World Communion Day

SUN., OCT. 6, 1996, 6:00 AM
FARM, STUDY

This is a special day among you Christians who do not celebrate Holy Communion at each worship service, at least weekly. It is the day of celebrating the unity that the rite of Holy Communion symbolizes and actually recreates. In Christ I have made you One, as I am One in Three. Yet you, of course, have much more diversity than I have, even though there is truth in the question: “If I am your Creator how can you be something I am not?”

The celebration today will feature a variety of breads, and these represent My Body, as the crucified and the risen Christ. My actual body was that of a Jewish man, and that can be represented by one type of bread, consistently. My spiritual Body should be seen in many ways – size, skin color, hair and beard, body build… even gender, and all of the variety that offers. I lived, in My short life, among the Jews, but I reached out, when I could to gentiles… and, symbolically, to all of the humans of that time.

Today My Body is most evident in Gentile, Caucasian cultures, though Spanish is probably the more dominant language with which I am overtly acknowledged and worshipped. Remember El Senor?! You were a good student of Spanish in those far-gone days of high school. You made a feeble attempt to refresh at least familiarity with that language before going to Cuba, but you found yourself mired in English. It was a sad discovery, but your early facility was not sufficient.

International Health has been the course that you have taught longest, and there is a fascination with the cultural differences that exist each time you lead learners in this way. You have a pretty good sense of the diversity I, as Creator, have designed and allowed, and sometimes you wish you had had more actual experience. But that is unlikely to be, in this lifetime. You can’t have everything. But you do have Me… and I do speak your language!

There is not much diversity in this congregation with whom you will celebrate this morning. You have one “permanent” black couple, one African family and another fairly regular African. Oh, you have visitors that bring some variety, but, mostly, you’re middle-class, white Caucasian. You really can’t be much else, so be who you are, with humble celebration. Among those I died for, you Presbyterians at University and Elm are included.

This will be your 3rd and final “class” on death and dying, quite appropriate for a communion day. For it is truth that this sacramental ceremony is a remembrance that My blood was shed and My flesh was pierced, and I gave up the Spirit that was in that body. That was for you… and for all that chew up and swallow the bread and savor and swallow the juice.

It shall be proclaimed that in this act I “created” eternal, everlasting life. But you already know that life in the spirit is everlasting and eternal. As the Christ I have always been, even as I was born in Bethlehem at a particular time. I was crucified and died, but I returned in a short while, and I am in this earth today, and always will be. As Holy Spirit I “arrived” at Pentecost, but I also Am “from the beginning” and am as active as ever, as the human population grows.

So, today the sacrament represents the eternal fact that death is necessary for life to continue, in quality. As you know, I am “working on” how these necessary deaths will occur, so that life can continue. It was not easy to go to the cross… but it was necessary. (So I say!) It is not easy to reduce the human population… but it is necessary.