We’re doing a sermon series on our Communion
liturgy, the words we say each time we prepare to take Holy Communion.
We’re doing this so that when we take Communion--which we’ll do again
next Sunday--that Communion liturgy will have more meaning for us. It
won’t just be words that we say automatically.
It’ll be a time that changes our lives.
Because that’s what taking Communion is supposed to do--it’s supposed to
change our lives. It’s supposed to be a time in which we truly feel God’s
grace entering into our hearts.
We took the first part of it last week: our need to
give thanks to God. So we’ll pick up
from where we left off last week. It should be on the screen. It goes “With your people on earth and all
the company of heaven, we praise your name and join their unending hymn:
Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,
heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the
Lord. Hosanna in the highest.
“Holy are you, and blessed is your Son Jesus
Christ.”
So, having given thanks to God,
we acknowledge who God is. We acknowledge the power and might of God, but
most of all we acknowledge the holiness of God. God is holy.
That’s a word we use a lot, of
course. We talk about the holiness of God. And we’d probably all agree that God is holy.
But what is it that we’re actually saying when we say that? Do we know?
Probably some of us do, but I suspect some of us don’t. What does
it mean to say that God is holy?
Here’s what it means. To
say something is holy means that it is “exalted or worthy of complete devotion
as one perfect in goodness and righteousness”. That’s what we’re saying
when we call God holy. We’re saying that
God is perfect. God is perfectly
good. God is perfectly righteous.
God is perfectly sinless. And as
such, God is worthy of our complete devotion.
God is worthy of our complete loyalty and dedication.
Now, I think that most of us,
maybe all of us, would agree with all that. We’d agree that God is
perfectly good, perfectly righteous, and perfectly sinless. We’d agree
that God is worthy of our complete devotion, loyalty, and dedication.
So, if we agree on that, here’s
the tricky part. How many of us live our lives that way? How many of give God our complete and total
loyalty and dedication?
Yeah, me neither. Now,
I’m not saying none of us do. I know there are people here who are very
faithful to God. If you can look at your life and honestly say that you
give God your complete and total loyalty and dedication, that’s awesome.
I salute you, I really do. In
fact, I’d like to talk to you after church so you can tell me how you do it.
Because I don’t. I’m not
proud of that. I’m just being honest.
I try. But I don’t think I can say that I really succeed. My
life is dedicated to God, to a certain extent.
But I don’t think I can honestly say that I give God my complete and
total loyalty and dedication. And I don’t think I’m the only one who has
trouble with that.
Now, it’s fair to recognize
that this is a pretty tough standard. Complete and total loyalty and
dedication to God--devoting one hundred percent of our lives to God--is not
easy. So I want to make clear that I’m not saying that’s the standard to
get into heaven. I don’t think the Bible
supports that. We are saved, and we go to heaven, by faith in Jesus
Christ as the Savior. And we also are
saved because of God’s incredible love and grace and mercy. We are not
saved because of how great and perfect we are.
I’m not saying that at all.
But still, when we read our
Communion liturgy, we say that God is holy. We say that God deserves that
complete loyalty and dedication from us.
So, how can give that to God? Or at least, how can we move toward
giving it?
Well, I think in broad terms
there are two ways we can go with this. One of them is to focus on the
things that keep us from giving God our complete loyalty and dedication.
We can look at all our distractions, all the things that get in our way,
all the things that keep us from dedicating ourselves to God the way we should,
and just completely and totally get rid of all those things.
There’s nothing wrong with
doing that, if that’s what you choose to do. And there are times when we
need to do that. There are times when we
engage in harmful or even destructive behaviors. There are times when,
quite frankly, you and I need to clean up our act. We need to recognize when those times come
and step up and do something about it when they do.
But the thing about that is
that it’s kind of a negative approach. It’s an approach that tries to get
to God by eliminating the things that are getting in our way. That may be
a good thing to do, but it’s not enough.
If there’s a barrier between me and where I want to go, just getting rid
of the barrier will not get me there. It’ll help. It’ll clear the path. But I still have to travel along the
path. I still have to take positive
steps, positive action, to actually get to where I’m going.
The way we do that is to focus
on love. Love of God and love of each other. What Jesus referred to as the two greatest
commandments. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all
your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” “Love your
neighbor as yourself.” That’s what will
get us down the path. The main thing God
wants us to do is love. So if we focus
on that, we’ll be going a long way toward giving God the complete and total
loyalty and dedication we’ve said God deserves.
But here’s the thing.
That focus will take us a long way, but it won’t get us all the way
there. Because we cannot get all the way there on our own. We cannot do this just by the force of our
own will. Even if we try, even if we’re sincere about it, even if we do
everything we can do to live our lives in a way that shows we love God and we
love other people, we’re going to fail sometimes. We all are. No matter how hard we try not to be, you and
I remain human beings. And as human
beings, you and I will continue to be flawed, weak, fallen, sinful people. Anything we do on our own we do imperfectly.
That’s true whether we’re trying to eliminate the things that get in the
way of being dedicated to God or if we’re focusing on love to get us close to
God. If we try to do it by ourselves,
we’re doomed to fail.
That’s why God does not ask us
to do it by ourselves. God asks us to allow God to help us. God tells us that we don’t need to rely on
our own will, on our own strength, on our own goodness. We can rely on
God’s will, on God’s strength, on God’s goodness. The only way we flawed, weak, fallen, sinful
people can completely and totally dedicate our lives to God is by relying on
the one who is perfect, strong, righteous, and sinless. We can only do
this by relying on God.
And that’s why our Communion
liturgy emphases God’s holiness. Because sharing in Holy Communion is one
of the ways in which we learn to rely on God. Again, it’s one of the ways
in which God’s grace comes into our hearts and into our lives. The sharing
of Holy Communion is a gift God has given us to help us completely and totally
dedicate our lives to God.
Now, don’t take that the wrong
way. Holy Communion is not magic.
It’s not a golden ticket into heaven. If you and I choose to shut
God out of it, God will allow us to. If
we decide that, for us the bread is just bread and the juice is just juice, it
will be. God allows us free will.
God does not force Himself on us.
We are allowed by God to shut God out if that’s what we choose to do.
That’s why we read the
Communion liturgy before we share in Holy Communion. We would not have
to, you know. We could just hand out the
bread and the juice. But we don’t.
We go through the liturgy. We
give thanks to God. We acknowledge the
holiness of God. We talk about the things we’re going to talk about in
the rest of this sermon series, too.
These are things we do to prepare ourselves for the act of sharing in
Holy Communion. These are things we do to help us open our hearts and
open our souls and allow God’s grace to come in.
God is holy. God deserves
our complete and total loyalty and dedication. We need to get rid of the
things that are getting in the way of giving God that loyalty and dedication,
and we need to focus on loving God and loving each other. But we can only
do those things by relying on God. Let’s
open our hearts and our souls to God’s grace.
Not just when we take Communion, but every day of our lives.
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