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Coming Together
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Communications companies bombard us with advertising that appeals to a basic
human need: the need to connect in a meaningful way with other human beings.
Slogans suggest “connecting people” and “bringing people together.” Deep down,
even the most independent of us need to feel that we are not alone. We need to
talk to others. We even need to touch others. Newborn babies do not develop
properly if they are deprived of the touch of another human.
God created us with this need to connect with one another. Since he understands
our need to make connections, the Lord Jesus gave his church a way to satisfy
this need on the deepest level imaginable
There’s a reason why the church refers to the Lord’s Supper as “Holy Communion.”
The word communion means “coming together,” and the Lord’s Supper is a coming
together in three different ways. First, in the Lord’s Supper, the bread that is
blessed and distributed to us communicants comes together with the body of
Christ and the wine comes together with his blood. In this way, we receive both
a physical element and a divine element—bread and body, wine and
blood—indistinguishably and inseparably joined together.
Second, at the Lord’s Table, we communicants come together with the Lord Jesus
himself. Here he is truly present with us as he is nowhere else—with his true
body and blood, to give to each communicant his gifts of forgiveness, life, and
salvation.
But there’s a third coming together too. The apostle Paul referred to it when he
wrote, “Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all
partake of the one loaf” (1 Corinthians). Communicants at the Lord’s Supper are not only
united with their Lord; they are united with one another into one body, his
church. Men and women, young and old, rich and poor—at the table of the Lord,
believers of every size, shape, personality, and background blend together in
one harmonious whole. There is one Lord who has one body, which is exactly the
same for every communicant who receives it. That means that what unites us
together at the Lord’s Table is vastly more profound than the differences that
set us apart.
It also means that when I partake of Holy Communion,
I am not simply
enjoying a private moment alone with my Lord. This helps us understand why the
beliefs of each communicant are not simply a private matter that’s between the
individual and God.
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