3rd of Easter
April 2008
I remind you of what I said for the past two weeks. Religion is about:-
- Finding out and realising what God has done for me, and,
- Trying to understand why God has done it.
So today I talk about;
3) Saying thank you in the way most pleasing to God.
Above all else God desires love; Love of God and Love of my neighbour.
For all practical purposes, God and my neighbour are one and the same.
I cannot love one and not love the other. If I do not love one I do not love the other.
To be authentic, love must always be based on truth and justice.
This is basic to all true religion. This is the rock. The foundation.
To help its members achieve this goal each church and each religion has its own menu of things which are practised or recommended. Many churches and religions have, to a large extent, more or less, the same menus:- Prayer, meditation, pilgrimages, fasting, various symbolic acts of repentance and cleansing, healing services, use of lights, flags, wheels, beads etc. as prayer symbols.
For almost all Christian Churches and particularly for our Church the Last Supper is the central act of our worship.
Various Christian churches differ in their understanding of and give varying names to the Last Supper, such as Communion service, Holy Communion, the Mass, The Lord’s Supper, The Eucharist, The Breaking of Bread etc.
For us the Mass is central to our worship and our Christian life.
Immediately after the Resurrection of Jesus, when his followers began to realise the meaning of His life, death and resurrection and looked back in horror at their past disbelief and ignorance, they immediately realised that in the Last Supper Jesus had given them a way of representing, in a symbolic way, his death on the cross. They also realised that His execution on a cross was not just an isolated incident but the inevitable culmination and symbol of a life totally dedicated to truth and justice.
They also remembered that he had told them to ‘do this in memory of me.’
Therefore from the very beginning (the first week or the first month after the resurrection) the followers of Jesus began to celebrate the Breaking of Bread - the Eucharist.
As we are told in Acts 2; ‘They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.’
And again; ‘Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area and to breaking bread in their homes.’
This is something they did every day.
They knew that this breaking of bread was doing again, and again, what Jesus had done at the Last Supper.
They understood that the Last Supper, on Thursday evening, was the doing, in a symbolic way, of what was done the following day - Friday, on a cross on Calvary.
They understood that the Breaking of Bread, or the Mass as we call it, was not an optional extra but the centrepiece of their worship and the great symbol of their dedication to the Risen Jesus as their Lord and Master.
All this of course - all religious practise - has meaning and value, only when it is built on the solid foundation of a life dedicated to truth and justice.