Breaking Bread: Love, Peace, and Joy

Today I wanna talk to you a little bit about communion, and instead of maybe a traditional communion passage, maybe, uh, you might be expecting me to read from, uh, the upper room where Jesus gathers his disciples the night that he's betrayed.

That's literally the story that is invoked by Paul later in his letter to the early church when he talks about communion.

Instead of visiting either of those passages, I wanna share this one with you.

It's Acts chapter 2, right at the end of Acts chapter 2, verses 43 to 47.

And I wanna sort of suggest to you that this is the first communion gathering of the early church, and that what we are doing is, to the best of our ability, just trying to recapitulate what we see happening in this first communion gathering.

It's Acts chapter 2, verses 43 to 47, and it says this, "Awe came upon everyone because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles." So of course, we're beginning midstream in the middle of a story, so just...

I'll just pause here and remind you that what happened right before this is that the Spirit of God, sometimes what we refer to as the Holy Spirit, is poured out upon a crowd of people at the beginning of Acts chapter 2.

This is what we tend to traditionally refer to as Pentecost, because Pentecost was an ancient Hebrew celebration.

It was essentially a harvest festival, and people had come from all over the known world.

Jewish people had come from all over the known world to celebrate Pentecost, to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and there in that pilgrimage, the Spirit of God shows up and transforms that group of people in some surprising ways.

Peter gets up.

He delivers his version of the gospel, what, what he thinks it means that Jesus came and was crucified and resurrected.

And as a result of that, a bunch of people say, "We wanna be a part of this.

We wanna be a part of this community." And so we're picking it up at the tail end of that story in verse 43.

When it says, "Awe came upon everyone because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles," it's referring to this core group of leaders in this early expression of Christianity.

Verse 44, "And all who believed were together and had all things in common, as they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.

And day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.

And day by day, the Lord added to their number those who were being saved." Now, I wanna share with you a couple of miracles that I think are happening in this passage, and they might be surprising miracles, because we tend to focus on something else that's happening in Acts chapter 2.

But I think there are three miracles happening in this passage that we often miss.

So I wanna share those with you today in light of World Communion Day, but first, would you just pray with me? God, we thank you for today.

Thank you for the opportunity to gather together, even in the midst of a rainstorm.

We ask that you would draw our hearts together, that we would become people who are able to overcome and look past our differences, to regard each other not as enemies because of those differences, but as friends, and that this table, this table of communion, this table where we break bread, would facilitate that transformation.

We pray that you would do all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.