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            “In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven.”  Have you ever just sat there on a communion Sunday and let those words sink deep into your soul?  You don’t look like you need to be forgiven.  You look like you have it all together.  You’re well dressed, well groomed, friendly enough.  In fact, you are a good-looking, well-behaved, likeable collection of people.  And as for your spirituality, you have chosen today to get up and spend your morning learning about and worshipping God.  So why did I just announce to y you, “In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven”?  And for that matter, why did you just announce it to me?  Forgiven for what?

            Driving down the road the other day, I turned on the CD player in my car.  I knew Chelsea had been the last one in my car, because Jewel came on singing to me.  She was singing some song that I had heard before, but I had never really listened to.  It is entitled,  “Innocence Maintained.”  There was a line in that song that seemed to jump out at me.  “We are given to a God to put our faith there in, but to be forgiven we must first believe in sin.”  Apparently this modern day singer gets what the church has been declaring for centuries.  We need to hear those words.  “In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven.”

            The apostle Paul addressed a church about this very matter one communion Sunday a long time ago.  Listen to what he wrote to a people that he had spent years pasturing.  His words are found in I Corinthians 11:17-36 on page 173 of your New Testament.  Hear now the word of the Lord.

            Now in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse.  For, to begin with, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you; and to some extent I believe it.  Indeed, there have to be factions among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine.  When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s Supper.  For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk.  What!  Do you not have homes to eat and drink in?  Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing?  What should I say to you?  Should I commend you?  In this matter I do not commend you!

            For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you.  Do this in remembrance of me.”  In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.  Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”  For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

                        The word of God for the people of God.  Thanks be to God.

            In this passage Paul corrected the Corinthians mis-representation of the Lord’s Supper.  “In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven” But are we convinced that we really need it?  I mean we’re not that bad – are we?  Forgiven for what?  Paul seemed to bring two severe charges against the Corinthians to which I’m afraid I would have to plead “guilty.”  He charged them with the sins of divisions and disinterest.  “To be forgiven we must first believe in sin.”

We must believe in the Sin of Divisions among us.

            The Corinthians were a proud lot.  They were people of wealth, education, class and sophistication.  I never read this passage without remembering years ago Ricardo Montalban advertising for a Chrysler car with “rich Corinthian leather.”  He spoke the phrase so eloquently with his Spanish accent.  Do you remember it?  Did you know that there is no such thing as “Corinthian leather”?  It was a marketing phrase to lift the leather upholstery in that car above all the others.  Nearly 2,000 years after Paul chastised this bunch for their elitism, Ricardo Montalban was touting their superiority.  Truth is, they were a proud church that did a lot of things right.  Apparently the well-to-do would host the church meetings which included a meal and communion.  The problem was even a well-to-do family could only seat about eight to twelve people in their dining room or triclinium.  This room was apparently saved for their best friends and socio-economic equals.  They may very well have met earlier than the working class and slaves, who would be served in the atrium or courtyard.  Gordon Fee wrote in his 840 page commentary on I Corinthians, “the meals served in the triclinium or dining room were qualitatively and quantitatively superior to what was served in the atrium”.  Paul was much harsher in verse 21, “One goes hungry and another becomes drunk.”  The food and wine that flowed so freely in one part of the house scarcely trickled into the courtyard.  The meal that Christ intended to bring them together was being abused to accentuate their differences to which Paul said, “Is not for the better but for the worse.”  They claimed to gather together but they were really fostering divisions.

            I was saddened this week to hear of Mel Gibson’s arrest and behavior.  It seemed to provide fuel for the fire of divisions.  Apparently the director of “The Passion of the Christ” had gotten drunk (not smart) and drove a car (terrible judgment).  When he was stopped for speeding he began badgering the policemen (not smart) and insulting the Jews as a people (terrible judgment).  Now I don’t know all the bending and twisting that goes into a story that makes it front page news, but I do know that something happened and Mel Gibson apologized to the policeman and to an entire race of people.  Here is yet another reason not to get drunk - What’s inside might just come out.

            I wonder if that’s what happened in Corinth?  My problem is I don’t even have to drink for my own issues to surface.  Anytime you or I find ourselves talking or even thinking about “those people”, we are in danger of Corinthianism.  It happens all the time.  We do it as Christians as we refer to those Baptists, those Lutherans, those Catholics, and we do it as a church as we identify our people and those people, us and them.  When we identify who we are by who we are not, we are guilty of the sin of division among us. 

            I have good news – In the name of Jesus you are forgiven, but to be forgiven we must first believe in sin. We must believe in the sin of divisions among us.

 We must believe in the sin of Disinterest toward Christ in us.

            Paul reminded the Corinthians what this meal is all about.  It grew out of the annual Passover Feast when the Israelites then and Jews today remember that they could not do it themselves.  God had miraculously freed them from slavery in Egypt, sustained them for forty years in the wilderness and established them as a liberated people.  The entire Passover is an experiential memorial to the need for and provision of God’s power to do what the participant could not.

            It was in the context of this meal that Jesus expanded that liberation from a people to all peoples, by doing for us what we could not do for ourselves – free us from guilt and condemnation.  “In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven.”  He took the bread of Passover that reminded them of slavery then told them it was his body which had taken suffering for us.  He took the cup that reminded them of salvation and told them it was the new covenant of his blood.  Paul said every time we eat this bread and drink this cup we are saying two things.  First, we are saying first of all Jesus died for you and me.  Secondly, we are saying that He is coming back.  This is an incredible act, this act of communion.

            Yet we can become guilty of showing disinterest in the meal that cost the Son of God his very life.  We can at this table become like my brother and I traveling cross-country with my Aunt Peg and Uncle Bill.  Three times my aunt and uncle took my brother and me from Findlay, Ohio to Riverside, California in their nice shiny Oldsmobile.  We drove to the St. Louis Arch, the Garden of the Gods and Mesa Verde in Colorado, the Petrified Forest of Arizona and so many wonderful places.  And do you know what my brother and I would do during these wonderful trips that cost my uncle his only vacation and more money than he would spend in two months? 

            “Are we there yet?”

            “Kemp hit me.  Hey, Kemp hit me.  Yeh, nice arch.  Kemp hit me.”

            “Stay on your own side of the car!  You’re still on my side.”

            How could I?   Well, I was just a kid.  I didn’t realize then what I do now.  How much they had given to show me America.  I’m not a kid anymore, neither are most of you.  Look at this table and be mindful of what it cost to buy your freedom. 

            In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven, but it took everything He had to make it so.  Don’t despise the gift through disinterest.

            But to be forgiven we must first believe in sin.

            Search your heart today. Any signs of the sin of division among you? Any signs of the sin of disinterest toward Christ in you? To be forgiven we must first believe in sin.

Now hear the good news, In the name of Jesus Christ you are forgiven.  In the name of Jesus Christ you are forgiven. Glory to God Amen.