Bence, Barry

English

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The appointment: a communion sermon

Wilfrid Laurier University

ConsensusVolume 14Issue 1 Essays: Historical and Theological Article 105-1-1988The appointment: a communion sermonBarry BenceFollow this and additional works at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensusThis Sermons is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Consensus by anauthorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.Recommended CitationBence, Barry (1988) "The appointment: a communion sermon," Consensus: Vol. 14 : Iss. 1 , Article 10.Available at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol14/iss1/10The Appointment:A Communion SermonBarry BencePastor, Lutheran Church of the Cross,Lac du Bonnet, ManitobaText: 1 Corinthians 11:26I want us to think about something St. Paul wrote to hisfriends who were having a bit of trouble knowing how to behaveat communion services. Paul wrote:Whenever you share this bread and drink from this cup you boldlyproclaim that the Lord died (for you), until that day when you comeinto his presence (my translation).I want to talk a bit this morning about that appoint-ment you and I have with our Lord, the day after ourbread-and-wine-communion with him ends and our face-to-face-communion with him begins.But first, I want to ask you a question. When you thinkabout pastors, what one book do they all have which:tells them what to do each day,which runs their life hour after hour,and without which they couldn’t be pastors at all?Well—if you answered “The Bible” are you ever gloriouslywrong! Fact is, far too many pastors go days at a time withoutever cracking open their Good Book for directions and for con-nections. But one book we cannot get through the day withoutis our DAILY APPOINTMENT BOOK, that red-covered cal-endar which tells me where I’m supposed to be and who I haveto see and what I have to do. You never see pastors get to-gether at a meeting without at some time reaching into theirpockets and getting out their little appointment books to see“when there’s a free day”.Well, a lot of us are busy writing down meetings and ap-pointments on calendars and in little books, but no matter how110 Consensusbusy we get or how stacked up our schedules become, each oneof us has an appointment we will keep whether or not we es-pecially want to; and the hairy thing is, not one of us knowswhere we will be or when it will come—only with whom!Of course. I’m talking about our Super-Appointment withGod. The Scriptures tell us, and Billy Graham is ever so fondof reminding us that they tell us, “It is appointed unto eachman to die, and then, the judgment.” Jesus, in his great para-ble of the final judgment (which I like to call the capital “B”Big, capital “A” Appointment) said that the whole world, ev-erybody and every nation that ever lived, owed God’s king anaccount of what we did with our life on this earth. A lot of peo-ple didn’t like what they heard about themselves, Jesus said,and a lot were surprized pleasantly, but everybody gets calledbefore the One who gave us a life on loan, a trust to workout for God’s greater glory, and everyone has an appointmentwith the Creator on a Day which no one but God knows. Myappointment with God is in God’s Book, and my Good Book,the Bible, tells me I would be a quadruple fool to forget thatAppointment, even for a minute.Now let me talk a bit about how we keep our appointments.Some we dread. Some years back I had a dental appointment.The dentist told me I would have to spend 45 minutes in thechair getting drilled—and this time without novocaine! Ofcourse, you can imagine my feelings every time I looked at thechart and saw D-Day getting closer. Finally the morning ofthe big Drill came, and folks, you who know me know I ama coward when it comes to pain. Forty-five minutes of painis no way to spend the day, so I cheated a bit. If the dentistwouldn’t give me some chemicals I’d pop a few of my own Ihad left over from before. Well, two 292s and 45 minutes ofNitrous Oxide later and I didn’t want to leave. I was feeling soloose and lively and laid-back I had him pull a wisdom tooth toboot. Of course I floated out of the office at a 30 degree angleand wound up walking home across lawns and through hedges,but I had an appointment which I dreaded, so I drowned it outwith some chemicals called drugs.Now of course we need to notice something. The biggestdrug pusher in Manitoba is—guess who—the Manitoba gov-ernment! It sells so much brain-haze called booze that wealmost forget that the same bunch we pay taxes to is also theThe Appointment 111biggest dispenser of drugs. That’s right, our friendly bunch inWinnipeg pays for more mood-altering drugs than anyone else,probably even more than the Mafia!In ancient Rome the government gave the bored bread andcircuses. Our day goes it a bit more with booze and prescrip-tion pills, but the outcome is the same, for government is asort of super-person, and as a group, we demand to dull ourheads to get us through life, seemingly believing that we canpush out of our thoughts that big appointment ahead whenGod holds up a mirror to us and says, “My child, this is whatyou did with your life!” And then, right away, when we lookinto God’s eyes, we have to compare it with what God did:out of loye, God died for us to bring us back to that abundantLife we were meant to submerge ourselves in just as a walleyeswims in our Winnipeg River!Well, not only do we sometimes haze out our coming ap-pointment with God, but sometimes, in fact, we positivelydread it! Back in the last Ice Age when I was a young man justout of college I found myself teaching high school in Ephrata,Pennsylvania. Now this was the very same high school I hadattended just a few years before. Can you believe it, over theP.A. system the principal’s voice said, “Mr. Bence, report tothe office immediately!”I nearly fainted! Michael Jackson never moved his kneeslike mine went as I wobbled my way to Judgment and De-struction, and yes—that hallway was just like that hit tune ofthe day, “We’re on the Road to Destruction”. Or so I thought.Actually, he wanted to offer me a job!But I had grown up in a day when a summons to the princi-pal’s office meant that you had better get your affairs in order,for life as you had known it was over.Now the thing is, a lot of Christians still feel that JudgmentDay is like my feared death-march to the strap! Oh, we growup, and we hear a lot about grace, and we read about theparable of the prodigal son’s welcome home by the divinelyloving Dad who sat and waited, but when rubber hits the road,when the old Pastor starts in preaching seriously, guilt spreadslike Dutch Elm disease and soon everyone’s got it, and we allinside feel, “Heaven help me. I’m really a rat at heart, andGod, if he looks at me at all, would probably say, ‘Boy, am Iever disappointed in you’!”112 ConsensusI used to feel in my heart of hearts that it was totally im-possible to get some of my flock to quit coming to the Lord’sSupper as if they were on their way to Jesus’ funeral service.No wonder some old time congregations would only observecommunion every season: four times a year is about all theycould stand to bury their best friend! For make no mistakeabout it, guilt and sadness speak in muffled tones about ourunworthiness, but St. Paul told us to cry out to the world aboutsomething greater, about Jesus Christ and his love for sinners,a love greater than his own desire to keep on living, if he hadto live in heaven without us!That brings us to the third way I feel about appointments,the way I felt one Sunday evening in December of 1970. Therewas only one appointment in my book for that day—get toSaskatoon to the Seminary Chapel by 7:00 p.m. and marrythe most wonderful young woman in the world! I was stirredup when I got out of bed at dawn. I cut short my morninghymns and liturgies—yes, my beloved parish first made meconduct two services that Sunday morning! I drove like a batout of Arizona all the way to Saskatoon, not even stopping toput on my parka when I had to get gas. I got to the chapel,and my heart hit about 180 beats per minute when the brideof my youth came down the aisle on the arm of her Daddy. Ifmy best man hadn’t held me down I would have floated rightup to her for sure! And friends—praise God—I still feel thesame way seventeen years later!For there in my beautiful bride was something so rarethat it has become the most precious commodity on earth—commitment. Here was love that would never quit, never for-sake the other, that was a living testimony to that little con-gregation and to the whole world for that matter: “I am mybeloved’s, and my beloved is mine”—someone to count on andto be with until only Death could tear us apart!Yes, only Death can tear us apart for a season, a painfulwinter called grief and aloneness. But for us who are the Brideof Christ, not even Death can tear us from our Lord, and wesee in our graves nothing more scary than a doorway, the otherside of which has organ music belting out wedding music, as allof God’s children march in to a feast, where no tears mar themenu, and no pain dulls the appetite for life, where the SpiritThe Appointment 113himself becomes a tree for the healing of the nations, and whereour best Friend is there to welcome his family home!Friends, how are we thinking about our Appointment withGod right now? Is our communion meal nothing more than alittle sip of wine that usually we use to drown out our callingto live as children of God? Do we come to the table with adread inside that really, we don’t belong here at all? Or is thisa little appetizer of our greatest hope and delight, to see Jesusand to dwell with the Father forever?May the Bread of Life so multiply in us all, that already wecan really sing, “THIS IS THE FEAST OF VICTORY FOROUR GOD! ALLELUIA!” For already we have been won tolook forward to our God as does God’s Son! Amen.

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The appointment: a communion sermon

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