C196 11/8/59
© Project Winsome International, 2000

THE CHALLENGE OF THE CHALICE
Dr. John Allan Lavender
1 Cor. 11:23-25

What does Communion mean to you? Is it just another custom of the church, a perfunctory exercise, the main function of which is to add an extra twenty minutes to an already too long service? Or is it an act of worship? A feeding of your soul upon Him who is the bread of life. An occasion for the sharpening up of your sense of commitment to the things that matter most.

I am afraid many of us will have to confess it is the former instead of the latter. I'm afraid that, for many of us, the deeper significance of this gathering about the table is often lost. It becomes a burden instead of a blessing. A function instead of a feeling of the presence of God. A custom instead of Communion with the living Christ.

And that is a tragedy. For not only are we the losers, not only do our poor souls shrivel and shrink for want of the spiritual nourishment that comes through a thoughtful worshipful gathering about this table, but our Lord himself is worthy of something better than the condescending nonchalance with which we all too often enter into a service of Communion.

He is worthy of something finer, nobler, deeper than the kind of worship which has one eye on our wristwatch, while the other roams the sanctuary to see how far along the deacons are in serving the elements. And if we are honest, we will confess that on far too many Communion Sundays we have been much more conscious of the clock on the wall than the Christ on the cross.

Well, what's the answer? It seems to me that it lies in our relearning the real meaning of Communion. The meaning our Lord attached to it when he is quoted as saying, not once but twice, "Do this in remembrance of me."

He was not talking about a perfunctory exercise. A casual function. A time-consuming custom. He was describing a heart-to-heart encounter with himself around his cross. A walking side by side down the lanes of memory to tread the path which he had trod. A standing together with him on Golgotha's brow, until the full meaning of the events that transpired there, has driven us to our knees again in an act of grateful, earnest re-surrender.

Is it possible that is your need today? Has your heart grown cold, even hard? Are you away from him? Have you, as the Bible puts it, "lost your first love?" Have you somehow or other allowed your faith to go flat, not by a sudden blowout, but by a kind of slow leak?

Have you neglected to pray? Have you ignored the book? Have you attended church when it was convenient? Have you given just enough money to maintain a form of godliness, but not enough to really lead in a serious reappraisal of your longing habits? And, is it possible that as a result of all this, slowly almost inseparably, you have gone flatter and flatter? On some occasions has your faith in God himself faltered? Have you found yourself facing life situations without the resources you need to meet them?

These are the questions I have been asking myself this past week. I hope you'll muster the courage to ask them of yourself. For the Bible says, "Be sure your sins will find you out." And our restless, pointless, anxious, often powerless existence is evidence of the fact that some of us are a whole lot farther from Christ than we care to admit.
I don't suppose there is anything quite so devastating as that agonizing loneliness which comes when one feels God is away off there somewhere. It is a feeling which plagues all of us at times.
But I would like to suggest this morning that it is not God who is away from us, but we who are away from him.

"How can that be?" you ask. "Isn't God supposed to be equally everywhere in all parts of his creation? Isn't that what we're told in the scripture?" My answer is "Yes." But, look over here in Matthew 15:8, and see something else the scripture says, "Their heart is far from me."

There are two things I would like you to note in that statement.
First, he is not speaking of physical remoteness, but of spiritual distancing. "Their heart is far from me."
Second, it is not God who is away from us, but we who are away from him. "Their heart is far from me."

What does that mean? Let me remind you of an illustration I've used before. Isn't it true that at times you have been at such complete loggerheads with someone, so angry with them or they with you, the two of you could be in the same room and yet be a million miles apart spiritually and emotionally?

Or to use an even more intimate illustration, have you ever known a married couple which sometimes were so full of resentment or hostility toward each other they could actually lie together on the same bed, and yet be separated by a vast impenetrable wall of unforgiveness?
I think you have. What little I know about human nature would suggest that you and your mate have probably known such times of spiritual remoteness. If that can happen to two people who are so close to each other they could actually touch, how much more is it possible for us to be afar from God whom we have never touched?

I'm speaking spiritually, not physically. For while it's true that "in God we live and move and have our being," while it's true that he is actually closer to us than we are to ourselves, it is also true that we can allow wrong attitudes, evil thoughts, and spiritual flaws erect a psychological and/or a spiritual wall of separation between us. And, when we do, from our point of view, God seems to be far, far away. But, in reality, he has not left us at all, we have left him.

What's the answer? I believe we're on the threshold of at least part of it today. For what we must do is to undo the dissimilarity between us. We must draw out of ourselves and become conscious of Christ again. That's what happens when in Communion we really begin to worship in remembrance of him. And, when we do--

We remember him and what he has done for us upon his cross.
We remember his incredible condescension in leaving heaven, which no adjectives or superlatives can describe, for the dismal darkness and death of a cross.
We remember his redeeming love and his sacrificial self-giving.
We remember that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.
We remember it is not we who have chosen him, but he who has chosen us that he might fill us with his grace and give us life eternal and abundant.
We remember the tremendous thing Jesus did for us and compare it with the little we do for him.

Then the wall of our rebellion and indifference begins to crumble. Our false pride begins to falter and we're prepared to confess that, like the prodigal son, we have allowed resentment, hostility, indifference, rebellion and preoccupation to take us into the far country of self-indulgence and self-rule, so we no longer feel worthy to be called his children.

If we stop with that admission, we will be little, if any, better off. But if, like the prodigal son, we say, "I will arise and go to my father and home," then miraculously, as we draw near to him, he draws near unto us, just as he promised. The sense of remoteness dissipates. The sense of his nearness returns. And we discover, as I have already said, that he is never away from us at all. It is we who were away from him.

"Do this in remembrance of me," Jesus said. God grant that we shall share Communion in that way this morning. For remembrance of him results in repentance. It quickens love. Fosters holiness. And best of all, remembrance brings God near, or to put it more accurately, it lets us know he was never away in the first place.