THE COMUNION OF THE SAINTS
COMMUNION SUNDAY
DR. JIM DIXON
FEBRUARY 11, 2001
1 JOHN 1:3-7
Well, this is communion Sunday. And of course, throughout the Christian world, communion goes by many names. It is sometimes called the Lord’s Supper. And of course, in Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting, it’s called The Last Supper. The Roman Catholics call communion the mass. This word mass comes from a Latin word the etymology of which is uncertain, but it’s believed that the word mass comes from a Latin word meaning meal. And the Anglicans and the Episcopalians call communion the Eucharist, from the Greek word “eucharistia,” which means “to give thanks.” And certainly Jesus gave thanks before He broke the bread. And we give thanks whenever we come to this table.
And the Orthodox churches, the Greek Orthodox and the Russian Orthodox churches, call communion the divine liturgy. This is because communion is a special time for the worship of God. And the Coptic churches and the Armenian churches called communion the oblation, a word which means “the offering.” And certainly, at communion we remember how Jesus offered up Himself. And we offer ourselves to Him anew. Many names are given to the Lord’s Supper, but most Protestants refer to the Lord’s supper simply as communion. And that is because of 1 Corinthians chapter 10. In 1 Corinthians chapter 10, the Apostle Paul writes, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion in the blood of Christ? And the bread which we break, is it not a communion in the body of Christ?”
Now, the word communion is a translation of the Greek word koinonia. And this word koinonia means “to share together.” It means to partake together; it means to participate together. And in its deepest meaning, it refers to intimate fellowship and intimate friendship. Certainly when we come to the Lord’s table, we partake together, we partner together, and we participate together. And in the deepest sense, we experience intimate fellowship with Christ and with each other. Thus, we call it communion. But in the Bible, the word communion refers to much more than the Lord’s Supper. The word communion in the Bible is a title given to the entire church of Jesus Christ. The church of Christ is called the Communion of the Saints.
And in 1 Corinthians chapter one, the church of Christ is called the communion of God’s Son. And in the church, we experience the communion of the Holy Spirit, as is mentioned in 2 Corinthians chapter 13 and in Philippians chapter two. And there is evidence in the first centuries of the Christian Church that when anyone joined the church of Christ, they were given the right hand of fellowship, or the right hand of communion, the Greek word being koinonia. The gospel calls men and women all over the world into this communion, into this partnership, into this friendship with Christ and with His people. The gospel calls people into communion.
I want to share with you this morning what I’ve already shared with the staff and what I’ve already shared with our elder board. And that is this: I believe God is calling this church into deeper communion. He wants us to seek deeper communion with Him and with each other. He wants our friendships to deepen. He wants our partnerships to grow deeper. And to understand this, we need to focus on our passage of scripture for today, John chapter one. And in this little chapter we see that there are two aspects to communion, two types of communion we must seek together. And the first is communion with God—communion with the Father and with His Son. God wants intimate friendship with you. God wants fellowship with you. He wants to partner with you. He wants to commune with you. There is a book called The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience. It’s co-authored by two brain physiologists, Newberg and d’Aquili. And in this book, they argue that the brain, your brain, has causal and holistic operatives that relate to religious experience. They define an operative as a network of nerve tissue. They argue that there is a portion of your brain that is designed to commune with God, designed for religious experience.
And of course, this discovery and this work by d’Aquili and Newberg is not unique. Other brain physiologists have come to the same conclusion, but the conclusion is controversial because there are secularists, there are atheists, who therefore say, well, religion is just in the mind. It’s all in the mind. Religious experience is just in your head. But Newberg and d’Aquili say the opposite is true. They point out that in your brain there is a portion of your brain that’s designed to deal with baseline realities like tables and chairs there’s a section of your brain that is designed to discern these baseline realities like tables and chairs. Nobody would say that because you have a portion of your brain designed to discern tables and chairs, tables and chairs are therefore not real. Nobody would say that. Nobody would say it’s all in your mind.
They also point out that there’s a portion of your brain that’s designed to deal with complex emotional realities. If someone hates you, if somebody’s angry at you, if somebody loves you, if somebody’s pleased with you, there’s a portion of your brain that is able to process that and discern that. But just because you have that portion of your brain doesn’t mean that emotional complex emotions are not real. In the same way, they argue, God must be real. In fact, Newberg and d’Aquili argue that because you have a section of your brain that is designed to commune with God and experience religious events, obviously God has designed us for communion with Himself.
God has designed us and created us for communion with Himself. Theologians often argue that God communes with us at the level of our soul or the level of our spirit. And certainly, the Bible says that the Spirit of God communes with our spirit, but it is evident that God communicates with our whole being—body, soul, and spirit. And there are even pathways in the brain through which He communes with us.
Now, communion with God, intimacy with God, fellowship with God, begins when you respond to the gospel. The gospel calls us into this communion. And when you respond to the gospel, you come in repentance and you come in faith and you come to the cross and you receive Jesus as your Savior and Lord, and you are “born anew”—the Greek word “annagennao.” You become a child of God and you begin to be able to commune with Him. Your sin is forgiven. You begin to experience friendship and fellowship with a holy God.
But that’s just the beginning. You have to work on this communion. You’ve got to put time and effort and energy into this friendship. And are you doing that? I mean, are you working on your communion with the Father? Are you working on your communion, your fellowship, your friendship, with Christ? Do you spend time with Him every day? I mean, do you just get alone somewhere every day? Maybe you get a cup of coffee, find a comfortable chair, but it’s just you and Jesus and you bring your Bible and you read? You spend a little time in prayer. You think, you read some more, you pray again, you commune. Do you do that? And do you do it every single day? It’s an oasis in the desert, and it’s the key to joy and purpose. In His presence is fullness of joy. The Bible says if you want joy, spend time with Him, commune with Him.
Maybe you need to jumpstart your communion. John Eldridge is coming next week to speak here at our church. What a blessing and a privilege. Later in this year, in the month of May, he’s going to bring to our church his Sacred Romance seminar. And this is all about intimacy with God and friendship with Christ. We want to encourage you to come and be part of that, that you might experience this sacred romance, this intimacy with Christ. Be part of that seminar. Later on, in the month of October, we are having another seminar here at the church called Renovare. Richard Foster and Dallas Willard will be here. And Richard Foster has written The Celebration of Discipline and Streams of Living Water and many other books. Dallas Willard has written The Divine Conspiracy, which I’ve just recently read. He’s written Hearing God and the Spirit of the Disciplines.
I know many of you have read those books. Dallas Willard and Richard Foster will be here at the church and we’ll have this great event called Renovare, which means “to renew.” And it’s going to be primarily focused on intimacy with God, the development of your communion with Him. If you need to jumpstart your devotional life, these are two great opportunities to come and be part of these conferences. But we want to make this our particular focus this year—as a church, as a staff, as an elder board—that we would develop our communion with God and our intimacy with Christ.
Now, there’s a second type of communion that is to characterize the church. And we see this also in 1 John chapter one, and that is communion with the body of Christ—communion with our Christian brothers and sisters. The communion of the church. We commune not only vertically with God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—but we commune on the horizontal with each other.
God wants to deepen our friendships with each other. God wants us to deepen our partnership with each other, that we might experience Christian communion in its fullness. And are you working on that? Of course, all people need friendship. God made us like that. “It is not good that man should be alone.” We read that in Genesis, and we are in need of relationship and we are relational beings.
I know some of you went and saw the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks, who’s been nominated yet again for an Academy Award as best actor. And in that movie, Tom Hanks is stranded on an island all by himself for four years. There is not another human being. And in the neuroses of his loneliness, he begins to commune with a volleyball which has washed ashore, a volleyball he calls Wilson. He talks to the volleyball and he develops some kind of attachment to the volleyball, so much so that he risks his life to keep from losing the volleyball.
I read recently where this volleyball that was in the movie just sold at auction for $18,400, which just proves the proverb that a fool and his money are soon parted. But is it not true that we need relationship? And you see, God has so designed the church to provide a special kind of relationship called communion and, and this friendship, this fellowship, is based on our communion with Christ. And it overflows into our friendship with each other. And we all have our love for Jesus in common, and we come together as brothers and sisters in Christ. And this is a special kind of communion. That’s why we have small group fellowships in this church, more than 300 small groups in this church. We invite you to be part of these groups because we’re seeking to develop communion on the horizontal—friendships.
And we want to encourage you to come and be part of that. We have ministry opportunities and sometimes it’s in the midst of ministry, as you’re part of a team of co-laborers, that you develop communion and close friendship. We invite you to go on mission trips and short-term missionary opportunities because part of our purpose is that you might develop communion with the other participants on the trip and you’ll come back from that trip closer to a group of brothers and sisters than you’ve ever been. We’re seeking to develop communion, but you’ve gotta be willing to make an effort.
You’ve gotta be willing to work at this. It takes work. You might not in your heart have a great desire or a felt need for this friendship in the body of Christ but understand that this is the will of Christ for you. And there are other people in this church who need you, and they need your friendship and they need communion with you and Christ. And this is the call of Christ upon His people. So our communion begins with Christ, and then it extends onto the horizontal into our Christian marriages as we seek communion there and then into our families as we seek communion in our families. And then it overflows into the church itself and the whole body of Christ.
I read a little parable recently. I want to read this parable to you. It’s just a short little parable. A frail old man went to live with his son and daughter-in-law and four-year-old grandson. The old man’s hands trembled. His eyesight was blurred and his step faltered. The family ate together at the table, but the elderly grandfather’s shaky hands and failing sight made eating difficult, and peas rolled off his spoon onto the floor. And when he grasped the glass, milk spilled onto the tablecloth. The son and daughter-in-law became irritated with the mess and needed to do something about grandfather. They’d had enough of his spilled milk, noisy eating, and food on the floor. So the husband and wife set a small table in the corner. Their grandfather ate alone while the rest of the family enjoyed dinner. And since grandfather had broken a dish or two, his food was served in a wooden bowl. When the family glanced in grandfather’s direction, sometimes he had a tear in his eye as he sat—alone, still. The only words the couple had for him were sharp admonitions. When he dropped a fork or when he spilled his food, the four-year-old watched it all in silence.
One evening before supper, the father noticed his son playing with wood scraps on the floor. He asked the child, what are you making? The boy replied, oh, I’m making a little bowl for you and mama to eat your food when I grow up.
The four-year-old smiled and went back to work. The words so struck the parents that they were speechless and then tears started streaming down their cheeks. Though no word was spoken, both new what must be done. And that evening, the husband took grandfather’s hand and gently led him back to the family table. For the remainder of his days, he ate every meal with the family. And for some reason, neither husband nor wife seemed to care any longer when a fork was dropped or when milk was spilled or the tablecloth soiled.
I think our children notice how committed we are to communion. I think our children notice how committed we are to communion with our spouse. I think they even notice how committed we are to communion with our parents and their grandparents. They notice whether we’re willing to put effort and time into this. They notice too whether we’re willing to sacrifice for the sake of communion and whether that sacrifice extends to the church and to the body of Christ. They notice if there’s an effort to seek intimate friendship and fellowship there and to be a friend to someone else.
You know, Satan is very much at work seeking to destroy the communion of the church. He wants to destroy your communion with Christ. He wants to destroy your communion with your spouse, with your parents, with your children. He doesn’t want you to ever seek communion with brothers and sisters in Christ. He doesn’t want you to experience the communion of the church. This is his great work in the world.
I know that probably most of you aware of the fact that Abraham Lincoln on January 1st, 1863, issued the Emancipation Proclamation. What few people know is that earlier, on September 22nd, 1862, Abraham Lincoln issued a preliminary emancipation proclamation. He’d been in a hurry to declare the emancipation of the slaves. This was his heart’s desire. He was just looking for some kind of an opportunity, looking for a union victory that would give him reason to make this declaration. And it occurred on September 17th at the Battle of Sharpsburg, sometimes called the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day of the Civil War. In 10 hours, 7,700 Union and Confederate soldiers died and 19,000 more were wounded or injured. It was said that the bodies were just scattered over the field and you could hear the cries of the dying. The battle was really a draw between Union and Confederate forces. But historians tend to regard it as a victory for the Union because after the Battle of Sharpsburg the Confederate armies fled south. They turned south out of Maryland and made their march home. The amazing thing is the Confederate forces in the Battle of Sharpsburg were led by General Robert E. Lee. And he was brilliant. And the Union forces were read led by General George McClellan, and he was considered a doofus.
How did General George McClellan win the day when he was fighting a more brilliant commander, a more brilliant strategist, in Robert E. Lee? How did McClellan win that battle? Well, historians tell us that just before the Battle of S Sharpsburg, some Union spies made their way into a Confederate camp that had been abandoned and they found three cigars rolled in paper. And at first they were just excited to find some southern tobacco. But then they unwrapped it and they found that on this paper were Lee’s instructions to his generals for the conflict. At Sharpsburg McClellan literally had the battle plans of the enemy in his hands, and that’s how he was able to win the day against Robert E. Lee. He had his enemy’s battle plans.
When you think about it, we as Christians have the battle plan of the enemy. We have the battle plan of Satan. It’s all right here. He seeks to lead the world into sin, and he seeks to thwart the gospel. And why? Because He doesn’t want communion. Sin blocks communion. It builds a wall between you and God. Satan wants to lead you into sin. He wants to block communion. He seeks to thwart the gospel because the gospel’s what calls men and women the world over into the communion of the saints. He is seeking to stop communion.
You go back to Genesis chapter three, and you see how Satan was active at the dawn of time seeking to break the communion between man and God. You go to Genesis chapter four and the whole account of Cain and Abel, and you see how Satan was active early on to break the communion between man and man. He seeks to break communion, and I promise you, he’s working in your life. I promise you he’s working in this church. But by the grace of Christ, he will not prevail, because Christ has called us to seek communion with Him and with each other, that we might seek partnership with Him and with each other—friendship and fellowship with Him and with each other. And as we come to the communion table this morning, we commit ourselves anew to this communion, to our partnership with Him and our friendship with each other. Let it be a time of renewed consecration. Let’s look to the Lord in a word of prayer.