Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Sign

by Dave Wilkinson

Matthew 18:19-20, Luke 22:14-19

January 7, 2001

Some people are really clueless -- like one lady who was very concerned because several deer had been hit by cars on the highway near her house. She had a simple way for the highway department to save the deer. Her answer? Move the "deer crossing next 1 mile" sign so the deer would find a safer place to cross.

Of course she missed the whole point of the sign. The deer don't follow the sign. The sign follows the deer.

There is a profound difference between a sign about something -- "there might be deer around here sometimes" -- and what a hunter would call deer sign -- hoof prints, droppings, sleeping places, places where antlers have been rubbed. A sign about deer suggests possibilities. Deer sign declares facts.

This morning we are sharing the Lord's Supper for the first time in this new year. The Lord's Supper is sometimes called the sign of Christ's presence.

But what does that actually mean? As we share the Lord's Supper, what do we expect? Is this table a sign about Jesus? Or is it a sign of Jesus? As we come to worship, is it, "Who knows? Jesus may even show up. He's been seen in the neighborhood from time to time" -- or is the Lord's Supper actually "Jesus sign" -- the demonstration that Jesus is here and Jesus is doing something?

What do you expect when you come to the Lord's Table? Do you expect Jesus to actually touch your life? Is this table a solid sign that Jesus is in our midst as He has promised to be that He is moving in our midst forming us into a community.

Have you come here today with the expectation of actually being met by Jesus? Have you prepared yourself with prayer?

In her book, An American Childhood, Annie Dillard writes about her experience with communion as a teenager at her home church in Pittsburgh. I think you could safely say that she came with very low expectations.

Dillard writes: "I had got religion at summer camp, and had prayed nightly there and in my bed at home, to God, asking for a grateful heart, and receiving one insofar as I requested it. Inasmuch as I despised everything and everyone about me, of course, it was taken away, and I was left with the blackened heart I had chosen instead.

"Nothing so inevitably blackened my heart as an obligatory Sunday at the Shadyside Presbyterian Church the minister's accent; the hypocrisy of my parents, who forced me to go, though they did not; the hypocrisy of the expensive men and women who did go. Every week I had been getting madder; now I was going to plain quit. One of these days, when I figured out how.

"After the responsive reading there was a pause, an expectant hush. It was the first Sunday of the month, I remembered, shocked. Today was Communion. I would have to sit through Communion, with its two species, embarrassment and tedium -- and I would be late getting out and Father would have to drive around the block a hundred times. I had successfully avoided Communion for years.

"The seated people would pass the grape-juice trays down the pews. After the grape juice came bread: flat silver platters bore heaps of soft bread cubes, as if for stuffing a turkey. The elders and ushers spread swiftly and silently over the marble aisles in discreet pairs, some for bread cubes, some for grape juice, communicating by eyebrow only. An unseen organist, behind stone screens, played a muted series of single notes, a restless, breathy strain in a minor key, to kill time.

"Soon the ushers reached the balcony where we sat. There our prayers had reached their intensest pitch -- so fervent were we in our hopes not to drop the grape juice tray.

"I passed up the Welch's grape juice, I passed up the cubed bread, and sat back against my coat. Was all this not absurd? I glanced at Linda beside me. Apparently it was not. Her hands lay folded in her lap. Both her father and her uncle were elders.

"It was not surprising, really, that I alone in this church knew what the barefoot Christ, if there had been such a person, would think about things -- grape juice, tailcoats, British vowels, sable stoles. After all, I was the intelligentsia around these parts, single-handedly. The intelligentsium. I knew why these people were in church: to display to each other their clothes. In church they made business connections; they saw and were seen. The boys, who, like me, were starting to come out for freedom and truth, must be having fits, now that the charade of Communion was in full swing.

"I stole a glance at the boys, then looked at them outright, for I had been wrong. The boys, if mine eyes did not deceive me, were praying.

"On the balcony's first row, to my right, big Dan had pressed his ruddy cheeks into his palms. Beside him, Jamie bent over his knees. Over one eye he had jammed a fist; his other eye was crinkled shut. Another boy, blond Robert, lay stretched over his arms, which clasped the balcony rail. His shoulders were tight; the back of his jacket rose and fell heavily with his breathing. It had been a long time since I'd been to Communion. When had this praying developed?

"Dan lowered his hands and leaned back slowly. He opened his eyes, unfocused to the high, empty air before him. Wild Jamie moved his arm; he picked up a fistful of hair from his forehead and held it. His eyes fretted tightly shut; his jaws worked. Robert's head still lay low on his outstretched sleeves; it moved once from side to side and back again. So they struggled on. I finally looked away.

"Below the balcony in the crowded nave, men and women were also concentrating. Were they perhaps pretending to pray? All heads were bent; no one moved. I began to doubt my own omniscience. If I bowed my head, too, and shut my eyes, would this be apostasy? No, I'd keep watching the people, in case I'd missed some clue that they were actually doing something else -- bidding bridge hands.

"For I knew these people, didn't I? I knew what they loved: their families, their houses, their country clubs, hard work, the people they knew best, and summer parties with old friends full of laughter. I knew what they hated: labor unions, laziness, spending, wildness, loudness. They didn't buy God. They didn't buy anything if they could help it. And they didn't work on spec.

"Nevertheless, a young father below me propped his bowed head on two fists stacked on a raised knee. The ushers and their trays had vanished. The people had taken Communion. No one moved. The organist hushed. All the people seemed scarcely to breathe.

"I was alert enough now to feel, despite myself, some faint, thin stream of spirit braiding forward from the pews. Its flawed and fragile rivulets pooled far beyond me at the altar. I felt, or saw, its frail strands rise to the wide tower ceiling, and mass in the gold mosaic's dome.

"There was no speech nor language. The people had been praying, praying to God, just as they seemed to be praying. That was the fact. I didn't know what to make of it."

"Dillard concludes: "I left Pittsburgh before I had a grain of sense. Who is my neighbor? I never learned what the strangers around me had known and felt all their lives -- those lithe, sarcastic boys in the balcony, those expensive men and women in the pews below -- but it was more than I knew, after all."

That was Annie Dillard's teenage experience. She grew from there.

What's your experience?

In communion I experience many things -- renewal, forgiveness, acceptance, resolve to do it better.

As your pastor I experience something more as I watch God's people come to receive the bread and the cup. For I know many of the stories. I know those who have overcome great pain and loss. I know those who are coming in hope. I know the child who is receiving the Lord's Supper for the first time. I know those who have come with forgiveness. I know those who are coming with newly discovered faith. Some come with present pain but with the confidence that God is faithful. All this is not just a sign about Jesus. It is Jesus' sign.

It is sign that Jesus is here. He has promised to be present when two or three are gathered in His name. This table isn't a sign that says that He's sometimes in the area. It's Jesus' sign -- the sign that Jesus is here, right now, walking up and down the aisles of this church, ready to touch your life.