Invitation

Sunday, January 11, 2004
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
1 Corinthians 11:23-26

23 For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, 24 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." 25 In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

‘Come see us’.

Those three words were all that made up the note at the bottom of the card. In the midst of the hustle and bustle of the season, and travels, and subsequent settling back in after those travels, the time has yet to come when we can respond to the invitation, but that time WILL come.

This last week we had guests for dinner two evenings. On Tuesday, Valentin, Lucio and Domingo, three of our Mexican friends who are working in White Stone, stopped in late in the afternoon, and we invited them to stay and share our spaghetti with us. We had a wonderful time. Lucio and Domingo are brothers to Mundo, who has 3 children of his own, who correspond in age roughly to our three, and while I was here meeting with the constitution committee, they were over in the parsonage basement attempting to play ‘Twister’ with the kids … while Leslie and Valentin got on the internet upstairs and tried to hunt for a car for Lucio. When I got back home, shortly after 9, we spent some more time laughing and visiting and just being with them.

On Friday evening, we had one of the area Pastors and his family over for supper. There is something about sharing a meal together, about sitting around a table and breaking bread, that draws you into communion with one another like nothing else. Our time together was relaxed and laid-back. It was 11 O’clock before we turned around twice. Lee and Kim have become good friends over the course of the last year, especially in the spring, when they opened their home to us as we were commuting from Virginia Beach to do the Hispanic work, or meet with the WMU, or the Associational Missions Committee, or, occasionally, a certain Pastor Search Committee. Over the course of the fall, with our shifting schedules, we’d not had many opportunities to spend time with them, and Friday was a welcome re-grouping.

I can imagine that some similar conversations might’ve taken place during the supper in the upper room so long ago. These men had gotten to know each other as well as they could. They had spent almost every waking moment together. The disciples had accepted Christ’s invitation 3 or so years earlier to come, follow him, and learn- learn to be fishers of men, learn to heal, learn to confront sin and injustice and Satan and stop them in their tracks.

That night, Christ was inviting them again to join him. But it would seem a bit odd. They’d been permanent fixtures of each other’s lives for so long, where else could he invite them to be, that they hadn’t already been with him?

Previously, his invitation had been to learn from him. That night, as it is today, his invitation was and is to DO. ‘Do this in remembrance of me’.

Leslie and I were talking over some ideas yesterday about the message for today, and she pointed out to me that throughout advent, I seem to have paused on themes of suffering and pain with each message. I’m afraid today’s message is no different in that respect.

Christ extended the bread and the wine and said ‘this is my body, which is broken for you; this cup is the new covenant in my blood’. The mention of blood in conjunction with a covenant only meant one thing: a sacrifice. Christ was speaking of nothing if not his coming death. In that sense, Jesus was inviting the disciples to join him in his passion. It always struck me, the reference to Holy Week as ‘passion week’. In a little over a month, a film will be released that brutally details the last 12 hours of Jesus’ life. It’s title: “The Passion of The Christ”. The root word is “Pati”, the Latin word for “suffer”. As Christians, we must not, ever, ignore pain and suffering. Our response to the brokenness in the world is where Christ shines through most plainly.

My word processing software’s list of synonyms for “passion” includes fervor, ardor, obsession, infatuation, excitement, enthusiasm, zeal, and craze. Odd, isn’t it? There is no mention of the root meaning: suffering. I like the last one: delight. It echoed so many passages – I’ll just mention two, and they bracket the book of Psalms: 1:1-2 and 149:1-4:

Ps 1:1 Blessed is the one who obeys the law of the LORD.
He doesn’t follow the advice of evil people.
He doesn’t make a habit of doing what sinners do.
He doesn’t join those who make fun of the LORD and his law.
Ps 1:2 Instead, he takes delight in the law of the LORD.


Ps 149:1 Praise the LORD.
Sing a new song to the LORD.
Sing praise to him in the community of his faithful people.
Ps 149:2 Let Israel be filled with joy because God is their Maker.
Let the people of Zion be glad because he is their King.
Ps 149:3 Let them praise his name with dancing.
Let them make music to him with harps and tambourines.
Ps 149:4 The LORD takes delight in his people.

So it seems to work both ways. We have a passion for God; God has a passion for us. We delight in him, he delights in us.

But just what is Christ inviting US to? What is Christ inviting Jerusalem Church to? Is it a life of luxury, a life of plenty? Or is it a life of service and struggle? Is it a life of perpetual suffering, or of perpetual joy, and are the two mutually exclusive? Is it freedom from want, or freedom from need? Is it a life free from illness and pain, or a life as fraught with pain and suffering as the person who has never heard of a God who became human and dwelt among us?

As I’ve said before, I believe Christ’s invitation is an invitation to communion, an invitation to enter into relationship with him. And in that relationship we are faced with a choice. Will our communion with Christ be reflected inwards or outwards?

Last week, Tony’s Children’s sermon touched on what happens to light when it hits a mirror – it is reflected. His point raises the question here: in what direction will your mirror be pointing? Is our reflection going to be a life of closed community, where we spend our time together, side by side, facing inward, enjoying each others’ company, certainly, but to the exclusion of the world around us, or is the reflection going to be in the other direction, where we find ourselves, still side by side, but facing outward.

There’s a new addition to the wall in the study over at the parsonage, courtesy of the National Geographic Society. It came in yesterday’s mail. It is a map of the world. I have it up on the wall right above my desk; I face it as I’m sitting at the keyboard.

One of the best benefits of the internet is the ability to communicate across vast distances … and time, in a way. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’ve been able to connect with childhood friends, and my college roommates, and just this week I reconnected with Breena Paine, whom I first knew as Breena Kent, an MK from Paraguay, who is now married, has two kids, and is serving with her husband in Chiang Mai, Thailand, the same city that Scott and Erica Riddell are serving in as missionaries. My last contact with her was almost 19 years ago, at the candidate conference for the Journeyman group of which I became a part. All that to say this: communion means so much more than simply communing with each other in this context (here within these walls). Communion means recognizing community across the room as well as across the street, the county, the river, the state, the country and the world and CELEBRATING IT.

We say we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, and in that sense the word celebrate means ‘to observe’ but in a real sense, Christ’s invitation is to celebrate communion with him in whatever context you find yourself in. It is a solemn occasion. It recalls for us just that which Jesus was predicting to his disciples: his suffering and death. But as we know, and as we can testify to, we are a resurrection people. We view the event in light of the resurrection: Christ’s triumph over death, in a way, his foreshadowing of how we can and will overcome the darkest shadows of human existence to one day draw in that breath of heaven. In that sense, we celebrate – festively- the joy of the resurrection.

What is Christ inviting you to? There are as many answers to that question as there are people in this room.

Whatever that means, wherever that takes us, individually or as a congregation, Christ is with us. He has promised us the companion – the Holy Spirit. And it is in and through the Spirit that we now gather around the table.

Will the deacons please join me at the table?

24 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."

25 In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me."

Hymn of invitation: 369 ‘Purer in Hear O God’

Benediction (on cover of bulletin)

‘Blest be the tie that binds’