Communion

Preceding physical communion, pastors often refer to 1 Corinthians 11. In verse 27 and 28 of that passage, Paul writes “whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and the blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.” In the past, those two verses have instilled a sense of worry, fear and guilt in my heart.

In the past, I have never taken the elements at a friends church where fingers and palms are cleansed with sanitizer before hand, and the wine is replaced with orange fanta.

In one sense, our call to self examination should make us uncomfortable--being accountable to God and others almost always will, for can we ever say we have been transformed to a perfect citizen of His Kingdom on this earth? However, The very act of communion is a recognition that we do not have to be perfect.

The time of self examination is not a place where we should agonize and obsess over whether or not our life is in perfect condition and we are untouched by sin; for that very reason Christ‘s body was broken and his blood shed. The call to communion is a call to fellowship with Christ, by confessing our sin, accepting his love, declaring his grace sufficient and allowing Him to wash our feet.

What profanes Christ’s body as Paul talked about is rejecting grace by being too worried whether we are in the perfect condition to accept Christ’s sacrifice or mark ourselves unworthy of his work.

It is for that reason that we don’t even have to sanitize our hands before touching the bread and wine, for it is in remembering Christ’s sacrifice and accepting it that we are cleansed.