Hugh Anderson - Communion Meditation (February 4, 1962)
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| Lecturer | In the name of God the Father, | 0:14 |
| God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, amen. | 0:16 | |
| For 1,500 years, I do not suppose there would be | 0:32 | |
| a single Orthodox Christian believer. | 0:36 | |
| Whoever dreamed that he should not participate | 0:40 | |
| in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper | 0:44 | |
| at least every Sunday. | 0:47 | |
| But by the 16th century, | 0:51 | |
| so great a fear of the sacrament had arisen | 0:55 | |
| in the hearts and minds of men | 0:59 | |
| that many came to the communion only to look on | 1:02 | |
| and did not participate themselves. | 1:06 | |
| But once in a year, or even once in two years. | 1:09 | |
| The reformers fortunately brought men back | 1:14 | |
| from that quite unworthy practice | 1:18 | |
| to the practice of semi-annual or quarterly communion. | 1:21 | |
| Now in recent times, | 1:28 | |
| there has been even in the Protestant churches, | 1:30 | |
| a quite distinctive trend back | 1:34 | |
| to the old Catholic regularity in the rhythm | 1:38 | |
| of the sacramental life. | 1:42 | |
| By the institution of the practice | 1:46 | |
| of at least monthly communion. | 1:49 | |
| In many of our churches that is so. | 1:52 | |
| In fact there are some Protestant ministers | 1:55 | |
| who would plead for the celebration | 1:57 | |
| of the Lord's Supper every Sunday. | 2:00 | |
| For example, Austin Farrer, | 2:03 | |
| that delightful Oxford Don and English high churchmen | 2:06 | |
| has said the month is a meaningless unit of time. | 2:10 | |
| Our lives do not beat with a monthly pulsation. | 2:17 | |
| Monthly communion cannot be the full expression | 2:22 | |
| of being in communion with God as weekly communion is. | 2:26 | |
| Well that's all very well and good, | 2:32 | |
| but there is another side to the matter. | 2:36 | |
| Is it not true that the most sacred right | 2:40 | |
| by its too frequent repetition or reiteration | 2:45 | |
| may be drained of its spiritual grandeur? | 2:50 | |
| Is it not true that these elements of bread and wine | 2:54 | |
| by their two frequent manifestation | 2:58 | |
| may lose their power of evocation? | 3:01 | |
| Their ability to dramatize vividly for us | 3:05 | |
| the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ. | 3:08 | |
| In the established church of Scotland, | 3:14 | |
| the longstanding tradition of the centuries | 3:17 | |
| has been to celebrate the communion only twice in the year. | 3:20 | |
| And I must say that our people come to the Lord's table | 3:26 | |
| as to a high and holy season, | 3:32 | |
| and gather round about it with solemn awe and reverence. | 3:36 | |
| And I presume that that is how you here | 3:42 | |
| in the Duke chapel have come this morning. | 3:45 | |
| In solemn awe and reverence. | 3:49 | |
| You are acutely aware that this is a very special occasion, | 3:53 | |
| that there is in fact a real difference | 3:58 | |
| between the verbum visibile, the seen Word, | 4:00 | |
| and the verbum audibile, the heard Word. | 4:05 | |
| In fact, this holy feast of bread and wine | 4:10 | |
| gathers up within itself | 4:15 | |
| the whole tremendous and fascinating mystery | 4:17 | |
| of Jesus the Christ. | 4:21 | |
| In the first instance, this bread and this wine | 4:23 | |
| memorialize the death of a man, | 4:29 | |
| Jesus of Nazareth, | 4:32 | |
| in quite particular historic circumstances | 4:34 | |
| in first century Palestine. | 4:38 | |
| We do this thing for a memorial of Him, | 4:43 | |
| who the same night in which he was betrayed, | 4:46 | |
| took bread and broke it, | 4:49 | |
| symbolizing his broken body. | 4:52 | |
| From the first the church has understood | 4:56 | |
| and preached this death as God's act of grace | 4:58 | |
| and pardon and redemption. | 5:02 | |
| Of course, there have been other noble and heroic deaths. | 5:06 | |
| The pages of history run red with the blood of the martyrs, | 5:11 | |
| but Jesus' death is singular and unique. | 5:16 | |
| For today in this feast, | 5:21 | |
| we do not only commemorate it. | 5:23 | |
| We celebrate it in the festival of the bread and wine, | 5:26 | |
| for we see in His death the defeat of death | 5:31 | |
| and the dawn of new life. | 5:35 | |
| Michelangelo once broke out in very indignant protest | 5:39 | |
| against his fellow artists because they were far too often | 5:43 | |
| as he saw it representing Jesus Christ | 5:47 | |
| in the likeness of death upon the cross. | 5:51 | |
| Paint him, instead, he cried the Lord of Life, | 5:55 | |
| paint him in his triumph with his Lordly feet | 5:59 | |
| set upon the stone which held Him in the grave. | 6:02 | |
| And the instinct of Michelangelo | 6:07 | |
| was perfectly sound theologically for in fact, | 6:09 | |
| this bread and this wine | 6:13 | |
| in which you shall partake today are primarily the tokens | 6:15 | |
| of his most real triumphant and regnant presence. | 6:20 | |
| In the sacrament, | 6:26 | |
| Jesus Christ is most particularly here. | 6:27 | |
| Bringing comfort to the deep places of our souls | 6:31 | |
| in a troubled age, | 6:35 | |
| or challenging us to look at our existence | 6:37 | |
| and you in His light, | 6:40 | |
| and perhaps to come | 6:42 | |
| to a new understanding of ourselves at last. | 6:43 | |
| The fact that this bread and wine bring us | 6:48 | |
| into closest touch with His living presence means simply | 6:52 | |
| that the sacrament authenticates for us the profound | 6:56 | |
| essential heart of Christianity. | 7:00 | |
| The mystery of an abiding presence. | 7:03 | |
| If you look back along the whole line of Christian history, | 7:07 | |
| you will see how central the consciousness | 7:10 | |
| of the living presence of Christ has been. | 7:13 | |
| Paul said long ago to me, to live, means Christ. | 7:16 | |
| Augustine said later, | 7:23 | |
| (speaking in foreign language) | 7:25 | |
| Lecturer | Jesus Christ cannot stay away | 7:30 |
| from us because He loves us so. | 7:32 | |
| Raymond Lowell said, "I looked at Him and He looked at me | 7:36 | |
| and we were bound together by chains unbreakable forever." | 7:42 | |
| As the old English poet put it, | 7:47 | |
| bright upon the grass I see bleeding feet of Calvary | 7:50 | |
| and I worship and I clasp them round | 7:56 | |
| on this bit of chalky English ground. | 7:59 | |
| Dr. John White, eminent Scottish churchman, | 8:04 | |
| said on the very night before he died | 8:08 | |
| in a talk on the radio in a series entitled | 8:10 | |
| "Why I Believe," he said, | 8:14 | |
| "I believe because I met a man." | 8:17 | |
| I believe because I met a man. | 8:23 | |
| In our own time as in every time, | 8:30 | |
| this abiding presence of a living Lord | 8:34 | |
| is most wonderfully vouched safe to us | 8:37 | |
| in the sacrament of His body and His blood. | 8:40 | |
| In cathedrals in the city, | 8:44 | |
| in little churches in the outlying valleys, | 8:48 | |
| in hospitals and homes, | 8:53 | |
| in battlefields, in the burning deserts, | 8:56 | |
| or on the cold mountain slopes. | 8:58 | |
| In the crisis of life and in the face of death, | 9:02 | |
| men have drawn near to the Lord's table | 9:06 | |
| and have experienced that other one in whose presence | 9:10 | |
| is such your peace as the world can never give | 9:14 | |
| and never take away. | 9:18 | |
| In the gospel according to Saint John, | 9:22 | |
| there is a very exciting episode recorded. | 9:24 | |
| The fame of Jesus of Nazareth had spread abroad | 9:29 | |
| and the Jewish feast of the Passover | 9:33 | |
| was drawing near in Jerusalem. | 9:35 | |
| And this time when the pilgrims gathered in the Holy City, | 9:37 | |
| there was a more than usually great excitement in the air. | 9:41 | |
| And they questioned among themselves saying, | 9:47 | |
| "Tell me do you think Jesus will come to keep the peace?" | 9:50 | |
| They need hardly have asked. | 9:56 | |
| For by an inexorable destiny | 10:00 | |
| and in obedience to a higher will, | 10:02 | |
| Jesus did most surely come. | 10:05 | |
| Even though it meant for Him traveling the Via Dolorosa, | 10:09 | |
| and enduring during the agony of the cross. | 10:13 | |
| And for an equal surety, | 10:18 | |
| this same Jesus comes again today to keep the peace with us | 10:21 | |
| his expectant people, | 10:26 | |
| dying and living, living and dying. | 10:30 | |
| He comes again with all his old, yet ever new power | 10:34 | |
| to heal and bless and renew | 10:39 | |
| such frail lives as ours. | 10:43 | |
| Ye gates lift up your heads on high, | 10:48 | |
| ye doors that last for aye. | 10:52 | |
| Be lifted up that saw the King of glory enter may. | 10:55 | |
| And now unto this King and the Lord of men's lives | 11:02 | |
| would we ascribe all honor and glory, | 11:07 | |
| majesty, dominion, and praise, | 11:09 | |
| world without end. | 11:12 | |
| Amen. | 11:15 |
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