WORLDWIDE COMMUNION SUNDAY
DR. JIM DIXON
JOHN 17
OCTOBER 7, 1979
This is Worldwide Communion Sunday. On this day, all over the world, people who love Jesus Christ are gathered together in His name to partake of the bread and the cup in memory of Him. Communion is a celebration of Christian fellowship—fellowship with a Father made possible by the atoning death of our Lord Jesus Christ and fellowship with each other made possible by the cleansing of our sins.
The Greek word, which is translated communion, is a word which you all know. It is the word koinonia, a word which means, “Fellowship, partnership, participation.” It is right that on this occasion of holy communion, we thank God for the fellowship and the partnership that we share together in Christ. It is right that on this occasion we thank God for our participation in all the blessings of the cross.
This morning I thank God for this fellowship that we share together. I thank God for the fellowship that is called Faith United Presbyterian Church, for our communion and our participation together in Christ. When I think of this church, there are a number of things that I am thankful for; and I want to share some of those things with you this morning.
First of all, I am thankful for the variety that we have in our congregation. Our unity is not based on sameness, but that we have variety. Out of that variety comes vitality and light. In some churches everybody is the same, at least they appear to be. They were all baptized in the same tank. They are all premillennial, pretribulation. They all use the same translation of the Bible, and usually it is the King James version. I grew up in a church like that. All the men wore wingtip shoes. All the women wore hats. We all voted Republican. There is nothing wrong with any of those things. I generally vote Republican now, and I actually have wingtip shoes on this morning.
But I thank God for the variety that we have. If you take for instance baptism, we have some of you who prefer immersion. We have some of you who prefer to be sprinkled. Some of you feel very strongly about infant baptism. Others of you feel very strongly about believer’s baptism. When we take evangelism, there again is variety. Some of you cannot wait to get ahold of somebody and tell them about Jesus Christ. Others of you are very laid back and let your light shine. So there is variety there, too.
We think of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. There is variety there. We do not all view the gifts of the Holy Spirit in exactly the same way. We do not all view the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives in exactly the same way.
When you think of the end times, there are a variety of views here at Faith Church. Some of you are pretribulation. You believe that Jesus Christ will come for his church before the tribulation. Others of you are mid tribulation. You believe Christ will come for his people in the middle of the tribulation. Still, others of you are post tribulation. You believe that Christ will come for his people after the tribulation period. Some of you are pan tribulation as you just believe that it will all pan out in the end.
When we look at our theology, there is variety here. Some of you are very Reformed, very Calvinistic, and you tend to stress the sovereignty and control of God in all things. Others of you are more Wesleyan, more Arminian. You tend to stress the free will of men. Then some of you do not even know what I am talking about. You are probably of the majority.
Take the subject of eternal security. Some of you believe that once we are saved, we are always saved. Christians can never lose their salvation. I am sure there are some of you who feel that perhaps a Christian could walk away from Christ, turn away from Christ in the faith.
When we look at the role of women, there are a variety of views here in our congregation. We do not all view God’s call to men and women in exactly the same way. I thank God for the variety that we have, for the life that it brings, and for the interesting dialogue that it brings. I thank God that our unity is not based on uniformity.
There is a second thing that I am thankful for when I think of our church, our communion and fellowship. That is why I am thankful that we have unity in the midst of our diversity. We all believe in Jesus Christ, that He is the eternal Son of God, the Lord of glory, the Lord of lords, and the King of kings, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God, a thing to be held onto. He emptied himself and came into this world as a man; and having come in human form, he humbled himself under death on a cross (Philippians 2:6-8). We all believe that. We all believe that he died for the sins of the world and that he rose from the dead in power and in great glory. That he now lives in the presence of God, the Father Almighty, forever to intercede on behalf of the saints. We all believe that He is coming again to claim His own and to establish His eternal kingdom. We believe these things, and we are united on the core of the gospel. That is the work of the Holy Spirit in our midst. That in the midst of our diversity, we have unity.
There is a third thing that I am thankful for when I think of our fellowship together. I am thankful for our freedom. I do not think I have ever been in a church that has more freedom than this church, freedom that is from the Lord, not from the world. I believe that most of you come here because you want to. You come here out of freedom. You join in the worship services because you want to be here. You join in the koinonia groups because you want to. So often you go to churches, and you feel like people are there because they have to be there. They feel like it is their duty. Maybe they are even there out of fear. But I believe that this is a church where people gather together in the freedom of love.
At one time I joined in fellowship with other Christians out of duty, out of compulsion, out of coercion. It did not work. It occurred when I was in seminary. I have shared this story with some of you who have taken adult education classes from me, but I am sure most of you have never heard it. It is kind of a wild story. It is hard to believe.
When I was in seminary, I was in the School of Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary. The students who were in the School of Psychology decided that we who were in the School of Theology were too theoretical, that we needed to get into more relationships, that we needed to get into small groups where we could “gut level interact” is what they called it. They went to the administration and the administration required that all of us in the School of Theology were required to participate in a sensitivity group. It became mandatory. They placed a student from the School of Psychology in charge of each one of those sensitivity groups, and we were assigned to a particular group.
I remember going that first week to that room where I was forced to meet with those other guys. They did not want to be there. I did not want to be there. We were there by coercion. It did not work. After three or four weeks, we talked about basically nothing. We talked about the Los Angeles Rams. We talked about good eating places in Pasadena. We talked a little bit about theology. Our group facilitator from the School of Psychology was very frustrated because he wanted to get us to share our deep feelings.
He was really frustrated so he went back to his professor and asked, “What can I do? I can’t get these guys to talk.” The professor said, “What you want to do is you want to shock them. Sometimes if you can shock them, you can kind of bring them out. You can get a reaction.” So, at our next meeting, as were just sitting around talking a bunch of small talk like normal, out of the blue, our facilitator said, “Last night, my wife and I made love three times.” And all of a sudden there was silence like right now. We did not know what to say. We did not know what he wanted us to say. We were amazed.
Finally, after a period of silence, a friend of mine, whose name was Henry—he and his wife were really neat friends—made a response. Henry had a speech impediment. It always sounded like he was talking through his nose. Henry said, “I suppose you’d like to know what my wife and I did last night, but personally I don’t think it’s any of your business.” And there was silence again.
Our group facilitator was angry. You could see the veins coming out of his neck. He still wanted it to shock us, but now he had a little anger to go with it. He turned to Henry and said, “Is that right?” He said, “Has anybody ever told you that your voice makes them sick?” He said, “I suppose the reason I say that is every time I hear you talk, I just want to throw up.” There was silence again. We did not know what to say. He turned to Henry and he said, “What do you say to that?” By now he was very confident that he was going to get a gut level reaction. He said, “What do you say to that?” A big smile came across Henry’s face. He said, “Well, I just better bring a barf bag.”
Our group continued to meet. We met, I think, for the rest of the quarter. For the rest of that quarter, some of us were friends and some of us really were not. I do not think any of us disliked each other, but we did not want to be there. We were forced to be there. Nothing really beautiful came out of that time together because it was a matter of coercion.
How neat it is that we come together out of freedom and out of love. I thank God for the fact that this is a church where freedom reigns. I also thank God that our small groups in this church are absolutely nothing like that small group that I had at Fuller Seminary.
A fourth and final thing that I am thankful for when I think of the fellowship that we share and the communion that we share here at Faith Church is that I am thankful for the depth of our fellowship. I am thankful for the small groups that meet in this church. I am thankful for all the koinonia groups that meet in homes. I am thankful for the fact that we can get together in those small groups and study the word of God, that God can speak to the circumstances and the events of our daily lives. I am thankful that in those small groups we can share the things that are going on in our lives, and we can intercede for one another in prayer. I am thankful that in those small groups there is confidentiality and accountability. I am thankful that we can support each other there, encourage each other there, even perhaps rebuke each other there—but all in love and all for the purpose of our upbuilding in Christ Jesus.
I want to encourage each and every one of you here today to take advantage of the depth of the fellowship that we offer here at Faith Presbyterian Church, to join one of these small group fellowships, or join one of the koinonia groups. Your staff here at Faith Presbyterian Church has been anointed by the Spirit to call you into fellowship with one another. John the apostle said that which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you so that you may have fellowship with us, koinonia with us, communion with us. Our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. And we are writing this, that your joy may be full (1 John 1:3-4. The gospel called men and women into fellowship—fellowship with a Father, with a Son, and with each other, the body of Christ, the communion of saints, the fellowship of believers.
We want to encourage you to join the fellowship here at Faith Church. It is too easy in our churches for Christians to sit back and be lost in the numbers. It is too easy for us to become passive spectators, to be content with being entertained and not become involved. We live in the midst of a world that is increasingly depersonalizing. There is a rapidly disintegrating family life in this world. In the midst of a world like that how important it is and how neat it is that we as a church can offer these small group fellowships where Christians can gather together as men and women and experience all the blessings of being part of the family of God. We live in a world that is rapidly changing in the midst of a society with rapidly changing moral and ethical values. Many people feel lost. They feel disoriented. They are looking for some point of reference. They are looking for a moral anchor in the midst of a sea of relativity. How important it is, how imperative it is, that we as a church offer these small groups where Christian men and women can come together into a fellowship rooted in the word of God and with a common commitment to Jesus Christ as the Lord of life.
We encourage you to join in the fellowship here at Faith Church, a fellowship for which I am very thankful. The scriptures tell us that in the beginning, God created man, Adam; and having placed him in this world, God said, it is not right, that man should be alone. So, God created woman. Normally that is viewed within the context of Christian marriage. But there is a deeper truth there. The deeper truth is that God created us to be social beings. He created us with a need for relationship, a need for fellowship, a need for communion with each other. That need, I am convinced, is only satisfied in the body of Christ. I believe that every person living on this earth has a need to belong. God placed that need there, and that need for belonging can only be satisfied when we belong to Christ and the people of Christ.
People in this world are trying to satisfy that need for belonging in a variety of ways. Students join athletic teams. Men and women join clubs or pour themselves into their work. We become Bronco fans and think of the Broncos as belonging to us and us as belonging to the Broncos. There is nothing wrong with any of those things, but they cannot possibly satisfy our need for belonging. As we have all seen, those things can fail us; but Jesus Christ will never fail us. He promises to bless us as we come into the fellowship of God, as we come into the communion of God. I thank God for the fellowship that we share together in Jesus Christ. I thank Him for this church, and I pray that you do, too.
Shall we look to the Lord in prayer. Father, there are so many things that we could thank You for, but we want to thank You today for Your church. We want to thank You that You have made us brothers and sisters with Jesus Christ. You have made us Your own children. Father, we thank You for the body of Christ. We thank You for the fellowship and the love, the fun and the comfort that we find here. Father, we thank You that that fellowship is eternal and will never end. All praises to You, Lord Jesus. It is in Your name we pray. Amen.