Holy Communion

SUN., OCT. 6, 1991, 7:00 AM
SHERATON, LONG BEACH

This is a Christian Sabbath day that is called World Communion Sunday. If you were at home the service of worship would be in Shryock Auditorium, and you would be one of those serving the elements to those Christians assembled. You hope Lenore will be doing this, and there is some comparable Remembrance in the church where you shall worship this morning, partly familiar, on at least a familiar corner.

I called this Holy Communion ritual a Remembrance, for it is a recollection of the Last Supper… the meal with My disciples before My arrest and crucifixion. The Holy Scriptures give varying accounts of this, but enough to be a guide to the development of this sacrament of remembrance. You are to remember that I broke bread and “commanded” each to take a piece, as a symbol of My Body, which would be broken for them. You are to remember that I offered each a drink from a common cup of wine and “commanded” each to accept the symbol that this was My Blood, to be shed for them.

As Jesus I remember that evening with vividness. As the Holy Spirit I had to assure that those who ate this bread and drank from this cup would remember and be sure that it would be part of Holy Scripture, so that it could be remembered by countless Christians through the ages. That was accomplished, and I am pleased that many Christian groups who do not celebrate this Remembrance each Sunday do so on this day, knowing that they are joining many others, world-wide.

It was a good meal, and, as you have heard, it was eaten with a good deal of joy and thanksgiving. I knew that I would be going to a painful, degraded death. That was My human realization. I would no longer preach and teach as I had been doing. The association on a day-to-day basis with the motley disciples I had chosen would be over. My relationship with My Mother and others in My family would cease. How, then, could the time be a joyous one?

I had to let Myself begin to move from the physical being that I had grown to be, in a natural, earth way, toward the spiritual being I had always been. I had never lost this. I merely let the incarnation into flesh and blood be dominant. Oh, I performed a few miracles, using supernatural powers, but most of My ministry was quite natural. Yet at that time of Supper I was letting My spiritual self return, so that I could realize what this death would mean. The writer Charles Dickens had his character Charles say it in a way that I wish were Scripture: “It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done before. It is a far, far better rest I got to than I have ever known.”

Yet you immediately see that, while it represented My human/spiritual reaction to My impending death, it would not be completely true. I had lived an exemplary life, and I had left teachings and parables and principles that are the best basis for human life in the earth. Yet dying in order that sin might be removed from human believers was, finally, a “far, far better thing…” I would go to a rest from earth life, but I would continue an active ministry. It would not be rest, in the sense of a surcease from activity.