Those words in the title will be very familiar to most Christians, and especially Anglican Christians. Taken from 1 Corinthians 11, and used in the Thanksgiving Prayer at the Lord's Supper, they remind us that in the intense time of suffering, just before he went to the Garden of Gethsemane, where he would be arrested, the Lord Jesus broke bread and drank wine with his followers.
He started something new, something to be continued - but not for ever. Until He Comes. The sharing of bread and wine, remembering the broken body and shed blood of the Son of God, the Saviour. The gathering of God's people together as we await the heavenly banquet, the wedding supper of the Lamb. Our bread and wine just a foretaste of the party in heaven.
I used those words today as I shared in the Lord's Supper with some who can't make it out to church any more. Despite their physical separation from the meeting place, they are still part of the body of Christ, the family of the church. Today we joined with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven as we lauded and magnified the name of our great God.
Tonight, in just over an hour, we will hear those words again, as we join together - not Anglicans, Baptists and Presbyterians - but Christians. The Lord's people around the Lord's Table, a powerful testimony to all that we hold in common rather than our differences.
Tonight we recall that night, the night that he was betrayed, when he took bread, gave thanks, and broke it and gave it to his disciples. When he took wine and gave it to them.
Remember, remember, not the fifth of November. Remember, remember, rather, that Christ has died (for our sins), Christ is risen, Christ will come again. Amen.
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