Pondering the Lord's Supper

At Grace, we have chosen the first Sunday of the month to celebrate the Lord's Supper - "reenacting" the momentous Passover meal Jesus shared with His disciples to begin an unbroken church tradition. The Lord's Supper goes by some other familiar names: most notably "Communion" and the "Eucharist." My personal preference is to call it the "Lord's Supper" because the other phrases often have associations with particular denominations or carry secondary meanings. Furthermore, "Lord's Supper" reminds us of who it's all about.

We have chosen once a month rather than weekly or quarterly or some other schedule because we want to keep it a frequent tradition, but not so frequent that it becomes a mindlessly repeated act. Many churches celebrate it weekly with great meaning, and we have no criticism of that practice. We believe that monthly is best for who we are at this time.

Janette Jasperson, Irena Jasperson, Hannah Flowers, and I'm sure many others who I'm not aware of, have faithfully prepared the serving plates, the bread, and the juice month of after month, and I'm grateful to them for their unsung labor. They "prepare" the Lord's Supper for us. In the same way, we should "prepare" ourselves for the Lord's Supper.

One way to prepare yourself is to fast for 12 or 24 hours before we celebrate it on the first Sunday of the month (such as this coming weekend). Then, you are breaking the fast specifically with the elements of the Lord's Supper. I've done this several times, and it's very meaningful to me - but I don't do it every time so that it remains meaningful when I choose to do it. The time of fasting, then, is a time to reflect, pray, and prepare your heart for how the Lord's Supper reminds us of Jesus' sacrifice for us on the Cross to pay for, and then wash away, our sin.

Whether you fast or not, another way to prepare for the Lord's Supper is to set aside time the night before or the morning of to have an unrushed hour to pray, particularly for the purpose of examining your heart, checking your motives, confessing your sin to the Lord, repenting of your sin (which is not about feeling bad, but about turning away from your sin), and receiving forgiveness. Then, you're not rushed during the Lord's Supper to try to "take care of business" in a short amount of time. The Lord's Supper becomes a way to celebrate forgiveness instead of just capping off a short time of prayer (which, quite frankly, is what it can become if we're not careful).

The Lord's Supper is something we particularly do in community - we take this all together, just as Jesus' disciples shared the elements together. There is an "us-ness" about it. The prayer and reflection are very personal, but the public declaration that I claim Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior is very public. Intentionally so.

Lastly, it doesn't need to be a pastor "presiding" over it or the elders to be the ones to serve it. There is nothing to stop us from having other believers speak, pray, and serve, and we have mixed that up on a few occasions. We should be in the habit of having others serve on occasion.

To read more about the Lord's Supper, read the accounts of Jesus and His disciples (Matthew 26; Mark 14; Luke 22; John 13), the accounts of the early church making the Lord's Supper important to their worship (Acts 2:37-47; 20:7-12), and how Paul teaches the church at Corinth how best to celebrate it (1 Cor 10:14-33; 11:23-34).

The Not-so-planny Plan

Biblical literacy is a high value at Grace Fellowship. We want all attenders to be able to dive into the Word on their own and be able to draw richness from the text, without needing anyone to tell them what they should conclude from the text. It's the proverbial teaching someone how to fish - we believe that those who know how to fish will eat better than those who don't.

In 2011, we had a church-wide reading plan to read the entire Bible together on the same schedule. Last year, we had a plan to read through the entire New Testament together, but in a order that roughly followed the timeline of the Book of Acts. In both cases, I have heard people mention how much they got out of the plans - having a goal to read, reading large sections at a time showing the big picture, and being encouraging by reading along with others.

For 2013, we're trying a different kind of plan. Rather than having a goal of reading a certain amount in a year's time, we are selecting readings that correspond to the weekly message. The week following a sermon, there is a set of passages to read that relate to that sermon.

Each week, we will publish in Grace Notes and in the weekly bulletin, plus on our Facebook page, the passages to read. For a given week, there will be five passages to read, one per day. Some will be long, intended to be read at a high level, and some will be short, intended to be read with more attention to detail. We recommend that you journal what you are learning from Scripture, what prayers are evoked by the passage, and even steps you intend to take to incorporate the Word into you life. The sixth day is for reviewing the previous five passages and synthesizing them together. There is nothing scheduled for the seventh day, in order to give you a day to catch up or to allow for one day a week that you just can't get to it.

The benefits of this approach are that it helps simplify our lives by not having so many different things to study in a given week, by repeating a lesson to help reinforce it, by actively digging into a passage that you heard someone else talk about, and by going deeper into the Word.

The downside of this approach is that I can't write out an entire year's worth of passages in advance. I just don't know all that I'll be teaching that far away, or where I want to put the emphasis in a given week. So, this means that we can't hand out schedules at the first of the year like we have the previous two years.

Next year, we'll probably do something else. But for this year, read with us and dig deeper into God's Word. Let me know how we can make it easier for you, and I'd love to hear your feedback on what you do and don't like about this approach. Pay attention to Grace Notes, the bulletin, or Facebook to keep up with us. I also plan to start posting on the church Facebook page some reflection related to the passage of the day.

Stewarding our Values

In last Sunday's message, we introduced the idea of "stewardship." We asked the question, "What is stewardship?" and there were several correct answers offered, all generally boiling down to the idea of being responsible with someone else's stuff. That's all well and good, but there's something important about stewardship that Jesus emphasizes repeatedly that I have ignored for years. I'm finding out since the message, I'm not alone in this. (The audio of the sermon will be available soon on our website.)

We asked three questions. The first was, "When does stewardship occur?" In all the parables about stewardship, not only does Jesus talk about being responsible with someone else's (i.e., His) stuff, but the fact that the Master is away during the time that stewardship is needed. Stewardship happens while the Master is away. Furthermore, stewardship happens because the Master is away.

The second question was, "What makes it stewardship?" What is it about stewardship that makes it "stewardship"? Again, beyond the idea of caretaking stuff responsibly, Jesus repeatedly emphasizes that the Master is returning one day (and on a day or hour that we won't know in advance). It's stewardship because the Master is returning. Because He's coming back, we have something to steward, and then be accountable for.

Thirdly, we asked, "How is stewardship a form of discipleship?" Jesus taught about stewardship in Luke 16:1-13 and ended with a series of questions to the effect of, "If you aren't faithful with small, temporal stuff that's not yours, who in his right mind would entrust you with big, eternal stuff of your own?" Stewardship is something that God uses to make us that kind of trustworthy. We're going to be given eternal time, full capacity of our abilities, fabulous wealth, and a community forever. Those are enormous responsibilities that we need to be prepared for. Stewardship is a form of discipleship in that it changes us to be able to handle the magnitude of what awaits us to our fullest.

We handed out a worksheet for each of us to prayerfully consider personal values to create the foundation of a steward's frame of mind. You can find that worksheet here: (http://doiop.com/PersonalValues, or see the QR code below). Please do take the personal time to walk through the worksheet - it will be very helpful for the rest of our series.



The discussions I've had since Sunday have been interesting and encouraging. Keep the dialog going - let's keep talking about being faithful and wise stewards, and let's encourage one another with the worksheets on stewarding our values. In the coming weeks, we'll talk about stewarding our time, our talents, our treasure, our family, our church, and our mission.

Every Misery Has an Answer

Thank you all for your kind concern for our welfare over this past weekend. We were both down with the flu - thankfully Lynne's case was mild, but my case was perhaps the worst I've ever experienced. Many of you posted, texted, IM'ed, emailed, and called to offer prayer, comfort, and assistance. Steve Reitz was called on Saturday evening with an urgent request to preach the message Sunday morning, and we are particularly grateful to him. Thanks for being family.

Without giving a descriptive narrative of our year-end "adventure," suffice it to say that I faced a long, varied sequence of miseries. But now in the aftermath, I realized that every misery had an answer. The misery of nausea had an answer - meds to fight it, and facilities just hurried steps away to relieve it. The misery of chills so strong they caused seizure-like shaking had an answer - blankets, thermal clothing, space heater, and even a household furnace. The misery of a desperate desire for it all to just go away had an answer - prayer to the God who is there. And so on. As the illness progressed into new miseries, each misery had an answer. Lynne's care was the answer to many miseries.

The answers to the miseries didn't always make the misery go away instantly. But there was an answer - something available, something to turn to, something that helped. There was no misery, no matter how uncomfortable, that lacked an answer.

Then I thought of those who don't always have answers to their miseries. It was easy for me to imagine what it would have been like if I did not have those answers available.

Some people don't have answers for their physical miseries. Whether we talk about our friends in Kenya or our friends across town, some don't have the blankets or the space heater or the furnace or even the facilities. Some don't have the meds. The answers exist, but some don't have access to the answers. Even if the answers don't immediately eradicate the misery, having access to answers brings hope to the misery.

More importantly, some don't have answers to their spiritual miseries. I always had access to God in prayer (and when you're sick, you tend to pray more raw, more honest, more prayerful prayers than when things are going well). There is the great answer we need to our misery of sin and its penalty, and there are ongoing answers to the full variety of spiritual miseries. But those who do not have a personal relationship with God through Christ don't have that Answer at hand. The Answer exists, but some don't have access to that Answer. Even if that answer doesn't immediately eradicate every spiritual misery, having access to the Answer brings hope to the misery.

Everyone you know has spiritual miseries - perhaps evident, perhaps hidden, but certainly present. However, every misery does have an answer. Our access to the Answer to our spiritual misery is found only through Jesus Christ. A weekend bout with the flu makes it easy to imagine what life would be like without access to the answers to our miseries. Make sure your neighbor knows where to find that Answer.