Sermon 10/3/2021
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World Communion Sunday Sermon 2021
Scripture - Psalm 133, Galatians 3:26-28
Theme - Unity in Christ
Remembering
My dad gave me an amazing gift this year. Wasn’t big, about this size. Small thumb drive but on that little drive is a catalogue of over a thousand family photos. Photos that were once tiny slides that my dad lovingly scanned one by one to preserve and pass along to my sister and I. It brought back memories of sitting on the floor as a child in a darkened room, listening to the click, click, click as the carousel went around and the next photo appeared on the living room wall. Got me thinking about the purpose of this little family ritual. At the heart of it was a longing to remember and give thanks.
Some families look at slides or old photo albums, others get together and tell stories or reminisce
We like to talk about Grampy and remember how everytime we sit down together to a big family meal, like at Thanksgiving, Grampy gets teary eyed as he looks around and talks about how grateful he is
This year as we pulled out decorations for Fall
I added a new display - family photos of past celebrations of Halloween and Thanksgiving - I had forgotten the year Cecilia’s friend group went as the Four Seasons
Human nature to forget, to have selective memories
People of Israel wandering in the wilderness remembered the good tasting food they had while in bondage in Egypt under Pharaoh, but they did not in that moment remember that the God who delivered them with a mighty hand and outstretched arm could and would generously provide.
Passover
To help us, God has instructed us to set aside time to remember and give thanks.
For the Jewish people God instituted the celebration of the Passover, a yearly feast to recall the ways in which God delivered God’s people from the hand of Pharaoh
Lord’s Supper
Jesus, before he was crucified, instituted the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, and instructed his followers to remember his sacrifice in the breaking of the bread and the drinking of the wine.
World Communion
In 1933 the Church created a new celebration - The celebration of World Communion Sunday. it was the darkest year of the Great Depression. The storm clouds of Nazism and Fascism hovered all over Europe and threatened the entire world. The prevailing mood was anxiety—fear about economics, fear about politics and fear about the future of the world.
As a faith response to the fears around them a group of leaders at Shadyside Presbyterian Church under the guidance of Pastor Donald Kerr sought to do something both real and symbolic, to proclaim that God is God indeed, in spite of politics, economics and future fears.
"The concept spread very slowly at the start. People did not give it a whole lot of thought. It was during the Second World War that the spirit caught hold, because we were trying to hold the world together. World Wide Communion symbolized the effort to hold things together, in a spiritual sense. It emphasized that we are one in the Spirit and the Gospel of Jesus Christ."
Take issue with one phrase - “We were trying to hold the world together”
Unity is not something we create, it is a reality that already exists in and through Christ.
When we gather around the Lord’s table on World Communion Sunday we Remember that we are all one because we are united in Christ
no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer servant or free, there is no longer male and female for all of you are one in Christ Jesus
We are acknowledging that in Christ and through Christ we are already one
“Sink into the body of Christ” (slogan from the early days of the Disciples’ movement)
Our unity in Christ is what brings us together every single week around the Lord’s Table.
Here at the table we remember:
Christ is our peace; in his flesh he has made all groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall between us. - Ephesians 2:14
Thanks be to God!