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Communion – Remember Me
A sermon preached by Dr. James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, February 6, 2005
We have just completed a very successful marriage
enrichment weekend. We give God thanks for the marriages, for the families
within our congregation and we bless all of you who participated.
One of the defining moments in a relationship, a growing
dating relationship is the first time the man sees the woman without make-up
on. You see, make-up is the art of facial management. It is designed to build
and put into place what is perceived not to be there.
Nancy Ortberg spoke recently at Richmond, at the 21-C
Conference that Virginia Baptists put on. She and her husband John serve a
church in California. I have heard John speak and have read his books, many of
you have also. I did not know that Nancy was an outstanding speaker as well.
But at the 21-C Conference, she hit homeruns all over the place.
In his book ‘Everybody’s Normal Until You Get to Know
Them,’ John Ortberg tells of the first time he saw Nancy without make-up. They
had been dating for some time. He arrived unannounced at the apartment where
she and her roommate were staying. It turned out that she and her roommate were
putting up wallpaper and she had on blue jeans, a ratty maroon sweatshirt, her
hair was apparently going everywhere, and she was not wearing one bit of
make-up, not even lipstick. And John wrote, “I looked at her and I said to
myself, no wonder I love that woman. I like her just like she is.” That’s the
way God is with us, you know?
Let’s be honest. We have come into this room this day with
our spiritual make-up on, haven’t we? We just put it like we think it ought to
be. It’s kind of spiritual make-up management. Now God, before whom no secrets
are hid, knows us through and through. I guess we do this for one another. But
wouldn’t it be wonderful if there is a place where we could go without our
spiritual make-up on and just be with the Lord? There is a place like that –
it’s called the church, but the special time you can do that, the most special
amongst all special times is around the table of the Lord.
Now there was once an ancient city and a church within it.
The city was called Corinth. It had very little make-up of any kind. Someone
many years later will call Corinth one of the three wickedest cities that ever
existed. Sodom, Gomorrah, Corinth – no make-up and Paul planted a church there
because it was such a large, strategic city. But when you plant a church in a
place with no background and no rhythm of the way things ought to be, weird
things happen and so when Corinth, the church at Corinth, was celebrating the
Lord’s Supper, the Lord’s Table, they were treating it…they were treating it
like a Super Bowl Celebration. Some people were even getting drunk and the
Apostle Paul wrote to them instructions on how they were to observe Communion,
The Lord’s Supper, how they were to gather around the Lord’s Table and I ask you
to look at those instructions with me. First Corinthians the 11th
chapter, the 23rd verse, “For I receive from the Lord what I also
passed on to you. That the Lord Jesus on the night He was betrayed took bread
and when He had given thanks He broke it and said…and when He had given thanks…”
Some of our brothers and sisters in Christ in more formal
churches call Communion, The Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist. They get that word
from the Greek word for thanksgiving. Eucharisteho – to be thankful…”Jesus gave
thanks and then He broke the bread and said, this is my body which is for you.
This do in remembrance of me.” That’s the first time Jesus mentions
remembrance. “In the same way after supper He took the cup saying, this cup is
the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance (the
second time He mentions remembrance) of me. For whenever you eat this bread and
drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes. Therefore…” Keep
in mind how they were misusing this whole celebration…”Therefore, whoever eats
the bread or drinks the cup in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning
against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before
he eats the bread, drinks the cup.” This is the word of the Lord.
Two key words…examine yourself because if both of these
words are in the celebration that happens today then you are participating
worthily. If they aren’t, you have a problem. The first one is
‘thanksgiving.’ One way to get at this is to say, what am I most thankful for
to the Lord for who He is? Not only for my blessings, that’s the end result,
but be thankful to the person who means the most. Isn’t that true? In any
relationship…what are you most thankful for in so far as the Lord Jesus is
concerned in your life?
There is an old Virginia saying that goes, “Gratitude is
the attitude of an aristocrat.” It may be a good saying, I would want to change
it a little bit. “Gratitude is the attitude of a Christian who has learned to
be dependant upon God.” Our Lord began almost everything with thanksgiving.
Now the second key word is ‘remembrance.’ Memory and
remembering are a challenge for all of us aren’t they? When we are children,
youth, young adults, we sit in classrooms, take exams, we try to remember…oh
my! Haven’t you a memory of a time you were taking a test, you knew the answer,
oh you knew that answer…you had said it the night before and you just couldn’t
remember it? Remembering…we introduce a good friend to another good friend and
we say, I want you to know one of my best friends and his name is… After the
first service when one of ours left the church with a chuckle she said, “Let me
tell you a story…my mother and my father were on their honeymoon and they
chanced to come across somebody they knew and my mother said to the person they
knew, I want you to meet my new husband his name is…”
As you’ve heard me say before, taken for granted faith has
a way of forgetting what we ought to forget and remembering what we ought to
remember. We switch it all around. You see, we remember the things we
shouldn’t remember, the worries, the slights, the misunderstandings, the
inferiorities, the sins, the mistakes, the fears…and we forget, oh my, how often
we forget to trust, to sing, to praise, to thank, to say to the Lord, thank you,
to pray, to let go, to be grateful. Remember! Jesus said it twice as if He
knew we were going to have trouble remembering.
There is a huge truth here that I don’t want you to
overlook. Huge truth. Here it is – the Holy Spirit is present at the Lord’s
Supper in ways that the Holy Spirit isn’t present at other times. You say, the
Holy Spirit is always present, I know, I know…but think of your own experience
and there are times when you have gathered around the table when the Holy Spirit
is there in such an incredible way. This is one of those times perhaps so open
up your heart, take off your spiritual make-up, let the Lord in – He knows you
anyway.
What are we remembering? We are remembering two basic
truths – one, that what Communion is about is a love story – a love story? You
have already read the text, Philippians 2. Søren Kierkegaard,
a man from another era put it like this, “Suppose there was a king who loved a
humble maiden? This king was like no other king and the most powerful king in
all of the world. Everyone feared him and no one ever crossed him. This king,
however, was in love with a simple maiden who lived in a forest in a little bity
cottage with her mother and father and the question that came to the king was,
how do I get this maiden to love me? I could send for her…send my best
chariot. I could put on her head a crown and royal robes all around her
shoulders and if I said to her, do you love me? She would be afraid not to say,
of course I love you, but would she? And as he thought about it, it became the
most important thing in all of the world for him to find out if that maiden
really could love him and you know what he did? One night when everybody else
was asleep he put aside all of his kingly wardrobe and dressed himself like a
servant and went to live in the forest close to the maiden. He wanted to find
out if she would choose him without any of his kingly trappings.
Friends, that’s what you read about in Philippians 2. You
may have missed it. I’ve just told you the story. The King of Kings, the Lord
of Lords, left it all and came as a human being putting on Himself the garments
of a servant and was made in our likeness and the grand lover of our souls is
continually coming again and again to say, I wonder if he or she will love me
because they choose to love me, not because they’re afraid not to; because they
are attracted to me, not because of what I can do.
The second thing that we are to remember is that still
small voice that comes to us and calls us home again like right now to our
spiritual home. Do you remember some years ago that remarkable voyage of Apollo
13? It was made into a movie. The code name for the voyage was Odyssey.
Unfortunately it was one of those journeys when everything went wrong and it was
a battle against all odds to bring those astronauts back safely. There was an
explosion in the capsule. They did not know what had been damaged and
destroyed. They had hoped that the guidance system was still intact because if
it wasn’t, they might miss earth entirely and their parachutes would turn into
blocks of ice. The heat shield that protected them might malfunction and it
would be like entering an inferno. All over the world people were glued to
their television sets. One of the great dramas of space history was taking
place. The space capsule traveling at 3500 feet a second was entering the
earth’s atmosphere and the television announcer said, “There are three minutes
when everything is silent. After that three minutes if everything is still
silent then we will know they didn’t make it.” Master control in Houston was
listening in every possible way they could. The three minutes was going by.
Every tick was like an hour and then the three minutes was over…silence.
Houston control said, “Odyssey, this is Houston, do you read me?” Silence.
“Odyssey, Houston control here, do you read?” Silence.
The families of the three men took hands. The announcer
said over television, “The three minutes is over and we hear nothing. I guess
all we can do is hope for the best and pray.” In Houston control tears began to
flow. The men at their computers hung their heads. The families began to
weep. Still, the word went out, “Odyssey, this is Houston control, do you
read?” The sky was vacant and then suddenly a speck way out on the horizon.
The radio crackled. “Houston control, this is Odyssey, it’s good to see you
again!” And the tears flowed but now they were tears of joy. People cheered,
literally, all over the world. There was that incredible release of joy. You
see, our boys had come home. Safe.
My dear friends hear me, please hear me…I invite you this
morning around the table to come home safely; to come home to the Master
controller. To come home to the way you really in your heart of hearts want to
be…come home, come home!
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