World Communion Homily

World Communion Sunday

Psalm 100

Early on Wednesday morning I will leave the United States for the first time in my life—

leave familiar faces and familiar culture and familiar language

for foreign faces and foreign culture and foreign language.

The Rocky Mountain Conference’s medical mission team of 11 people will land in Maracaibo, Venezuela,

where the Bishop of our partner denomination-el Unión Evangélica Pentecostal Venezolana-will meet us.

What do I know about these people and this country?

Nothing, really.

Nothing except what I read through the view of U.S. media and my own cultural filters.

I can’t make assumptions about their living situations,

how they feel about not having easy access to medical care;

I take for granted the abundance of fresh Rocky Mountain water that I can drink straight from the tap—so my lenses won’t let me guess what they think about not being able to do the same for fear of some waterborne illness.

I don’t know them, and they don’t know me.

But what I can know about these people with whom I will work and worship for 9 days

is that they are a part of the body of Christ—the same body of which we are a part.

I know they are Christ’s hands and feet in this world, striving to make visible God’s reign here on earth—

just as we are.

~~~

It seems right that today is World Communion Sunday, a day when each church remembers its connection to every other church around the world, moving beyond our historical and theological differences to remember that we are the body of Christ—broken—but all working for God’s Shalom.

It’s a day of remembering our oneness.

And we remember our oneness tangibly—bodily—through the enactment of this memory meal.

We remember that we are members of the body of Christ—head and hands and heart and feet.

And in Communion, we re-member his broken body, becoming one once more: not the United Church of Christ, not the Evangelical Pentecostal Union of Venezuela, not the PCUSA or ELCA or any other denomination: but the one body of Christ.

Today’s message is, therefore, the Communion liturgy itself, a more full or traditional liturgy than what we usually enact at Plymouth, a liturgy that connects us with the ancient and the other—our brother and sister churches in all the earth.

This ritual is the embodiment of our faith,

the re-membering of a broken body,

becoming one again in Christ.

~~~

As I leave for Venezuela this week, I will bring our particular embodiment of God’s love

here at Plymouth UCC, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.

I will take with me to that place where those people, in their church in that country

also live their particular embodiment for God’s peace, justice, healing and wholeness.

And together we—who know nothing about one another—

will re-member Christ’s body in just a few small village clinics.

But isn’t that what we’re called to do every day? here in our own time and place?

just a few unknown people, in a few small ways

working to re-member Christ’s body

helping to bring God’s realm on earth.

Today, as you receive the bread of Christ’s body,

try to meditate on one way that you, as a part of that body,

bring your particular embodiment of God’s love to the world:

through writing justice-seeking letters to government officials

or serving lunch at the mission;

by intentionally praying with love for Hugo Chavez, Hamid Karzai, Mahmoud Abbas, or Kim Jong-Il

or by supporting the CROP Walk against hunger.

What part do you play

in re-membering Christ’s body on earth?