Sacraments: The Bread and The Cup

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We exist to awaken this generation to new life in Christ.

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Today we're starting a brand new series and it's called Sacraments.

I want to talk about that, but I just want to pray for us before we head into God's word and look at what He has in store for us.

So would you join me just in a brief prayer?

Heavenly Father, we desire that you would speak to us now.

And in these unique circumstances where I'm preaching to a camera and my friends are listening to me on a screen, that you, the transcendent and good God, would meet me and meet them where they are, and that you would unite us as your church through the bond of Jesus Christ.

Right now, would you do that work in Jesus' name?

Amen.

Well, you know, as I talk with a lot of people through this crazy pandemic, one of the words I hear, you know, I ask people, how are you doing?

And one of the words I've heard over and over again is the word scattered.

Like I feel all over the place.

I feel scattered.

I don't feel centered.

I have no rhythm.

And I know I felt that way as my wife and I have had kind of ups and downs with childcare.

My wife works in a hospital, and so there's tons of complications with that.

On top of that, trying to lead a church with a great team amidst a pandemic has been, well, frankly, difficult.

And it's left us a lot scattered.

And maybe you have felt that way too.

There's no rhythm.

You know, you think about all of the things in your life.

There's no commute, there's no workplace to go to, there's no school to take your kids to.

Some of you college students, you still have finals and have finished that up and you have that stress.

So that's still there.

But man, a lot of the normal rhythms that center our life are gone and we're left trying to find time for all of the things.

It means it's hard to place our life, to locate our life.

I'm sure you've had that issue where you're like, what day is it today?

Every day seems the same, and every day seems difficult and managing a ton of different stress.

Believe it or not, that's actually one of the main reasons we need to talk about the sacraments.

And that's why we are in this series that we're starting this week and just gonna continue next week.

So two weeks on the sacraments.

And you might think, why do we need this right now?

Well, I think we need it because we need to center our lives, to settle our lives, to place our lives.

And the sacraments do that.

Now, you might be new to church and think, what is a sacrament?

Like what does that mean?

This is a word that's etymology is in the Latin, like a lot of English words, and it literally just comes from the Latin word sacre, which means holy.

And the word sacrament just means things that are holy or things that have been made holy.

And holiness, we talk about this a lot at um awakening, you know, holiness is not some strange ethereal religious word.

It actually just means to separate and to set apart.

And so if a sacrament is a thing to make holy, it is a thing we set aside.

It's a thing that we set aside and we experience in a unique way.

The two sacraments across church history that now this is crazy to say, but really all churches, all Orthodox churches hold on to these two sacraments, which is crazy to say because a lot of churches disagree on a lot of things.

But we agree many universally on these two sacraments, these two practices we've set aside, communion and baptism.

Communion is the bread and the wine that we eat to remember and drink to remember the work of Jesus.

Baptism is where we place people under the water and bring them back up as a physical symbol of their conversion in Jesus.

These two practices have been practiced across centuries, thousands of years of church history, and are still practiced to this day.

And yet, in this pandemic, we're struggling with how do we practice these things because they're very intimate practices.

They're very close.

There's no social distancing involved in baptism.

There's very little social distancing involved at the communion table.

And so we got to think through these things and in many ways bring the sacraments back to the church and back to the center of life together and think through why is it important, number one, and two, how are we going to practice these things during this really unique time?

In a scattered time, we need to center our lives through the sacraments.

In a scattered time, we need to bring and collect and place our lives by looking at communion and looking at baptism.

Because these two things remind us of Jesus in a very unique way.

Today I want to talk to you about communion.

I want to talk about the bread and the cup.

Now, over our email newsletter and through our social media channels, we've tried to tell you guys to prepare for communion today.

And so, whatever you have today, we would love for you to participate in communion if that's bread and juice, or if that's tortilla and water, or whatever you might have.

Man, in your house, whatever you have, we'd love for you to prepare those elements so that at the end of this sermon, as we worship together, we could partake in communion together.

Again, communion is simply the elements of bread and wine or juice.

The bread symbolizing the broken body of Jesus and the cup, the juice of the wine, symbolizing the blood of Jesus.

These two things remind us of God's work on the cross and remind us of the gospel.

And historically, the church all takes this together.

We eat bread, we drink juice or wine, and we remember what Christ has done.

It symbolizes what Jesus did many, many years ago for us, and it reminds us of his work.

And I've noticed as a pastor, experience with communion really does vary.

For some of you, uh through this pandemic, you've actually forgot about communion.

You're like, oh yeah, right, we should maybe be doing that, right?

Maybe for some of you, you've been really missing it because it's it was a central part of your upbringing.

Maybe you grew up Catholic or Lutheran, and through one of those denominations, perchance you you were really focused on communion, so you've been wondering what we've been doing.

Maybe though you're new to faith, and this is the first time you've ever really heard about sacraments and communion and all that stuff.

Man, wherever you are, again, I my hope today is that you leave understanding why this is important and how we can practice these important practices.

Um, communion's so central, so important to what we do at awakening and through the church.

And what I love about it is it's so non-performative.

Do you know what I mean?

I think one thing I struggle with as a pastor in like modern times is um how much performance is connected to worship, you know?

Um, what I mean by worship is like worship services, everything from like the music to the preaching to the announcements to the videos we produce.

It's like everything has this pressure on it to be great.

And in this pandemic, it's almost heightened my anxiety about that because I'm seeing all these other churches that are doing all these other things.

And I can get lost in the comparison game.

And what communion does is it reminds me that the center of our faith has one performance, the performance of what Jesus Christ has done for us.

And that communion reminds me it's not all about the other stuff.

The other stuff helps us get to that.

You know, it helps us push to the work of Jesus.

That's why we worship, that's why we have cameras, that's why we have live streams, that's why I'm preaching, is to try to point you to Jesus.

Well, communion is so beautiful because it's so simple.

You can't really make it cool.

You can't really make it, you can't really class it up.

I mean, you can find nicer bread or cheaper bread or something like that, but at the end of the day, it's bread and it's juice or wine, and it really reminds you of what Jesus has done in a very simple way.

And I think we need that right now.

I've I'll put it this way: communion is a consistent, non-performative, universal way in which all Christians can settle their life in Jesus.

Communion is a consistent, non-performative way in which all Christians can settle their life in Jesus.

And I want to look at the first communion to help us understand this of why we need it, why it's important, and how we can practice it.

Going back to the Last Supper, the final time Jesus had a meal with his friends.

In fact, this is moments before he would be arrested, and really moments before he would be led to die.

And this passage we're going to jump in on is a kind of dramatic moment.

Much art has been made of this moment, and you might have kind of a picture of this in your brain of the disciples gathered around a table with Jesus.

And they're gathering around a particular meal.

These were Jewish men who were celebrating a particular religious feast.

I'll talk about it in a little bit.

But this is right before Jesus dies, and he gathers with his friends, and they're eating.

Matthew 26 is where it's at.

If you have a Bible, you can go there or you could click on the Bible tab.

It will be in Matthew 26, verse 26.

Matthew 26:26

Matthew 26, 26, it says this.

Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread and after blessing it, broke it and gave it to the disciples, and he said, This, take, eat, this is my body.

And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

I tell you, I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father's kingdom.

There's a lot in here.

There's a lot of drama, uh, there's a lot of biblical words, covenant, and then there's also a lot of alarming words like Jesus' blood and Jesus' body.

But understanding this passage, this Last Supper passage of Jesus instituting communion or the Lord's Supper, the Lord's table, the many words we have for it, this is the key to help us understand this meal that we take every week.

Very simply put, communion centers us on Jesus.

It centers us on who Jesus is.

I like to say it this way too.

It locates us in Jesus.

You ever been lost before and you pull out your phone and you click that blue arrow that locates you on the Google map so you can see your surroundings and see where you are.

You're in a new city or a new area.

Communion is kind of like that.

When you take communion, it's like pushing that blue arrow that switches your frame and views you in the context of your environment.

When you take communion, you are locating yourself in Jesus.

Right now, you're you might be looking around a lot, going, man, I don't know if I'm close to God.

I don't know where I'm at with God right now.

Where am I with God?

You're looking around for Him.

When you take communion, it's like pushing that button on your phone, locating you on the map of grace, locating you on the map of your life in Christ, figuring out where you are with Jesus.

And as you do that, it's like being in an environment where you need to be located.

You start looking in all these different directions.

And communion, as you take it, as you look in these different directions, you figure out you're actually surrounded by the presence of Jesus Christ.

And so communion becomes important because it locates us and centers us in a space and a way where we can be certain of where we stand with God.

Because a lot of us, we stress about where we stand with God, but communion settles us in where we stand with God by looking in all these different directions.

I want to show you this passage by looking in all these different directions to try to locate you and locate me in Jesus.

Backwards, forwards, inwards, upwards, and outwards.

We're looking all these directions to center us in Jesus.

First, for looking backwards.

The way we look backward and remembering Jesus, remembering his work.

In fact, this passage is filled with a ton of context, okay?

I'm gonna do my best to figure it to help you understand as much as I possibly can, but there's so much here.

Why is Jesus eating with his friends?

You see, when you and I take communion, we look back on the work of Jesus.

But when Jesus was instituting this Last Supper, they were also looking back as well.

So when we take communion, it's like we look back and back again at the work God has done across history.

Just nine verses before the verses you and I just read, Matthew is saying that they were on the first day of unleavened bread.

So he's locating it in the week that they were in.

Um, what does that mean?

They were preparing for Passover.

Since chapter 24 or 25 of Matthew, Matthew's been obsessed with this thing, Passover, saying, Passover is coming, Passover is coming.

Jesus was preparing for Passover.

Why?

Well, it was almost like Christmas for these Jewish men.

It was this big day they looked forward to.

They prepared a big meal for this.

And this was important to Matthew because he was writing to a Jewish audience.

So the first readers of this book weren't Americans or anything of Western mindsets.

These were particularly Jewish people reading about Jesus.

When Matthew's trying to tell them this, they would know.

They would hear that and exactly know the meal that Jesus was having.

It's very important, the Passover meal is what they were sharing, where Jewish people they retold the story of the Exodus through food.

Sounds great, right?

I'd love every story I heard to be communicated to me through food.

It's this big meal that goes back to Exodus 12, 13, 14, and 15, telling the story of the freedom of Israel.

And this was to try to remind the Jewish people of who God is and what he has done.

And over the first two nights of this week-long meal, seven total nights, it was called a seder.

And it that literally just means order.

They would kind of order their lives around this story.

There'd be unleavened bread, there'd be bitter herbs, and there'd be a Passover offering, a lamb, there'd be a piece of meat.

All of these pieces of food would remind the Jewish people of particular moments in the story so that they could memorize it.

You have to think this was during a time where literacy rate was like 1%.

So it's not like they could hand a book to a kid and say, hey, read the story of your ancestors.

They had to create spaces, environments, meals, sensory memories so that children could understand where they'd come from and what God had done in their family's life.

And there was, yeah, unleavened bread and herbs and wine and this lamb.

And that's the meal Jesus is having right now.

And as he's eating this meal, he takes the bread and he says, This is my body.

Now, the bread, though, in the original Passover meal was actually connected to the lamb.

The lamb was given to remind the people of Israel of the lambs that were slaughtered to paint blood on the doorpost.

If you've heard this story, they would paint blood on the doorposts at this moment because God asked them to from lambs that they had slaughtered.

And that that was an outward sign of this inward trust they had that God would liberate them from slavery.

And as they painted the blood on the doorpost, there wasn't anything magical about the blood.

It was simply just a symbol that they trusted God.

They heard what God said and they did what God asked them to do.

But in this scene, Jesus doesn't take the lamb, he takes the bread.

And it's this strange moment if you're a Jewish audience member reading this story, because you would wonder, where's the lamb?

Why is he taking this bread and saying, This is my body given for you?

The sacrifice to Jewish people was always a lamb.

The sacrifice was always an animal.

And there's no animal.

There's no lamb.

This is because if you're an early Jewish audience member reading or hearing this story, Matthew's clueing you into something.

There is a lamb at the table.

It's Jesus.

You see, there is no lamb because Jesus is going to substitute himself for our sacrifice to where there will be no need for lambs moving forward in this meal.

We don't need meat every week at communion because the body has been sacrificed and the body is Jesus.

So we don't need to do anything or perform anything or offer some kind of sacrifice to appease God, because Jesus takes the bread and says, Remember, in this bread there is no lamb.

Remember, in this bread, there is no need for religious performance.

In this bread, remember that I have performed on your behalf.

He will be the lamb.

There is no need for that.

And so when you and I eat that bread, it uh it unlocks for us the idea that no sacrifice is needed because all the sacrifice has been given.

And that's when he breaks it, he gives it to his disciples, and then he takes a cup of wine.

And in the Passover meal, there's actually four cups of wine.

And a lot of scholars believe that at this moment Jesus took the third cup of wine.

And that third cup would be called the cup of redemption.

It corresponds to a promise in Exodus 6, verse 6 that says this, I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty axe.

Exodus 6:6

This is this idea that God will come and he will act on behalf of the people.

It won't be by Israel's might that they get out of slavery.

It will be on God's might.

And so Jesus takes this idea of redemption and he says, This is my blood, my new covenant for you.

And the blood during the Passover meal, again, which was painted on the doorposts, was the outward sign that they trusted God.

And so, likewise, when we take the wine, we are saying, we are not the agent of our own redemption.

We're taking the glass and the cup, and we're saying, at this point in my life, I confess I'm not the person that I will save for myself.

I will not be the person who saves myself.

I will not be the person who acts by myself to save myself.

I'm trusting in another agent.

I'm trusting in another action on my behalf, which is Jesus Christ.

And so the whole meal should help us understand this very simple, maybe very overlooked fact.

Communion is not about you.

And that's the best news you can hear.

When I preach or when I hear preaching, I'm constantly uh, you know, critiquing myself or thinking, what do I think about what this person says?

When I'm worshiping, I'm thinking, I don't have a very good voice, you know.

All these people on stage have a better voice than me.

I'm kind of caught up in my, I struggle to be caught in my own mind.

Communion has nothing to do with your action or your performance.

And when you come to the table, you should come with the attitude of Hebrews chapter 10, verse 19, which says, and so, dear brothers and sisters, we can go boldly and enter heaven's most holy place because of the blood of Jesus.

Hebrews 10:19

Look down on verse 22, it says, Let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts, fully trusting him, for our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ's blood to make us clean.

The writer of Hebrews is saying, when you go to communion, the reason you can go boldly is because it's not about what you bring to the table.

It's about what has been brought to the table in Christ.

And we can rest in that securely, knowing when I take communion, I think first of Jesus.

I think first, I go backwards.

I think about God's action across history.

Who is God?

God is the one who freed Israel from Egypt and slavery and has freed me from my sin.

That's who God is, and that power overshadows the rest of the meal.

We not only look backwards in communion, we look forward in anticipation.

We are anticipating something.

Jesus says this actually at the end of the meal.

He says that I tell you the truth, I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.

He's holding up this glass of wine, he's saying, I'm not gonna drink this with you until we meet each other in heaven.

What does he mean by this?

Well, again, scholars kind of think he was at the third cup when he was raising it and saying, This is my body.

And many scholars think he then took the fourth cup.

So think about them drinking the third cup, the cup of redemption, realizing that it's not gonna be any lamb that's sacrificed, it's gonna be Jesus.

Then he takes the fourth and he actually withholds the fourth glass.

Maybe this is what scholars surmise, right?

They think maybe Jesus was raising the fourth glass and saying, You will not drink this until you and I meet.

The fourth glass was one that correlated to the promise of God that God would make for himself a people.

It was Israel's hope that Israel would be a nation that is open to the nations.

And in fact, there would be a multi ethnic gathering of God's people across everyone from the world that would come together.

And Jesus tells his disciples, I'm not going to drink this last glass, the one that's about all people coming to God and being God's people, until you see me again.

It points to the anticipation of the mission we're on right now.

It points us to the purposes, plans, and will of God that is coming.

The day is coming when, as Revelation 21 says, the dwelling place of God will be with mankind.

And the glory of the nations, this is language from Revelation 21, an image of the end of everything as God comes and makes all things right, the glory of all nations, of all cultures, of all colors and creeds will come together in the place of Christ, with Christ, and be with his people together.

And so I wonder, just as communion isn't about you, as I said, when we look back, when we look forward, communion reminds us that the future is not in your hands.

And so when you take communion, you look forward, maybe it's time for you to consider I don't have to make my future for me.

There's a lot of things that are uncertain right now.

And I wonder if taking communion could remind you of one thing that is very certain.

God will gather his people, his kids will come to him, and his dwelling place will be with his people.

And our faith will no longer be faith by our own belief.

It'll actually be what we see.

Our faith will be sight.

We will see God with his people.

And then communion pushes us back, it pushes us forward to look forward, but it also does take us inward.

Because you notice in this meal, there's some reflection we should have.

The context of this meal is not just theological and biblical history as I've outlined.

It's actually kind of relational.

You know, if you just are looking at a physical Bible right now and you're looking at verse 26, which we're looking at right now, the very verses before it are Jesus confronting those who would betray him at the table.

It's kind of awkward, but the context of the meal of communion is not purity and righteousness.

The context of the meal of communion is wickedness, betrayal, and sin.

There is a tension at this table.

Who should be here?

Who's good enough to be with Jesus?

Who's good enough to eat this bread and drink this wine?

And right before this, Jesus looks at Judas in the eye and he says, You're gonna betray me.

And then he offers the meal to all of his disciples.

Now, that should cause us to inwardly reflect on our own lives.

Not only that, but after this, his disciples will betray him, Judas.

They'll deny him, Peter, denies Jesus.

They run up to Peter, they say, Did you know this man?

He says, No.

And they'll also be forced towards apathy.

There's this scene where Jesus is praying right before his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane.

This is coming up in the very next verses, right after the verses you and I read.

He tells his disciples, Pray for me.

You know what his disciples do?

They fall asleep.

So at the communion table, at the first Lord's Supper, we are surrounded with betrayal, denial, and apathy.

So what are you bringing to the table?

Are you bringing one of those things?

Because the good news is it's actually welcome at the table.

If Jesus could welcome his disciples who betrayed him, who denied him, who were apathetic towards him, what are you gonna bring to the table that Jesus is not prepared for?

He, in the midst of sin, is able to initiate this meal and be fully comfortable.

Why?

Because he knows his presence and work at the table outweighs your presence and your work or lack of work at the table.

That the grace and work of Jesus Christ at the communion table always will surpass and overwhelm the sin that you bring to it.

Every single time you come to communion, you might think, I'm not worthy of this meal.

And do you know what I say to you?

Welcome to the club.

Welcome to the table.

What do you think we would bring to this table, anyways?

In light of Jesus, right?

What do we have to bring?

Betrayal is disloyalty that hurts somebody else and benefits you.

That's what Judas did.

He hurt Jesus just for some silver.

And we do this to God all the time.

We betray him by hurting him and trying to elevate ourselves in pride.

We also often are filled with denial.

You know, denial is declaring something to be untrue or failing to acknowledge another person.

We very often deny God.

We leave our faith at the door, walk into a relationship without God, or walk into a workplace and kind of leave the God thing aside.

Or what about apathy?

Apathy is just being actively unwilling to work.

And maybe you're there right now, like in quarantine, you're just like, I can't find the energy for my faith.

And so you might approach the communion table thinking, Chris, I've denied God, I've betrayed God, I'm apathetic towards God, I don't feel worthy of this table.

You are perfectly situated, though, for the table when you're in that space.

Communion forces us to reflect on our position towards Jesus Christ.

Communion is time where you and I should reflect inwardly on what we actually think of ourselves and where we're at with God.

You know, there's this passage in 1 Corinthians where Paul is talking to a church there, and he's actually talking about early practices of communion.

And man, this church was a mess.

They were bringing all kinds of sin to the table.

And, you know, Paul gives this really interesting and strong warning in 1 Corinthians 11, 27.

He says this, so then look, whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup takes communion in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.

So look at 28.

Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat the bread and drink the cup.

So I want you to notice the language there.

It's very important.

He's not saying, if you have sin, don't show up to the table.

He's saying, if you have sin, examine yourself and then approach the table.

You see, what we can do going into the table is confess our sins.

You know, 1 John 1.9 is a beautiful verse.

I would push you to memorize, to read.

It says that if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us of all sins and cleanse us of our unrighteousness.

If you confess, you are cleansed.

I would say with communion, when you examine, you're perfectly ready for the table.

You're perfectly ready for the table to examine yourself.

Now, sometimes we examine our hearts and our lives, and actually the Spirit of God reveals very deep, important things in our life.

And I would say, um, you know, sometimes we really feel like we shouldn't take communion.

And this verse is important for us to kind of weigh, because while sin is perfectly, like I said, welcome at the table, none of us come to the table without any sin.

I would say there are times where the Spirit of God impresses on us to not take sin until we've made a relationship right or repented in some particular way of the sin that we're committing.

I wouldn't say that that's something I would suggest all of us do, because I think we get in our heads a lot, you know, and we like become super self-critical where God wants to actually just offer us the grace.

But I want you to be aware that for those of you who have been walking with Jesus for a long time, the Spirit of God may sometimes say, Before you take this meal, go make this right.

And I actually think that there's something really beautiful about that.

And there's something that allows us kind of an urgency for repentance that's needed.

And the table confronts us with our sin, you see, but it doesn't leave us in our sin.

You see, it shouldn't make us feel comfortable in our apathy, denial, and betrayal.

It should move us to repent.

And so when you go to the Lord's table, ask some questions, right?

Ask yourself, like, where am I trying to hide from God?

What thing in my life am I not bringing to the light because I think I can kind of shoe it away from God so that he would never know?

What in my life has my heart just not aligned to the things of God?

Like my heart is just not in line with the things of God?

Or where have I maybe failed to trust God and I've really been just trusting myself?

As you ask these questions, maybe the Lord would tell you, hey, do this before you partake.

But I think, I think more often than not, you know what God says?

Take my body and my blood in place of your sin, and then look upward and look outward.

These are the final two points.

That not only do we look back to locate ourselves, not only do we look forward in anticipation, not only do we look inward to understand what God's doing in our life, but we look upward, which is in worship.

You might notice at awakening, we tie worship and communion together.

In fact, after I'm done speaking here and the team leads you in worship, um, we want you to partake in communion during worship.

Why?

Because these things are interrelated.

The communion experience and the worship experience should be one and the same.

We should, at the communion table, place our eyes on what is above.

We know the greater context of this story.

Jesus, after this meal, he dies, but he raises in glory and ascends to heaven at the right hand of the Father and where he's currently reigning.

We know when we eat the bread and drink the wine, we're not eating it of a dead religious figure.

We're eating it of a resurrected king who is the true triune God.

And we get to eat that and look up and start to worship Jesus.

So my hope is that when we take this meal, we start to, as Paul says in Colossians chapter three, set our minds on things above.

Look at this verse.

It says, if then you've been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is.

Christ isn't down below, he's up above.

That's why we worship.

Verse 2 set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things of earth.

You see, communion locates us by placing our minds off of ourselves and on to God.

And so it it's it's kind of why I love, you know, I wish we were at Del Mar because I love how the communion table is actually up towards the stage.

Because, you know, when I when I take communion, I like to take it and then look at the words of worship and just take that moment to remind myself, I don't live on earth.

I live with Christ.

I'm unified with Christ in heaven.

And that leads me to look out.

Not only do I look up, but I actually start looking out.

And we start practicing obedience.

You see, the communion table, like I said, it's it's not meant to be sat at forever.

It's not meant to sit there the entire time.

Communion is to be taken as a meal is taken.

There's a current kind of time slot for it where you take it, you eat it, and you move on and leave.

You only sit at the table momentarily because you respond to what Jesus is doing and we respond to it together.

Typically and ideally, we take communion together.

And in a non-pandemic, uh, you know, normal time of living, we would definitely take communion together, all together.

In fact, I always try to kind of have rare moments where you take it alone because communion is not just about your personal relationship with Jesus, it's about our corporate relationship with Jesus, and it's about how God has done for you what He's done for all.

And it connects us to the outward sign, right?

We start to look out at the church.

And right now, we don't have that central element of communion.

We don't have the collected body, the gathering of people.

And so, in many ways, we're we're kind of making a compromise right now.

We're making a compromise for this season where we're saying, while we cannot meet together, we will partake in communion and practice it as a church in separate locations.

You know, also though, through scripture and throughout church history, the church has always met unique situations with unique graceful action.

What I mean is when people have been in prison, when people are too poor to afford bread and wine, when people are in a remote village where they cannot access certain items, when we are unable to fully immerse someone in water, for example, in baptism, there's always grace for these moments.

And God shows time and time again through scripture, by the way, you could look at all these moments, Old Testament and New Testament, where God has grace that abounds across these moments.

And we're in one of those moments right now.

One of the moments where we should be together taking communion, but we can't be together and take communion.

And so we will take communion separately and we will experience it together, looking outward, knowing this.

As you take communion in your living room, I'm taking communion in my living room.

Right?

As you're taking it, wherever you are, someone else in awakening, and get this millions of people across the world are taking communion this weekend.

It should help you look out to the community of Jesus.

There's one other time in my pastoral life where this was a reality where what we wanted could not happen.

And it was when I was pastoring in Oregon for a number of years.

There was this woman at our church who had this intense aversion to light.

She suffered this terrible, terrible way where she couldn't be out in the light and in the day for much of her life.

It was terrible.

She had to stay inside, black out curtains, adjusted light so that she wouldn't have paralyzing headaches and pain throughout her whole body.

It was awful.

We had this ministry where we would take communion to elderly and to sick people, and sometimes we would bring like a worship leader to lead worship for that person.

And uh this woman definitely fit that ministry's uh profile.

And we would take her communion, and she was this godly incredible woman.

And every week her husband and her kids would take communion at church, but she would take it alone in her house.

And she had such an incredible way of understanding what this was.

And I remember I wasn't there, but I remember somebody telling me the story when they visited her and gave her communion a part of this ministry.

She said, It reminds me when I take communion, she says, it reminds me I'm not alone even when I feel alone.

Here's this woman, she can't go outside.

She's alone in her home.

But to her, communion was not a personal experience, even though she was having quite literally a personal isolated experience.

To her, it was a communal experience, not just with the believers outside of those walls in our church, but believers all across the world and all across history.

When you take communion, you pull your purview back of what your life is about, that your life is not just about you and you are not alone, even though you might feel alone.

And awakening, the biggest blessing right now is as you partake in communion, just know for a fact your church is taking it with you right now.

And so I want you to now prepare the elements if you can, as we go into worship.

And I just want you to think about these directions.

I want you to think about the remembering Jesus, looking backwards.

I want you to think about looking forwards in anticipation for what he might bring.

I want you to look inward and think about the sin that might be harming your life.

I want you to look upward in worship, knowing, man, my sin is canceled through the grace of Jesus.

And then I want you to look outward.

And remember, even if you feel alone, you are not alone right now.

I don't know what you're facing.

I don't know how this pandemic is particularly affecting you, but I know that communion will center you and that communion will bring you and locate you in Jesus.

And friends, as you look in these different directions, backwards, forwards, as you look in these directions, I can guarantee you you will find yourself surrounded by Jesus.

Let me pray.

God, we ask you now to direct our minds and direct our hearts towards you.

This meal, this communion meal that we are about to partake in, as we eat bread and drink of the cup, Father, we are centering our life on you.

And I pray for my brothers and sisters as they do this, they would sense your presence and sense the security they have in you, Jesus.

We pray this in your mighty name.

Amen.