
Heritage Fellowship Church
Join us for Heritage Fellowship Church's Podcast of our Sunday morning teaching.
Heritage Fellowship Church
Spiritual Formation: Hospitality - 7
Dr. Casey Moss -- This week, Dr. Casey shares part two of his enlightening three-part miniseries on Communion. Join us as he thoughtfully explores these vital questions: What is the role of the meal in Communion? Is Communion a deeply personal experience or a powerful corporate one? Should Communion be a somber reflection or a joyful celebration?
Welcome to Heritage Fellowship's Sermon of the Week. We hope you're encouraged and challenged as we study the Word of God together.
Well, welcome. We are two weeks from Easter. That's super exciting.
So yeah, it's kind of a big deal. So we're looking forward to that. What also just by way of things I meant to say earlier, we have not forgotten first fruits.
That's still a matter of prayer amongst the elder team. So for those of you wondering and just wanting to know what's happening, we find ourselves among you. We are praying and wondering and are waiting to see what's happening there as well.
So we are, okay, give me two seconds. If you can't get it to pull up, that's fine. We'll just wing it.
That's no big deal. We are continuing. This is the part two of three of our series on, or series within a series within, I don't know, I've sort of lost track.
But we're talking about communion. And we had a clever little subtitle, A Matter of Life and Death, part two of three. If you did not hear last week, I would encourage you to do that.
I will do my level best to not reteach all of that. There are two points I would just bring out, because I think it's really important that we are all on that same page. Number one, our attitude of humility and honor is absolutely essential as we talk about communion, as we talk about the Lord's Supper, an acknowledgement that we, as brothers and sisters, we experience, we have different thoughts, we have different views, and it's important to allow the reality of who Jesus is and how he's called us to interact with one another, to take precedence over our own particular thoughts or opinions in a matter.
So humility is absolutely essential, and we said this, that our goal here is not trying to define the right way for communion to be done in every church, everywhere. We are just asking the Lord to increase our understanding, our appreciation of what communion looks like, so that we in this body, in this local expression of the body of Christ, can more fully experience the reality of communion. And we see this coming in the midst of our conversations about hospitality.
We see Jesus as the ultimate example of hospitality and an invitation to the Lord's Table to partake in the communion, to partake in the Last Supper, to remember those things, is a tremendous opportunity that we have to again both be the host and the guest at Jesus' Table. And so this flows very well out of our conversations and sort of capstones our conversations about hospitality and leads us directly in two weeks from now into our celebration together of Easter. So, that's where we've been.
Now, before we can continue that, I do want to go and talk a little bit about food. I know it's a dangerous thing to do on a Sunday morning, as we're looking at the clock, wondering when we have lunch with a bake sale just waiting through those doors for us. But this is really just on purpose so that we're extra hungry when we go out of these doors.
But here's the thing. I want to back up and look at food in general and Table Fellowship more specifically. And before we continue to talk about communion, let's do that.
Why, you ask? Thank you for asking. Because God created us as human beings.
We don't just have a body. We also are a body. And I think that there's a lack of understanding of the complexity of who we are, and we try to segregate out, well, there's the, I'm a spirit, and I'm just having this bodily experience.
And I just want to say that God created us as human beings. We could have just been spirits floating around, but He gave us a body. And I think we get into trouble when we try to somehow put our, the physical aspect of our bodies, somehow separate that out from our spirituality.
But they're linked. And if you have a hard time thinking about that being linked, imagine when you are sick and tired, no, like literally sick and tired. And then ask yourself, how does that impact your ability to pray for others, your ability to participate in other spiritual disciplines?
They are linked, and that is, though sometimes extremely annoying, apparently it was on purpose, because that's the way God created us. And so God chose to institute communion as part of a table fellowship, table sharing meal, and He used bread and wine. He could have done that differently.
But there's something about food that's spiritual. And some of you are like, yeah, finally this guy's learning to preach. Meals are important.
Table fellowship is important. So I'll just say this, eating is important. Food matters.
We quoted Dolly Parton last week. We'll follow that up by quoting Aladdin. Apparently, you have to eat to live.
You do. You have to eat or you will die. Plants, interestingly enough, make their own food.
It's called photosynthesis. They draw the power of the sun. But we aren't that way.
We do not make our own food. We have to eat to live. And this is interesting.
For us to eat, for that to happen, something must die. Did you ever think about that? In order for you to eat to live, if something else has to die, be that a plant or an animal, something else dies so that I can live.
And I just think that's a fascinating reminder of the fragility of mankind, that my dependence on living is dependent on something else beyond me. Your life depends on something outside of you. Should be a fascinating reminder.
Next time you eat, just think, something had to die for me to live. And I think if you think of every meal of every supper, reminding you of that, perhaps it would change the way that you live, and that you would be a little less full of yourself, and a little less fiercely independent, when you realize at the core of it all, since you are not photosynthetic, you would not be able to survive without something else. And then maybe perhaps that you would see the Last Supper then as the ultimate and supreme example of this, an eternal working out of this reality.
That something, someone, in the literal physical sense, something has to die for you to live, but in an eternal perspective, someone had to die for you to live. And we see this in the Lord's Supper represented so beautifully that in a meal where people were gathered around a table, eating, fellowshiping, experiencing the hospitality of Jesus and one another, at the same time, it was a representation of a broken body and spilled blood, the death of the one whose death was required so that we would all live.
And it's not just food that matters. It's meals that matter. More specifically, it's meals eaten with other people.
In the same way that our physical lives require food, our relational lives require meals together, what we've been calling table fellowship. This is where we see our bodies and our relationships nourished and allowed to grow and flourish. So just like food's a big deal, table fellowship is a big deal.
It certainly was in the culture of the Bible, and it continues to be so in our culture today.
So maybe we should think about it this way. Who you eat with matters. Who you eat with matters.
Just ask anyone who's ever walked into a middle school or high school, public school cafeteria. Anybody. I know it's kind of a weird question in this place.
Like, cafeteria? You mean the kitchen? My kids are home schooled.
It's fine. They think the cafeteria's when I come home and cook lunch for them. That's fine.
But there is a place, a gigantic room, where hundreds of kids go to eat together. That's a cafeteria. School children who aren't home schooled or in private school do that throughout this country, just in case you wondered, that does exist.
But fascinating sociologic experiment, just to see where you go. I still remember that in our cafeteria, in our situation, I went to school. I really remember, honestly, through like fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grade, it went through eighth grade, I remember where I sat.
I sat with the cool kids. Whether it's reality or not, I guess doesn't matter, but I felt of myself. I either was a cool kid or I thought of myself as a cool kid.
And do you know what defined us as cool kids? We brought our lunch. And we all sat together because when we all went into the cafeteria to eat, because that's what you did in the cafeteria, those of us who brought our lunch got to sit down first.
So we got to sit at the head of the table where we wanted to sit. And we all sat together while everyone else was forced to eat whatever that was. And so, and then we talked about what we had made for our lunch and what we were going to bring the next day, and we traded in homemade desserts.
Nobody's trying to trade that other stuff. So we all sat together. We got to eat where we wanted to eat, what we wanted to eat, and we were cool.
At least we thought we were cool. And the interesting thing about this sociologic experiment didn't matter whether you were cool or not. It's not like you had a card and you got like credits on it.
We thought we were cool, so we were. So many of you in this room, what matters, what has experientially mattered to you? Who you are or who you believe yourself to be.
Because I'm looking at a room full of sons and daughters of the king. But if you don't realize that you're a son and daughter of the king, you're going to act like what you think you are, not who you are. We all thought we were cool because we brought our lunch, so guess what?
We were. Who you eat with matters.
You know, it still matters. Some people say you are what you eat. I would just say you are who you eat with.
And that extends beyond high school to this very day. And it's a certain version of that reality that at least in part was responsible for both the effectiveness and the controversy of Jesus' ministry on earth. We've talked about that a lot over the last several weeks and months, about what the hospitality of Jesus looked like to people who should not have been invited to a rabbi's table.
But Jesus was no ordinary rabbi. So people were invited to his table because he knew who they were, not who everybody else thought they were. And he realized it didn't matter that they couldn't make their own lunch.
It mattered who his dad said they were. So he invited them to his table. Got him in big trouble.
He didn't care. He's cared more about who they were than what other people thought about who they were. Who you eat with matters.
See, I'm framing this context. We have to see the Last Supper in a greater totality of Jesus' ministry, and not just like, hey, let's have a big meal before I go up to be with my dad. And let's just institute this thing called communion with, so I got some bread and wine.
It's so much more than that, because it exists in a greater context of not just the culture of the day, not just in the reality of what it means to be human, but in the totality of Jesus' ministry on earth. This, it was all leading up in some respects to these moments where we were all invited to the table to partake in the one who would have to die so that we could live. And it was very much human beings having a human bodily experience and a spiritual experience.
All at the same time, there's this cohesiveness of everything just coalescing all at once in this moment.
See, meals have been used to unite us and divide us for as long as people have been eating. It wasn't just instituted in that day. There's a quote, so it's from this book.
This is a new guy, the little book on the right. This is Skye Jathony. He's written a lot of different books.
What if Jesus was serious about the church? As I've referenced that several times, so we'll put that up in our resource list. You've got that.
But he says, this meals are a universal human activity in the primary way every cultural creates bonds and constructs identity. We laugh about it at middle school, but it's a matter of life and death when we think about the meal around that table.
In previous cultures, the deals were done. The deal was sealed over a meal. I didn't mean for that to rhyme.
It's interesting, we have lawyers and paperwork and contracts and e-sign and all of that now. But if you talk to people in the business world, that may be where the legality of the deal is done, but deals are still done around the table. There's just something about table fellowship, eating together.
Food, shared food, table fellowship, still holds such a key role in our culture. A few quick examples. Birthday parties.
We eat. We gather together after a funeral. We eat.
We celebrate birth and death by sharing a meal. Weddings, times of sickness, we eat. We eat to celebrate.
We eat to console. We eat to live, and we live by eating. And it's at its best when it's around the table with other people.
I'm saying all of that to continue the introduction, but more to fill in all of the edges to make a more vibrant picture when we talk about communion of what's going on. Another way that you can understand the significance of food and of the shared table, just look back at the beginning. I don't think it's any coincidence that sin entered humanity the way it did.
Eve was offered something to eat. Food continues to be such a tremendous problem. We have those who would struggle with obesity and gluttony.
At the same time, we have those who struggle with food insecurity and starvation. We have eating disordered and disordered eating rampant throughout this world. We see food as both a problem and a solution at the same time.
And our relationship as human beings with food is as tenuous as our relationships can be with one another. And yet, with all of this, the power of the shared meal, the power of table fellowship persists. And that's exactly the environment that we find ourselves in.
Back at Luke chapter 22, it was Passover in Jerusalem. And we find ourselves with Jesus and the 12 disciples around the table, celebrating the Seder meal, one of the significant meals of the portion of Passover, celebrating God's faithfulness in rescuing the children of Israel out of Egyptian slavery, something that had been done for generation after generation after generation. It was a celebratory season.
And it was a celebratory week of Passover. And they find themselves at one of the culminating moments around a table sharing a meal.
Luke chapter 22, verses 7 and 8. I'll get into verse 14. Then came the day of unleavened bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed.
Jesus sent Peter and John saying, go and make preparations to eat the Passover. Verse 14, when the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined around the table. They gathered at the table.
And he said to them, I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God. After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, take this and divide it among you.
For I tell you, I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. And he took bread, gave thanks, and broke it, and he gave it to them, saying, this is my body, given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.
In the same way, after supper, he took the cup, saying, this cup is the new covenant in blood, in my blood, which is poured out for you. And we see this very similar story recounted in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark as well. It would be, and this is biblically where we see communion instituted, if you would.
This was the first communion as part of that Passover meal. And so one of the things that we have been doing...
Just a second. One of the things that we have been doing is just asking a few questions.
If you would pull up this week's keynote, I think I've ran out of the ones from last week. I texted that in this morning. If you've got it, that's great.
If you don't, that's totally fine, too. Because questions we asked last week, we asked who can serve or minister or offer Communion. So that was last week.
This week's questions will begin with this. What is the role of the meal in Communion? What's the role of the meal in Communion?
Said another way, is the Lord's Supper meant to be a full meal or a tiny little snack? The Lord's Supper was instituted by Jesus during the celebration of Passover, as I just read. It occurred during and as part of the larger meal with His disciples around the table.
I would just say this. We need to realize that the entire meal itself was extremely symbolic, just full of symbolism, the entire meal, as a reminder of God's grace and God's miraculous power.
Rich and deep in symbolism. We will talk about that some. Oh, you will see.
Let me go back. We don't want to go on all the questions. All right.
That's where we are. So the question goes something like this. Should communion be a full meal, or is the bread and the cup all that communion meets?
And I will tell you, there is a significant amount of controversy, as we alluded to last week, about questions such as this. To me, this is where I would land. This is where I would think for our church family to consider, for us to land would be this.
I believe that communion was originally started in the context of a relationally connected, celebratory, and symbolic meal where life together was being lived around a table, where the hospitality of Jesus was on full display. So I believe that there is an element of communion that can still best and perhaps only be understood and experienced in that way. So I'm going to say that again.
I believe that there is an element of communion that can best and perhaps only be understood or experienced in the context of the full meal. Am I saying that's the only way to do it? No, I'm just saying there's an aspect of communion.
Jesus put it into place in the context of a full meal, and I believe there's something to that that we should honor and take into consideration as we celebrate communion as well. So, logistically, that's a bit difficult. I did consider asking the elder team to say, could we just take all the chairs out, and y'all just come in, and we just have a huge meal?
Logistically, a bit difficult, but instead, you get three weeks of teaching, so, you know, and a bake sale. But there's two basic ways to do this, because it is logistically difficult to celebrate communion with all of us. Around the table.
That's a very big table. Not saying it's impossible, not saying we won't try it sometime, but just not today. So, how do we share that kind of meal?
How do we experience that life around the table, focused on one another and focused on God, giving thanks and celebrating, and let the breaking of bread and the sharing of the cup flow out of that greater understanding of life around the table, for the hospitality of Jesus to come from us and to us and through us, toward one another. How do we allow that, both in and through and toward everyone, that hospitality, that life around the table, and to see communion experienced in that more full perspective. How do you do that?
Where does that happen? I would simply say this. Most of us have a table in our home with seats around it.
Around the table of your home, and perhaps best with other people, maybe a group that met in your home, not a group home, not a home group. Maybe your home group would be an excellent way to experience that more full reality of communion. And at the same time, we can continue with the little cup and the little piece of bread, but I would just encourage us to see that, and we'll talk more next week, but to see that as a symbol of a symbol of a symbol.
What does that mean? Because even when we gather in our homes around the table, and we experience communion as close as we can to what Jesus, even experiencing that is full of symbolism. That is just the symbolism of something yet to come, but yet something that is celebrating something that was.
The communion table is a time machine. We'll talk about that next week, too. It's amazing what happens.
So there's something symbolic and real that is happening at the same time, when we gather on that table, but it is symbolic of something even greater that is happening. In the same way, when we are together with our cup and cracker, we are symbolizing this meal that is symbolizing this even greater thing. And that's perfectly acceptable as well.
We're not minimizing it when we do it in that way, provided that we have what I'm hoping to be an ever-increasing and expanding appreciation for the depth of what happens more than these two little things. Okay, that's good. We did that next quarter.
Do it again. It will be nothing regardless of how big the people is if we don't understand more of what's happening, the background of what's going on. So, I think that, think about it in this way.
Jesus said when we read this in the Bible, do this in remembrance of me. The question just is, what is the this? Do we see the this as simply the bread in the cup, or do we see, to do this?
The life around the table, the community, the love, the sacrifice, the hospitality, all of this. I just think he said it in that place. We could say, when you do this, not just this, but when you do this, you do it in remembrance of him.
And what does remembrance of him mean? That's next week as well. It's a busy week next week. Come early.
But when we begin to think about communion as a full meal around a table with other followers, it brings up a couple of other questions. Let's go through those. We will talk about a few things.
Number three on the list. Is communion a personal or a corporate experience?
For most of my life, I have seen and practiced communion, even when done with other people, as just a personal intimate. This is just, this is me and Jesus. It would be a very awkward dinner if the 12 people around the table ate their dinner and experience, like...
But I do that. I don't know about you. Maybe you don't.
But I've always thought about the Lord's table as a very, like, this is just me and him. And I will say this, yes, there is an element of that. You know where communion comes from, where that word comes from?
It's found in 1 Corinthians 10, 16. The NIV parses it out this way. It's not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks, a participation in the blood of Christ.
And it's not the bread we break, a participation in the body of Christ. But there's, I think, a bit more full or nuanced understanding of that word. We'll read, the American Standard Version says this.
The cup of blessing which we bless is not a communion of the blood of Christ. Is the bread which we break, is that not a communion in the body of Christ? It's that Latin word.
So you go back originally, that's the word koinonia. And it's translated in the Latin to communion, where we get communion. But it's, that word itself is this.
It is mutual participation. It's the Greek word koinonia, and it means so much more than just this me taking. There is an expanded appreciation for that.
This idea of mutual sharing, we use the word communion, but it really emphasizes not just the Lord's Supper uniting me and Jesus, but it also goes horizontally to me and other people. So the answer to the question, is communion a personal or corporate experience, is yes, it is. Both a personal and a corporate experience.
It can be done. I believe you could have communion just by yourself. I believe if you are in a room full of people, you could have communion.
It doesn't matter the number of people that are there. What matters is your understanding of what's happening. And it is about you and Jesus.
But I think by now, we've all learned that my life about me and Jesus is about all y'all as well. And that not just communion is a me and Jesus thing, and a me and everybody else thing, but my life as a follower is not just about me. God will use me to just bless so many of you.
And God will use me to challenge so many of you. God will use me to annoy a few of you. We're doing life together.
And so I think to see communion as an expression of the greater reality of what it means to be a follower, again, gives us that ability to sit at the communion table and go, oh Jesus, this is just me and you. Thank you that everyone else is invited to. Jesus, this is about everyone else.
Thank you that I can only be in community because I am in this with you. It is a both-and situation. You see that actually in Luke 22, 19 and 20.
We'll read, he said, took the bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, this is my body given for you. That plural, that word you is plural. So if we were, we don't have that, we'd have to read, given for you guys, like it's for y'all.
We have that in the south, y'all. That's what he said, this is my body given for y'all. Otherwise, like you, oh, it's just me, no, it's y'all.
Same with the cup, it's given for the plural you. He's at the table going, this is for all of you. Communion is best understood in a both-and, both an individual and a corporate context.
One more question for today. Is communion supposed to be somber and serious?
Interesting question. There certainly, I would say, is a quiet, somber personal element, as well as a community, corporate celebratory element of communion. It's an interesting thing.
If you remember last week, we talked about two sides of a coin or truth and tension, and it's interesting in our culture in America, in sort of our version of the way we, for lack of a better phrase, do church, which is a terrible thing because we are the church. I think whenever we do church, we're already missing it. But most places, Christianity's problem, if you would, is not that we are, I want to say this.
If we were going to miss it, we can become overly familiar with things, and we can decide, because we want to say, well, you know, Jesus is the friend that sticks closer to their brother. Jesus is with me all the time. Jesus is the man.
And there is this familiarity with Jesus, but yet, if we get too far on that, we forget the reality that he's also the son of God and the king of kings, and was there when everything was created. And so there's a place of honoring that, and esteeming that, and holding it as holy, which just means other than. At the same time, if we exalt Jesus so far away, we forget that he's very up close and personal.
And so it's the two sides of the coin, it's the truth and tension. At the same time, he is the king of kings and the Lord of lords, and he created everything, and yet he knows everything about me. It's a very intimate personal relationship I have with him, and it's just like he really can be your best friend, but don't forget he's also the king of the universe.
And somehow we are going to get way off base if we over focus on one of those, and we can put Jesus so far away that we forget how close he is, but sometimes we want to bring him down to earth so much that we forget that he's from heaven. Do you hear what I'm saying? So communion can be the same way.
We can do these things, in such a way that we hold it with such reverence that we forget this is really a moment of celebration, but yet at the same time, if we're not honoring it for the reality and the totality of it, then we can cheapen our understanding and not realize this is literally the king of the world. Your Lord and Savior has instituted this as a practice in remembering him and his life and what he did. And if we somehow just make it so comfortable and so familiar, then we miss out on that reality too.
And so, in our church, the way we do church, we, I think, have to be careful that we don't allow these two things to become an opposition to one another, but we allow them to be completions to one another so that we can focus on the truth, not the tension. Do you hear what I'm saying? So it's a truth and tension, but we don't pull against each other.
We push into each other to find the fullness of that. Now, that's a lot. You're like, wait, I think you might be talking about a little bit more of the communion.
Yes, I am. It's about everything we do. It's about everything we do because we are doing it in a way that both honors and elevates who Christ is, but yet at the same time, he's very close and very personal.
And so I will ask you this question then. Have you ever participated in the Eucharist? And some of you are like, no, man, Protestant Reformation, we don't do the Eucharist.
We do communion. I don't even know what the Eucharist is, but we don't do it. Sounds too high.
It's a high church. We don't have those things. It's not us.
There's no stained glass here. Some stained walls, we're gonna paint those, no stained glass. We're not doing that.
1 Corinthians, chapter 11, verse 23, Paul says, for I received from the Lord what I passed on to you. The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, he took the bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you, do this in remembrance of me. Speak Greek for a moment, and when he Eucharistiae.
The Eucharist simply means to give thanks. So if you have ever taken communion with any degree of thanksgiving in your heart, you have done the Eucharist.
Some of you, that's like, wow, that's very interesting. Some of you are still confused why I'm talking about some of these things. That's fine.
But why I'm talking about it is, in a way, the Lord's Supper, for the fullness of understanding, we have to talk a moment about the element that it should be like Thanksgiving dinner. And I don't know about your house, but at our house, the table is getting longer. But we don't just sit there and say, thank you for the turkey.
It's your turn to talk. You can't get a word in edgewise. There's like literally 12 conversations happen at the same time.
My wife, God bless her heart, is involved with four of them very well. I can't keep track of anything, and she's talking to everybody at one time. I say something, she's, no, no, no, it was the, how you do that, I have no idea.
But it is full on excited celebratory mode. It is, but at the same time, there comes a moment where we all get quiet. We go around the table one at a time, and that person is the center stage.
We say, what are you most thankful for in this moment? Then we had to change that because it puts pressure on somebody most thankful, and they feel like, what is something that comes to your mind on the top 10% of your Thanksgiving list? That way, they don't feel like it.
Otherwise, 20 minutes, well, thankful. There's this very somber moment, yes. But the whole dinner would be weird if it were that, but it would also be weird if it wasn't, including that.
And so when we, Jesus broke the bread, and he gave thanks, there's a thanksgiving element to communion. And there's, honestly, I mean, let's just think about this. We'll talk again more next week.
I got a lot of work to do this week. But part of what we're remembering, I mean, had the disciples more fully understood what was happening, they probably would have been even more bummed out about that. But had they really fully, fully understood, then they would be able to celebrate.
But you get the benefit of hindsight. You see what's happening in this moment. Like, this is Jesus talking about his broken body and his shed blood, which would be very disconcerting, except you know what happened, but you know what happened after what happened.
Do you hear what I'm saying? And so, there should be, when you come up to take communion, and you're remembering, holy, like, this is holy. Oh my.
Jesus died and rose again, and he said, do this, there should be something in you that is so blasted excited about it, and so thankful about it, and at the same time, it's like, so quiet. And so on Easter, I have no idea what's gonna happen. Spoiler alert, we're gonna take communion together some way somehow in two weeks.
And I don't know because I kind of want us all to like just kneel in our seat, and there'd be complete silence everywhere. That is so holy and so sacred, and we have so deepened our appreciation that it's so much more than a brick, this little styrofoam thing that we've done, so much more than that, that we can't even speak. You can't, like, it's just.
But then I would love for like the, I don't even know who it was. I didn't see his face. Like, time to go to class.
Like, it's time for communion. Like, excuse me, pardon me coming through. There's like a rush.
I cannot wait to celebrate what Christ has done. I can't wait to give thanks. No, you know what? You first. No, you first. It should be so exciting.
It's like chaos and pandemonium to get to that table and celebrate with thanksgiving what Christ has done for us. And I don't know how we're going to sit really quiet and not move and plow over each other at the same time, except to say that's what's happening when we're around the Lord's table taking communion. It's so much bigger than just this little moment. It's an eternal moment.
Seeing the table as a symbol of victory, not just death, and taking the bread and cup as an act of gratitude, not merely one of memorial, can carry such unexpected power for believers. Do you stand with me?
So your homework, if you would, we talked about taking communion last week. I would encourage you, your home group, with your family, somebody around your table, you could do it at Olive Garden, I don't care.
Just take it out for a test drive. Do what you think of as communion in the context of a full meal, and just see what happens. Have Thanksgiving to your dinner this week.
Thanks for listening to this week's podcast. Please join us online at heritagefellowship.us, or in person in Jefferson City, Tennessee, as we encounter God, touch lives, and impact nations.