COMMUNION SUNDAY
THE PRESENCE OF GOD
DR. JIM DIXON
JANUARY 9, 2005
MATTHEW 26:26-29, 1 CORINTHIANS 10:16
Thomas Edison died in 1931 at the age of 84. When compared with people of his generation, he lived an extremely long and productive life. Thomas Edison had six children—three children through his first marriage and three with his second wife. But Edison was not much of a family man. He spent most of his time in his laboratories becoming the greatest inventor in the history of the world. When he was not working, he loved to go on camping trips with his cronies, and he would go with Henry Ford and with Harvey Firestone and with John Burrows, the naturalist. They were his friends, and they would travel together, smoking cigars and stopping to camp along the way. Thomas Edison just wasn’t much of a family man; he didn’t go camping with his family.
The American people referred to Edison as the Wizard of Menlo Park, referring to his first laboratory in the state of New Jersey. Later they called him the Wizard of West Orange, referring to his second laboratory in New Jersey. To the people of America, Edison did seem like a wizard. Everything he did seemed kind of supernatural. From the light bulb to the phonograph, it all just seemed impossible to the typical American. They considered his stuff supernatural. Now of course, Thomas Edison worked with the natural, not with the supernatural, but he believed in the supernatural. He believed in the spiritual world. Thus, it was his good friend Henry Ford who introduced him to psychics and mediums.
You see, Thomas Edison wanted to communicate with the dead. He told Scientific American Magazine in 1920 that he was working on a machine, a device that would enable people all over the world to communicate with their loved ones who had passed away. Thomas Edison believed in reincarnation. He thought that when a person died, their soul left the body and just kind of hovered around looking for another body to enter. He thought that souls gave off energy and electricity and that if he could create the perfect machine, people would be able to communicate beyond the grave.
He longed to communicate with his mother. He missed her. He loved her. He had this fervent desire to somehow be in her presence again and to communicate with her. But historians tell us that there’s no evidence that Edison had a desire to communicate with God. Even though he believed in the spiritual world, he didn’t have this desire to be in God’s presence, didn’t have this longing to communicate with God. Many historians believe that Thomas Edison was actually afraid of God. Maybe that’s true of you. Maybe some of you in this room this morning are afraid of God. You are not really wanting to be in His presence. You know, 3,300 years ago, Moses went up on Mount Sinai, sometimes called Mount Horeb. There he encountered the presence of God, and he experienced a theophany, a visual manifestation of the divine presence. He came down from the mountain and his face radiated light.
According to Talmudic literature in the decades and centuries that followed, that mountain was considered holy. The Jewish people believed that the Shekinah, the presence of God, kind of hovered up there on Mount Sinai. So the people of God, the Jewish people, would pilgrimage to Mount Sinai, but they wouldn’t go up on the mountain. They wouldn’t go up on the mountain because God was there. The Shekinah was there and they were afraid of God. Of course, the Jewish people believed that the Shekinah, the mystical presence of God, was in the Holy of Holies, hovering over the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant. In the tabernacle and then the temple, the presence of God was there. But there’s no evidence from any literature, from any ancient writing, that any of the Jewish people tried to break into the Holy of Holies. You didn’t read stories of Jewish people going up on the Temple Mount and trying to break in and work their way into the Holy of Holies, wanting to be in the presence of God. They were afraid of that. Of course, only the high priest went into the Holy of Holies, and he on Yom Kippur, on the Day of Atonement, when he would go in and sprinkle the blood of animals over the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant, seeking to atone for the sin of the people. But they had to tie a rope around him so that if he died in there, they could pull him out so that they wouldn’t have to go into the Holy of Holies, into the presence of God.
Of course, we’re told an amazing thing in the synoptic gospels—in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In all three of the gospels we’re told that when Jesus died, darkness covered the land. The sun would not give its light. In the moment of His death, the earth shook. Rocks broke. In that moment of His death, the veil, the great curtain that separated the Holy of Holies from the world, was torn in two and entrance was given into the presence of God. The Bible describes this as God’s invitation through His Son to come into His presence. The veil is torn, the curtain is open; come into the presence of God. Do you want to do that? do you want to go into His presence? Do you want to communicate and commune with Him? If you do, I have two simple teachings this morning.
The first is this: you can have the indwelling presence of God every moment of every day. This is the great promise of the gospel. 2,500 years ago, the prophet Ezekiel was in Babylon. He was in exile in Babylon, and he’d been in exile for 25 years in Babylon. One day he was by the waters of Babylon and he was weeping; he was crying. He was lamenting over what once had been the holy city of Jerusalem. He was weeping because he knew that Jerusalem was in ruins. He was weeping because he knew that the presence of God had left the temple. God had left the building. In fact, he knew the building was no more. The temple had been destroyed and he was in great sorrow. It was in that moment by the waters of Babylon that Ezekiel the prophet had a vision.
And in this vision, he saw a future Jerusalem. He saw a new Jerusalem, a millennial Jerusalem—beautiful, majestic, glorious. He saw that Jerusalem would be given a new name and that name would be Jehovah Shema, which means “The Lord is present.” For the Jewish people, this was their great hope, that one day the Lord would be present with them again. As Christians, we too look forward to the new Jerusalem. We look forward to the heavenly one. we look forward to the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, which the Bible calls the Parousia, which means “The presence.” Christ will be present with His people, and He will present Himself in judgment to the world. But we know that as Christians we don’t have to wait until then. We know as Christians that all people through the gospel are offered the indwelling presence of God every moment of every day. The Bible tells us that when you come to Christ, He can make you a temple.
He can make you a temple. He promises that if you’ll receive Him, He will tabernacle within you. He will come and reside within you. When you come to Christ, you trust Him as your savior from sin, accepting His sacrifice on the cross. When you make that commitment to Him as Lord, you follow Him, knowing you’re not going to be perfect but committing your life that you would seek to follow him. When you make that commitment, He comes with His presence and indwells you, and you become a temple of God. This is the great promise of the gospel and Christ is with you from that point on every moment of every day.
I know very few of you have heard of a man named Henry Francis Light, but some of you have read some of his writings. Many of you have sung some of his songs. You didn’t know his name perhaps, but Henry Francis Light was, in the year 1824, made the rector of the cathedral in Devonshire, England. It was a seafaring community. Henry was 30 years old at the time. He was a humble man. His wife Ann was a humble woman, but they didn’t live in a humble house. They lived in a lavish estate called Berry Head. He was right on the coast, right on the sea. It had one of the best views of the ocean in all of Great Britain. This beautiful estate was given to Henry Francis Light and his wife by King William IV, who loved Henry’s ministry. There were 41 acres of gardens and pathways that went up to the sea. Henry wrote most of his sermons and his poems and his songs and hymns there on that estate. Yet there was a dark cloud over Henry’s life because he had a serious, grave lung illness. When he was 53, in the year 1847, Henry came down with tuberculosis. It was September 4th, 1847, when Henry preached his last sermon in the Devonshire Cathedral. He did not know it was his last. He told the congregation that he was going on a holiday for his health. He’d be going to the warm climate in Italy trying to escape the dampness of England. He went home after preaching to his estate at Berry Head. He walked the pathways through the gardens, and in one hour he wrote a hymn called Abide With Me. He gave that hymn Abide With Me to his wife Ann, and then he set sail and came to France and Avon. And there in France, he rewrote the song Abide With Me. This song was very important to him. Henry Francis Light never made it to the coast of Italy. He died in Nice, France, not far from Italy. He went into his hotel there and his lungs finally gave out. By the grace of God and by His sovereign grace, there was another minister there, another English pastor from Chichester. He was with Henry in the moment of Henry’s death. He said that Henry’s last words were “Peace, joy.” Henry’s body was taken back to England and they had a funeral service for him. It was conducted by his son-in-law, who was also a pastor. Therefore, the very first time they sang this great Christian hymn Abide with Me.
I want to read you the words: “Abide with me, Fast falls the even tide. The darkness deepens. Lord, with me abide when other helpers fail and comforts flee. Help of the helpless, OH, abide with me. swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day. Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away. Change and decay in all around I see. Oh, Thou who changes not, abide with me. I need thy presence every passing hour. What but thy grace can foil the tempter’s power? Who but Thyself my guide and stay can be through cloud and sunshine. Lord, abide with me. I fear no foe with thee at hand to bless; ills have no weight, tears, no bitterness. Where is death’s sting, where, grave, thy victory? I triumph still if Thou abide with me.”
I think Christians have felt like this throughout the Christian centuries, because we have Christ with us. And maybe you don’t. Maybe you know in your heart you don’t have His indwelling presence. Maybe as you go through life and all that’s in life, and even as you approach death, you want God to abide with you and in you. You see, that’s the beauty of the gospel. God offers that if you’ll come to Him and receive Him a Savior and Lord, He will abide with you and in you, and He’ll never ever leave you.
Well, secondly and briefly, as a Christian you can experience God’s presence in special ways at special times. Of course, every person in the world’s invited to become a Christian and to receive His indwelling presence. But then as a Christian, you can experience His presence in special ways at special times. All of the Christian church traditions acknowledge this. The Pentecostal and charismatic tradition acknowledges that you can experience the special presence of God through the mystical and ecstatic gifts of the Holy Spirit, from tongues to prophecy. The mainline Protestant denominations acknowledge that you can experience the special presence of God through spiritual formation and discipleship through time in His Word and time in prayer and time in Christian fellowship and in Christian service. The Catholic and Anglican traditions acknowledge that you can experience the presence of God in a special way through the sacraments. You can experience His presence sacramentally.
I think all of this is true. It is true that we can experience the special presence of Christ through His mystical and ecstatic gifts of the Holy Spirit, like tongues and prophecy. We can experience the special presence of Christ through spiritual formation, through discipleship, through time in Bible study and prayer and Christian fellowship and service. Yes, we can experience the special presence of Christ sacramentally through the sacraments. Of course, we come this morning to the sacrament of communion. Communion has many names. It is sometimes called the Lord’s Supper. It is called the Mass in the Catholic tradition, sometimes called the Eucharist in the Anglican tradition and the Eastern Orthodox churches. Oftentimes communion is called the divine liturgy. There’s another name given to communion by the Coptic churches and the Armenian churches, and I think it is a beautiful name for communion because they call communion the presence. Sometimes they call it the present—not referring to a gift, but to the fact that God is present and Jesus is present.
of course, Jesus said, this is my body and this is my blood. I have no interest in discussing the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation or the Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation. I personally do not believe that Christ is physically present in the bread and in the cup. I do not believe these elements are transformed into His physical body. But I do believe, as Christians have affirmed through the centuries, that Christ is somehow present spiritually and mystically in a special way as we take the bread in the cup. That’s why the early church often called communion “the mysterion,” from which we get the word mystery. He is present in the bread, in the cup. Do you want that?
Are you one of those who wants the presence of God? The curtain is open. God invites you into His presence. If you really believe that communion is a time of His special presence, you shouldn’t miss communion. In fact, you really shouldn’t miss church, because the Bible says where two or three are gathered in His name, there He is. In the midst of that, do you have a longing for the presence of God? Have you received His indwelling presence so that He is with you always? And do you long for moments of His special presence?
You know, I think people in general (and sometimes even Christians) do not understand what the Bible teaches about hell and heaven. I think some people, when they think of hell, think of God kind of just torturing people forever and ever knocking the living daylights out of people, unable to exact a vengeance forever, kind of a kick-ass God. That’s how they think of hell. But hell isn’t God kicking ass. Hell is God not showing up, that’s what hell is. It’s God not showing up. There’s no greater suffering than to experience the total absence of God. The Bible says in 2 Thessalonians chapter one that hell is exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His might. But what is heaven? The Bible says in God’s presence is fullness of joy, at His right hand are pleasures forevermore. In God’s presence is fullness of joy. At his right hand our pleasure is forevermore. You can have a little heaven now. You can have His indwelling presence now and special, special moments of His presence. As we come to the table, let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.