Scripture: St John Chapter 6 verses 1 to 21.
I suppose that I was about 16 or 17 years old before I went to receive Communion in the church; it was a pre-arranged visit, one of those random ideas that comes sometimes when speaking with friends. We had been to a BB meeting when it was decided that three of us would go to the evening service in the Kirk, just for a wee look. Afterwards the three of us were walking home when Jimmy asked, “do you two feel any different?” We both answered “No” and there was silence for a minute.
I said, “how could a wee bit bread and a sup of wine make you feel different?” There was a general silence until Jimmy said, “Aye, but I was hoping to feel something, I don’t know what – just different”.
That was a very, very long time ago and it made me think. Later that same night I told my mum what we had done. She asked me what I thought.
I said, “well I didn’t feel any different”
“What were you expecting then”, she asked me.
“Oh, I don’t know…, I thought I would feel something”.
There was a silence before she added, “well, maybe you’ll have to think about it a bit more and see what you come up with”.
So. My first communion had, I believe not a total lack of impact on me, because over the years I did think a lot about it.
It was something that grew in me over those years, and now every time I celebrate Holy Communion, whether at the table in the kirk or around the tables on Maundy Thursday evening when we celebrate a simple ‘hunger meal’ as friends together, or in the bedroom of an old person in the hospice or a care home, then there is real experience which is so intense. What can a wee bit bread and a sup of wine do?
In its simplest form probably not very much.
However it is when Almighty God in Jesus Christ took a morsel of bread and a chalice of wine, and before eating and drinking said the words “this is my body…. this is my blood…”, and then gave himself up to Crucifixion and died for all human kind. His sacrifice for us all, that is when the fullest and deepest meaning comes and it arrives with the full force of the Grace of God. Jesus; sacrifice for you and for me.
A prayer for you:
Dear God, thank you for the Grace that Jesus gives us; your Grace every time we eat the bread and drink the wine and contemplate Jesus’ painful sacrifice on a Roman Cross, sacrificing himself for me.
Amen