Acts 2: 43-47
Sacrament of the
Lord’s Supper
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany/ 1st February 2015
Years ago one of our young theologians asked,
“Mommy, what is the church for?” It’s a
terrific question, one that we should continuously ask ourselves. What is a church for? Why does it exist? Not just Catonsville Presbyterian Church, but
any church? What are we here to do?
What exactly is going on here?
What are we meant to be? Why does the Church exist?
It’s a good question to ask,
especially today as we gather for the Annual Congregational Meeting, review the
committee reports, receive the budget, discuss your pastors’ terms of call,
elect new officers. The reports reflect
the institutional life of this congregation—what it takes to “run” a healthy,
vital church. But they also reflect
something else, deeper than the budgets and graphs and all the words, words, words found in the
reports.
What is necessary for a church to be
a church? What if we whittled everything away, every
committee or board and member of the staff, everything extraneous, what what’s essential?
What’s the absolutely minimum requirement for a church to be a church?
We don’t need a building—at least not one that looks like
ours. Any room large enough to gather
the community would do. Without a
building like ours we wouldn’t need a sexton or a board of trustees. We wouldn’t require the use of an office
manager or bookkeeper. It’s not
essential that we have boards and committees.
We don’t have to have choirs or organs or pianos or music directors and
organists. We don’t really need pastors.
I think they’re kind of important, but I’m biased. Yet, I know, we, your pastors, know we’re not
essential for the church to be the church.
Two weeks ago both of your pastors couldn’t get here for worship due to
the ice storm, but worship carried on without us.
Now, I’m not proposing that we let the staff go or sell the
building—although I used to hear similar comments about our building, years ago,
before our renovations. This is simply
the way we “do” the institutional these days—with buildings and staff and
professional ministers. It hasn’t always
been so and neither will it always be so, because the Church is changing. But this exercise is an interesting thought
experiment to remind us why we’re
here and to answer that question, what are we here for.
The answer to this question is found
here in Acts 2, in this marvelously concise description of what it was like in
the first century. It’s ridiculously
simple. “Gather the folks, break the bread, tell the
stories.”[1] This is at the heart of what we do. Simple, yet radical and life changing because
of the One who breaks bread with us and because of the stories we tell. Gather the folks, break the bread, tell the
stories.
“All who believed
were together” (Acts 2:44). Believers
gathered. From the very beginning, believers in Jesus gathered together in
small groups, in what could be called
“circles of trust.”[2] Because the level of trust was high, they “had all things in common.”
“circles of trust.”[2] Because the level of trust was high, they “had all things in common.”
Embedded within the English word “common” is the
Greek word, koina, common.
It’s related to one of the most beautiful and profound Greek words in
the New Testament, koinonia. Rich in meaning, koinonia pulls this text together, pulls the disciples together
and, by God's grace, pulls all of us together with them.
Actually, koinonia is just under the surface shaping most of what happens in the New Testament, and it emerges in English in many places, whenever we read words such as: fellowship, sharing, participation, contribution, community, and communion. Behind these words is the Greek word koinonia. It's tough to capture what this word means; maybe because it isn’t a concept to be understood, but an experience we undergo, encounter. Or, better, koinonia is a description of what it looks like and feels like when believers of Jesus Christ gather together, break bread, tell their stories—the old, old, stories about Jesus long ago, yes, but also the stories of how Jesus has changed and continues to change lives, now, today—stories shared, lives shared, resources shared with gladness and generosity, a people determined to live not apart but together.
Determined to live
and believe together not apart. It’s
tough to be Christian by oneself. Years
ago someone called the church office and asked to speak with a pastor. He had a question: Does
one have to be part of a church, go to worship to be a Christian? Can I be a Christian home alone? I was a little perturbed by the question, to
be honest. I was brief in my
response. “No. You can’t be a Christian alone, by oneself, apart
from the community.”[2] He didn’t like my response. For how can you share in communion if you’re
by yourself, cut-off from community?
Believers are drawn together, drawn to the
presence of Christ who meets us here and “shows up” when his people gather,
break bread, and tell the stories of his love. What this text (and many like it
in scripture) points to and reminds us is that from the beginning Christ was
worshipped and experienced and served in and through community (koinonia),
when believers shared (koinonia) their joys and their sorrows, when they
shared (koinonia) their resources and
contributed generously to the worshipping koinonia,
and then shared (koinonia) with those in need, and through the rich,
intimate fellowship (koinonia) that occurs when believers break bread in
Jesus' name and see his face imprinted in the members of the community. When all of this happens, we can say Jesus
“shows up.” His presence, real. The
early church knew, as we know, that we are participating (koinonia)—right
now, right here, gathering, breaking, telling, sharing—in the very life of
Christ! This is what the church is for.
All of this
becomes the basis for our Reformed understanding of breaking bread and sharing
a cup, of Communion (koinonia). It's
why what goes on at this Table is more than just a “memorial meal,” and why
John Calvin (1509-1564)—blessed be his name—wanted Communion served on every Lord's Day. Why? Because when we
do we participate in the very life of Christ found here in this community. Holy
Communion is—co-union, a communing with Jesus; it is the mystical
joining of Jesus Christ with the community of the faithful. Listen to Paul’s
description of the meal: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the
communion (koinonia) of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break,
is it not the koinonia of the body of Christ?” (1 Corinthians
10:16).
Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, is right
when he says. “When we gather as God’s guests at God’s table, the Church
becomes what it is meant to be.”[4]
The people of God are formed and reformed when we break bread together with the
Lord. This act—again and again—shapes who we are as a people and shapes the
work of the church.
So let us break
this bread, believers, share this cup knowing we participate in the presence of
Christ alive within us and among us here—and then watch how Christ is formed in
us and among us and through us, a congregation of widely diverse people
gathered together in communion,
in koinonia, formed into a community that embodies the presence of
Christ. This is what the church is
for.
[1] Cited by
Larry Rasmussen, "Shaping Communities," in Dorothy C. Bass, ed. Practicing
Our Faith: A Way of Life for a Searching People (San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1997), 119. He calls it "the perennial
strategy."
[2] This is a
phrase central to the thought of Parker J. Palmer, Hidden Wholeness:
The Journey Toward an Undivided Life (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,
2004), 25ff.
[3] Of course this response doesn’t apply to members
unable to get to worship or be a part of the fellowship life of the church (for a
variety of reasons).
[4] Rowan Williams, Being
Christian: Baptism, Bible, Eucharist, Prayer (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2014), 58.
