{"id":831,"date":"2011-08-22T11:45:55","date_gmt":"2011-08-22T16:45:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/?p=831"},"modified":"2011-08-22T11:45:55","modified_gmt":"2011-08-22T16:45:55","slug":"seeing-across-time-a-communion-devotional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/seeing-across-time-a-communion-devotional\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing Across Time: A Communion Devotional"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our colleague Wendell Willis, who teaches New Testament, offered this devotional in worship yesterday.\u00a0 Our thanks for him for sharing it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you have worshipped with very small churches, especially in mission contexts where there are only a handful of believers in the midst of a very large city, perhaps you have thought about how they see themselves in the context of their surroundings.\u00a0 What gives you hope when you are one of 15 members in a city of 2 million?\u00a0 One thing is to take a long view of the church.<\/p>\n

In C. S. Lewis\u2019 classic allegory, The Screwtape Letters<\/em> the senior demonic mentor, Screwtape, tells his nephew, Wormwood, that in order to squelch the beginning faith of a new Christian convert, he should make him focus on the church and the many faults and disagreeable features of the members.\u00a0 So that is how he will see the church, not as Screwtape and other demons see her: \u201cterrible as an army spread out over the ages with banners unfurled.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the most intriguing passages in Scripture is found in Revelation 5, the description of worship around the heavenly throne.\u00a0 Most often when we read Revelation we assume that it pictures the future of the church\u2014and often it does.\u00a0 But in Revelation 5, we see also the present life of the church. \u00a0For when John sees into the heavenly throne room, and hears the singing of angelic and redeemed voices, he also smells the incense which surrounds the throne.\u00a0 He then explains that the incense \u201care the prayers of the saints.\u201d There is some sense in which what we are doing here is caught up into the larger story of God and the worship of him.<\/p>\n

Often when we gather to remember the Lord at this table, we should remember this in association with the Lord\u2019s Supper.\u00a0 Here is an activity that begins with the sunrise of a new Sunday in Greenwich, England, then continues to circle the world like a wave.\u00a0 Every hour, even every minute, each Lord\u2019s day a church assembles, partakes of the communion and then passes the Supper on to the next time zone and the next churches.\u00a0 Thus communion takes twenty-four hours each Sunday.\u00a0 If the church is most clearly seen to be the church in the communion, it is most clearly seen to be universal too.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most popular play staged each spring at high schools around the land is Thornton Wilder\u2019s \u201cOur Town.\u201d\u00a0 In that touching play, the town includes those citizens alive, but also those who have passed on and now reside in the cemetery.\u00a0 Their shadows fall across the town as well\u2014they continue to be town members.\u00a0 For Christians that is true in a similar fashion.<\/p>\n

The truth is that at any particular time and place, an assembled church, as we are today, is but a small part of the church.\u00a0 The church includes not only those alive all around the world, but also those who have died.\u00a0 What is called \u201cthe communion of the saints.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prayer for the Bread<\/strong>:\u00a0 God our Father, as we now share in the bread that binds us to Jesus, give us an enlarged vision of your church than encompasses not only all the earth but all time.\u00a0 Thereby we may realize how much we have shared in the body of Christ and how eternal is your church.\u00a0 We thank you in Jesus\u2019 name.<\/p>\n

Prayer for the Cup:<\/strong>\u00a0 Lord as we drink from this cup in remembrance of Jesus\u2019 shed blood we also recall how long that redeeming blood has flowed to reach down to us.\u00a0 Give us grateful hearts for those believers who have brought the gospel to our time, and recommit ourselves to passing on this gospel to yet other places and times.\u00a0 In this way may we too have a share in the communion of saints, called by Jesus, through whom we pray.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our colleague Wendell Willis, who teaches New Testament, offered this devotional in worship yesterday.\u00a0 Our thanks for him for sharing it. If you have worshipped with very small churches, especially in mission contexts where there are only a handful of believers in the midst of a very large city, perhaps you have thought about how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3538,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nSeeing Across Time: A Communion Devotional - ACU Graduate School of Theology<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/seeing-across-time-a-communion-devotional\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Seeing Across Time: A Communion Devotional - ACU Graduate School of Theology\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Our colleague Wendell Willis, who teaches New Testament, offered this devotional in worship yesterday.\u00a0 Our thanks for him for sharing it. 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