a sermon for World Communion Sunday

2 Timothy 1.1-14

1 From Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by God’s will, to promote the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus.

2 To Timothy, my dear child.

Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

3 I’m grateful to God, whom I serve with a good conscience as my ancestors did. I constantly remember you in my prayers day and night. 4 When I remember your tears, I long to see you so that I can be filled with happiness. 5 I’m reminded of your authentic faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice. I’m sure that this faith is also inside you. 6 Because of this, I’m reminding you to revive God’s gift that is in you through the laying on of my hands. 7 God didn’t give us a spirit that is timid but one that is powerful, loving, and self-controlled.

8 So don’t be ashamed of the testimony about the Lord or of me, his prisoner. Instead, share the suffering for the good news, depending on God’s power. 9 God is the one who saved and called us with a holy calling. This wasn’t based on what we have done, but it was based on his own purpose and grace that he gave us in Christ Jesus before time began. 10 Now his grace is revealed through the appearance of our savior, Christ Jesus. He destroyed death and brought life and immortality into clear focus through the good news. 11 I was appointed a messenger, apostle, and teacher of this good news. 12 This is also why I’m suffering the way I do, but I’m not ashamed. I know the one in whom I’ve placed my trust. I’m convinced that God is powerful enough to protect what he has placed in my trust until that day. 13 Hold on to the pattern of sound teaching that you heard from me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 14 Protect this good thing that has been placed in your trust through the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

Let the words of my mouth
    and the meditations of my heart
    be pleasing to you,
    Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Once upon a time, there was God. God, out of loneliness or boredom or curiosity or pure artistic flair, decided to create.

And there was stuff. And God, whose opinion is infallible, said it was good.

And there were a whole bunch of mornings and evenings; a lot of days.

And then, somewhere between 3000 and a few trillion years later, there was this guy named Jesus. He was the kind of guy we’d expect to be a jihadist today, because we’re big fans of racial profiling, and he was of half-middle eastern descent.

The other half of his ancestry was God.

This Jesus guy walked around, did the kind of stuff that only God can do, and tried to convince people to be nice to each other for a change, for which blasphemy and insurrection he was assassinated on a cross.

His followers saw him walking around a few days later and started telling people about it.

And the Church was born.

This Church did a lot of things, not the least of which was to multiply like a household of rabbits.

They broke bread together, each time discovering that the bread and the wine they were consuming were, in fact, that Jesus guy still finding a way to get into their heads and hearts.

They thought that was so cool that they kept doing it. They were known for it. They did it so often, and made that connection between bread and body, cup and blood, so definitively that people started calling them cannibals.

But that didn’t stop them.

Even when the reformers started ripping the Church into different groups, they didn’t stop. Every time they got together, they proclaimed and shared the body and blood of Jesus.

Nothing stopped that practice, and the Church was enriched and maintained, even during her darkest hours, by so physically, so fundamentally taking Jesus into their bodies that every cell, every neural pathway was shaped by Jesus.

Maybe that’s a little glorified, but it is, in fact, the practices of the Church that keep her being what she is: the Body of Christ, redeemed by his blood.

In every age, people recognized how important that practice was.

But then something weird happened. America. Westward expansion. The unavailability of clergy to preside over the table. People had made the practice into such a ritual that they were afraid to celebrate the meal without an official.

So churches started receiving Jesus only when a circuit-riding pastor would happen into town, and that happened only infrequently. And that circuit-wide practice of communing over the body and blood became a practice itself.

The meal was no longer the regular nourishment of the Church; it was a special occasion.

And even when pastors started to become available for local congregations again, they had long forgotten how important, how vital that reminder of Jesus inside them was. They kept up the practice only occasionally, at special events, maybe quarterly.

And that is one reason why the Church is withering today. We have lost our grip on so many of the things that the Church once knew was so important, so vital, so life-giving.

Paul writes to Timothy and advises him:

Protect this good thing that has been placed in your trust through the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

And he is speaking of the teaching of Jesus Christ, and him crucified, resurrected. But that’s because the practices of the early Church were easier to continue than the theology. The story kept having to be re-told, and still does, every time we share it.

But today, two millennia on, we have lost touch with so much. The Church isn’t relevant to younger generations because we’ve become preoccupied with growth and money.

We’ve forgotten our roots.

So today, let’s reclaim the foundation of our faith and practice. Today, on World Communion Sunday, let’s join with congregations of all stripes and flavors, all around the world, and remind ourselves just how beautiful, just how relevant, just how powerful Jesus-inside-us still is.

Let’s commune together friends. Let Jesus bring us back to life.