“In communion, our entire covenant community is brought closer to our God and subsequently, to each other because our Christ is our commonality, and the sacrament is our common sign. As all believers possess God’s Spirit, we are personally fed, repaired, and strengthened. But that communion is not a privatized, one-dimensional experience.
All of Christ’s Church enjoys the presence of the Holy Spirit, so we cannot experience true communion in isolation. The sacrament that is experienced is always done in plurality with other brothers and sisters… We are brought out of isolation into a community that rallies around an identity that is not consumed with melancholic introspection or shared backgrounds. Once defined by our sin, we are now defined by the person and work of another – Jesus. We are now defined by his righteousness, not our own. As we corporately approach the table, it is a group of righteous people who still sin, a group of righteous people who hate their sin, and a group of righteous people who long for the day when they will not sin.
What a relief to many that there are others who are disgusted with themselves. We are morally frustrated, and yet, also long for the perfection found in Christ’s work – not increased fervor or promises. The Table once again unites a fragmented people. Unified, we come. Sinners who have been made righteous attend this Table. We do not come through varying acts of goodness, but through One Person, applied to his people by One Spirit. The Sacrament of the Lord’s Table is, yet again, the cure for loneliness and isolation.”
- Tim Lien
This Is for You (The Means of Grace)
Imagine that your prayer is a poorly dressed beggar reeking of alcohol and body odor, stumbling toward the palace of the great king. You have become your prayer. As you shuffle toward the barred gate, the guards stiffen. Your smell has preceded you. You stammer out a message for the great king: ‘I want to see the king.’
“So with the Lord’s Supper. My witness is, and I think I speak the mind of many of God’s people now present, that coming as some of us do, weekly, to the Lord’s table, we do not find the breaking of bread to have lost its significance—it is always fresh to us. I have often remarked on Lord’s-day evening, whatever the subject may have been, whether Sinai has thundered over our heads, or the plaintive notes of Calvary have pierced our hearts, it always seems equally appropriate to come to the breaking of bread. Shame on the Christian church that she should put it off to once a month, and mar the first day of the week by depriving it of its glory in the meeting together for fellowship and breaking of bread, and showing forth of the death of Christ till he come. They who once know the sweetness of each Lord’s-day celebrating his Supper, will not be content, I am sure, to put it off to less frequent seasons. Beloved, when the Holy Ghost is with us, ordinances are wells to the Christian, wells of rich comfort and of near communion.”
“Gathering to eat at the Lord’s Table reminds us that grace is as common as bread, as sparkling as wine, and as necessary and invigorating as both. We need those reminders, for we live surrounded by an atmosphere rife with noxious poisons and convenience stores stocked only with confections. We need communion, which draws us together to contemplate grace, to be newly infused with grace, to be prepared for demonstrating grace. So to the table we come, and from the table we depart, nourished for life by encounters with the Lord.” – Dan Schmidt
“In worship we gather together to draw near to God, who is full of grace – the very grace so vividly displayed by communion. Grace has saved us, and, as we discover so often in worship, it continues to be evident, shaping those who gladly submit to the Lord. Bread and cup take us to a manifestation of grace in the selfless advent and giving of Jesus on behalf of rebels, and they lay in stores of the spiritual enrichment we receive at Gods hand. As we eat and drink, our bodies are fueled only modestly in terms of physical nutrition; in spiritual terms, we enter time and space saturated by grace and can be permeated, refreshed, and refueled by it. We must teach ourselves that coming to this table is as necessary as eating. We must train ourselves to recognize that we require feeding.”
