During this Lenten season, I have been having a wonderful time exploring the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion with our 2nd -5th graders and their parents. As we “play” with water, fire and different kinds of bread, I am reminded all over again about the power of our Christian Story.
Christians are a people set within the Story of God’s loving and saving actions in the world. The sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion are God’s “show- and- tell” or, as John Wesley wrote in the Articles of Religion, “They are certain signs of grace, and God's good will toward us, by which he doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm, our faith in him.” Water, grapes and grain graft us to God’s story. When we pray over the water at Baptism, that water connects us to the water of Creation, the water of the Great Flood, the water the Israelites traveled through on their way out of slavery into freedom, and the water in which Jesus was baptized. We participate in these stories, and through the water, they become part of our experience too. Water is God’s vehicle of new life and it flows throughout Christian life. We are renewed and re-born in it.
As we celebrate Holy Communion each Sunday during Lent, we are given the chance to experience our story as God’s people through the grapes and grain. Just like the baptismal prayer over the water, the communion prayers remind us of who we are, how we got to be that way and what God has done for us in Jesus. As our Pastors lead us in the Great Thanksgiving and then consecrate the bread and cup, listen carefully to the story that is told; the covenants God made with us that we broke, and how Jesus restores us to right relationship with God, “In love you made us for yourself; and when we had fallen into sin and become subject to evil and death, your love remained steadfast . . . Blessed is your Son Jesus Christ whom you sent in the fullness of time to redeem the world” (UMH pg. 62). The prayers may differ a bit from week to week, but through them, the story of our redemption in Jesus is told. In the bread and the juice, the new life given us through Jesus in baptism, is sustained, nurtured and grown by the regular family meal at Christ’s table.
As John Wesley reminds us in his sermon, The Duty of Constant Communion,” The benefits of [Holy Communion] are so great to all that do it in obedience to him; the forgiveness of our past sins and the present strengthening and refreshing of our souls.”We are never too young or too old to be reminded that we are formed by God to be part of God’s story. We are never too young or too old to share the family meal. Eating and drinking together at the table is the visible sign of God’s grace – the place where we all belong, where we all are welcomed and valued, where we are forgiven and restored joyfully to our place in God’s story.
See you at the family table this Sunday!
Dr. Elizabeth
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