church found a summary of its four main activities: “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (vs. 42). Because it appears in a list and uses the definite article, The Breaking of Bread operates like a proper name grammatically.

Verse 42, therefore, is unlike verse 46: “And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts.” Thus, the second mention of “breaking of bread” in this paragraph was not the Communion (vs. 42), but a general description that modified the main verb, received. In other words, The Breaking of Bread happened when they were gathered for worship service, whereas house-to-house meal sharing throughout the week characterized the early church.

The second passage is 1 Corinthians 10:14-22. The Communion illustrates Paul’s overall logic as to why the church should withstand the temptation to observe both paganism and Christianity simultaneously (i.e., syncretism). “Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry” (1 Cor. 10:14). “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?” (1 Cor. 10:16). The Communion is both communal and exclusive. “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor. 10:17). “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons” (1 Cor. 10:21). Partaking any ceremonial table is an act of worship. Though idolatry is impotent (vs. 19), Christ will not share his glory with demons. He is rightly jealous for his people (vs. 22).

An Overview of the Lord's Supper (Part One)

An Overview of the Lord’s Supper (Part One).  Our Lord Jesus established two, enduring ordinances for the church to observe in perpetuity: water baptism and the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, or Communion (also called by some, the Eucharist). 

Water baptism happens once, usually marking the beginning of one’s Christian journey as a testimony of faith in Jesus as Savior. Communion, however, happens often with an unspecified frequency but a certain purpose: “As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor. 1:26). The central imagery for the Lord’s Supper is the shared meal. Christ’s table is set. God’s children are all invited to gather around. Communion is a family meal. 

Significant and sober but not necessarily somber, the meal looks back—“Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19)—and looks ahead—”For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes” (Luke 22:18). This meal is the rallying point for the church, its rehearsed center, and default setting.

In the Synoptics, the history-shifting ceremony was placed in its historical context (Matt. 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19). Jesus commandeered the Jewish Passover Feast, which was quite a feat, since it unilaterally belonged to the Lord. “You shall keep it as a feast to the Lord” (Exo. 12:14). Jesus personally fulfilled Passover and reforged it as the ceremony of his New Covenant. “For Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Cor. 5:7).

Instituted on the last night before his crucifixion, the Lord’s Supper was later infused with explanation. In his first epistle to the church at Corinth, Paul delivered a stinging rebuke for the misuse and misunderstanding of the Communion meal. “But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse” (1 Cor. 11:17). But their errors gave occasion for a clarification of the Communion, which has ironically edified the church in every generation since the Corinthians botched the Communion.

They were using the Lord’s Supper at Corinth as a wedge to divide the church. The Lord’s Supper should unite the church, not further entrench factions within the church. To this grievous error Paul gives his sarcastic retort: “When you come together, it is not the Lord's supper that you eat” (1 Cor. 11:20). Call it something other than Communion, Corinthians, because there is neither communion with God nor community with one another. 

They were cliquish, which probably indirectly referred to a separation between Jews and Gentiles during the meal or to political parties in the church: “I follow Paul,’ or ‘I follow Apollos,’ or ‘I follow Cephas,’ or ‘I follow Christ’” (1 Cor. 1:12). But they were also selfish, cutting in line, overindulging, disallowing some to participate. “For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk” (1 Cor. 11:21).

Paul added a final application for the Corinthians with a very sharp edge. “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Cor. 11:27). Communion is about communion! If you mess with it, you mess with God at your own peril (see, 1 Cor. 11:30).