Covenant Service - Revd Chris - 17th January 2021

Readings Isa 43 18-19, 1Cor 12. 12, 13 &27, Mark 14. 22-25

Our President of Conference, Richard Teal has chosen the text of Isa 43 for the membership tickets this year, “do not remember the former things, for I am about to do a new thing”. I think he probably chose wisely, for many things are new these past twelve months. My hunch is that when we emerge from the pandemic the Church of God will be very different, indeed it is already different. Whilst many of the changes have been enforced on us, it might be that we can perceive some of the ways we have done things in the past have outgrown their usefulness and we must bend our minds to seeking new ways of doing those things, as well as discovering new things to do. We need to be radical at owning the new reality. We need to take more risks and not be bound by the past. We have found and must continue to find new ways of being Church. A new era is now upon us. Some of us will be wary of that, others thrilled. But there is a sense of embracing the new in every single one of us. I have already bought compost for sowing my vegetable seeds into and bought seeds to sow. Even now in January I am thinking ahead to the new growing season. This time last year I had never zoomed, never posted a u tube video, but I have engaged over the last year in zoom meetings, and in on-line worship for example. And today we are engaging in a Covenant Service removed from the church building, without Holy Communion. So for the first time in my life I share in a covenant service without the sacrament as part of that service. The Methodist Church has said we cannot have virtual communion because by definition it involves the one presiding taking bread and wine and placing them on the table in the presence of the people and saying prayers and invoking the Holy Spirit upon them. We cannot do that virtually, something not all Methodists including some ex President’s understand. That having been said I am still taking my text from the institution narrative of the Lord’s Supper. Because the Lord’s Supper is so central to my understanding of what Church is about. Amongst the recommended readings is Mark’s account of the institution narrative at the Last Supper. And it is from this I base my reflections today. Mark 14. 22-25 “this is my body….vs 24 ….this is my blood of the new covenant which is poured out for many. Truly I tell you I will never drink again of the fruit of the vine until I drink it new in the kingdom of God” . The Methodist Worship Book says that “Holy Communion or the Lord’s Supper in the central act of Christian worship in which the Church responds to our Lord’s command “Do this in remembrance of me”. I wonder what you make of that statement?

  • Jesus says, “This is my body”. Jesus’ words obviously refer to the bread on the table in the upper room because he prefaces it with “take”. At every eucharist of the one, holy, catholic Church since these words of institution have been said over the bread, and often the bread has been offered to the people with the accompanying words “the body of Christ”, or some such, not “here is a piece of bread”. Guidelines in our present circumstance dictate they are distributed in silence. I found this quite odd last week as I distributed the bread. Whist there will be many shades of opinion between those who gather in this service today, and between us when we gather in physical buildings for Holy Communion about what we make of this practice, chances are we all assume everyone else thinks the same as we do, (whatever that may be) and that may not be the case. We may vary in what we understand by the presence of Christ and how he is with us in the bread and wine, in the gathering together or we may have never given much thought to such subjects, but we probably all agree we are participating in something special that demands our serious attention and that is to be approached with reverence. I don’t want us to fret about those differences today but I do want us to note the various other ways we also use the term “the body of Christ” , For example, when we use it like St Paul, to denote, not the blessed sacrament, but the blessed company of believers. For Paul writes to the Corinthian Christians “you are the body of Christ”, so we gather as sisters and brothers in his name. We are the Body of Christ as we gather virtually. We are very members incorporate in the mystical body of Christ (to use a BCP phrase that made its way into the Methodist Church’s Book of Offices Service) . Of course, there are other disciples of Christ not with us today, those who cannot access on-line services but essentially we (the baptized band of disciples) are his body here in our local communities. As St Teresa of Avilla put it long ago “Christ has no hands on earth but ours”. We are to make manifest his love and concern in our ordinary everyday lives as we serve him in serving others in our communities. We are the body of Christ when we gather together and when we go out dispersed into the world. Not just on a Sunday but everyday of the week. We show we are Christ’s disciples, we are his body by the things we do and say and the attitudes ad qualities we exhibit.

“This is my blood of the new covenant” There are many covenants in Scripture, literally dozens with Abraham, Noah, David, Isaac, Jacob to name a few. But the covenant Jesus speaks of seems to look forward in time to his shedding of blood on Calvary. It might not be popular in our modern world or even in the modern Church but you can’t get away from it as Christians, that Christ died and shed his blood. The cross is the central event the story of our salvation. For as we might have sung at Christmas, if we had been allowed “now you need not fear the grave, Jesus Christ was born to save”. A covenant with God, initiated by God always takes sin seriously in all its forms, personal, social, societal, and we probably live in an age where taking sin seriously is less and less the case, than it was in previous times. Essentially the work of any covenant involving God, is at God’s initiative, not ours, we cannot win salvation by our own efforts. It is not a deal, a contract of equal parties. As human beings we know we need help. We are fallen and flawed. We need salvation. And any reminder of the fact that the covenant which is the ground of our hope is sealed with the blood of Christ should push us to take sin in our own lives, in the life of our society and the life of the whole world seriously. The Letter to the Hebrews goes to great lengths in making the point that every covenant worth anything is sealed in blood, demands commitment. Hebrews 9 speaks of Christ entering the Holy Place and obtaining redemption for us through the shedding of his own blood. It goes on to say without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin. We offer of course an unbloody sacrifice in our worship today as we understand it, but Charles Wesley (good High Church Anglican that he was) was clear about the eternal benefits of the one perfect sacrifice, and the connection between that event and our sharing in the Lord’s Supper. In one of his many communion hymns (166) he writes “with solemn faith we offer up and spread before thy glorious eyes that only ground of all our hope, thy precious, bleeding sacrifice”.

  • Jesus’ words over the bread and the cup are suffixed by a reference to the kingdom. He is looking forward. Glorious though our various experiences of worship might be and each of us might have different memories that are the highlight for us, each of them are only a stage on the journey, though an important one I think, we must keep striving for the kingdom. I get the sense that Jesus is saying something like he will not rest until the kingdom has come. He will not mistake the stages on the way for the final destination. And an understanding of that illusive kingdom encompasses all our striving for community here in our neighbourhoods, our desires for that which binds us to the common good and seeks love of neighbour not just ourselves, encompasses our striving for greater fellowship and unity in God’s Church, and for justice and peace in all the world. The kingdom agenda was ever before Jesus as he exercised his ministry and it behoves his present-day disciples (you and me) to remember that and keep that vision of the kingdom before our eyes in all we do and plan. So may God help us as we renew the covenant today, as we share in the sacrament, as we gird up our loins to step out into 2021, may we look more carefully for the signs of God’s kingdom among us here in this community and rejoice more fervently and strive more faithfully to serve the cause of God’s kingdom again in the year ahead. To end with some words of the URC Thomas Caryl Micklem “Jesus, with all your Church, I Iong, to see your kingdom come”, May it be so for us too. Hymn 520 “Give to me Lord a thankful heart”