Lent Communion - February 22, 2023
Lent events today and past Easter!
Today is Ash Wednesday. You are invited to gather for a brief interactive time of sombre worship. We will consider our human frailty, admit we are broken, consider giving up something we value for a time, adding a discipline, and in the end have an ash smudge put on our foreheads. And then our Lenten season is underway.
Lent is a season that coincides well with the month of March: you know spring and Easter are coming but you still have to go through a tough period of waiting.
This year our focus for this time will be Communion. The first Sunday we will spend time thinking about preparation for communion. For the next seven services after that (including Good Friday and Easter) we will experience the Lord’s Supper together and consider different themes and aspects connected with it.
We begin this coming Sunday reflecting on the tradition of a Preparatory Sunday. You need to be of a certain age to remember this. I do remember it, but have never led one as a Pastor. When you are doing 7 weeks of communion, however, it is likely a good idea to do some preparatory work.
The rest of Lent we will look at themes of communion including our need for communion, the unity of the body, the bread and the cup, and the anticipation of the feast at the return of Christ. Good Friday and Easter have obvious connections with communion as the time when it starts and the reason it has power.
As we look at these themes, we will participate in communion in a way that helps us connect with the theme being considered. When we talk about unity and “one body” we will stand in very large circles in the worship space so we can see many other faces as we all eat the bread at the same time and drink the cup at the same time so that we experience our unity. When we focus on the bread and later on the cup, we will pass the elements along the rows and say to each other “the body of Christ for you” and “the blood of Christ shed for you.” On Palm Sunday, which happens to be when Friendship Ministry helps lead worship, we will focus on the wedding feast of the lamb and have communion around many tables in the foyer and fellowship hall, much like we do when we have a dinner or feast. And, yes, there will be coming forward to signify our acknowledgement of our need. There will also be communion how many would remember it best where we pass plates down the rows (Good Friday). The goal is to help us lean into the many themes of communion and recognize that how we do communion can be part of the message people take home through experience.
It would be good if you would have conversations along the way at home and in small groups about how the different themes and distribution methods affected you. Hopefully you can get past “I liked this” and “I didn’t like that”. I assume most of us will like what we are used to – that is only natural. This season is a time of intentionally experiencing something old in a new way to help us reflect and grow.
Finally, on April 12, the Wednesday evening after Easter, we will be hosting Jews for Jesus who will do a presentation of “Christ in the Passover”. This presentation does an outstanding job of helping us connect how in Jesus Passover is transformed into the Lord’s Supper.
May you be blessed as you enter the Lent journey together.
Pastor Erick Schuringa