I've never taken on a project like this before, but it has been an exciting challenge! It's rewarding to see ideas and possibilities becoming realities.
A small portion of this project was updating the look of the communion table. This meant replacing the dusty, plastic grapes and apparently multi-grain plastic loaf of bread. They looked something like this:
But with what would we replace them?
What can be placed on a table that draws us in and reminds us that Christ is here.
Among us.
In us.
With us.
The Cornerstone on which God is building His eternal kingdom has burst into the present from the future. The kingdom is already here! Not yet in its perfect, glorious entirety... but from the moment Jesus rose from the grave, crushing death to death, the reality of "on earth as it is in heaven" began to take shape.
In Christ glorified, we see that one part of creation has already been transformed. He is the beginning of God's new world. While the whole earth is currently groaning as it waits for its own redemption, Christ has gone ahead into God's new creation. And when we participate in communion by eating the bread and drinking the wine, Christ meets us there, and the new heaven and earth break through to meet us here in this world. God's new world and glorious kingdom has already begun!
In the words of theologian N.T. Wright in his book Surprised by Hope,
"Every Eucharist is a little Christmas as well as a little Easter."
At Christmastime, we celebrate Immanuel. God With Us.
At Easter time, we also celebrate Christ-come-near. Our Redeemer restored.
And every time we take communion,
every time we look back and remember the cross
and reflect on the significance of the empty tomb...
the future and the present are joined together in a holy moment of remembrance.
This is why we take communion. To remember.
Our King and future hope is already here.
No comments :
Post a Comment