[AI translation] Two weeks ago today, I gave you an invitation from Jesus saying, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." (Mt 11,28) Today, a week ago, most of the congregation took up this invitation and shared in the hospitality of the Lord's table. Today I want to talk again about the Lord's Supper. A week has passed since our last communion, and by the daily practice of our lives since then, can we all now measure whether we have taken communion correctly? What did it mean for us to receive the body and blood of the Lord? What was the practice of our daily lives in this holy visitation for? This is what we are trying to explore in the context of the story I have read from the life of Jacob.We read that 'Jacob rose in the morning and took the stone which he had put under his head and set it up as a pillar' (verse 18). Jacob had many things. God blessed him very richly. He had oxen, sheep, land, houses, servants, children, wives, he had many things, but his most precious possession was this stone. It was this stone that became the most important thing in his life, the one he put under his head that wonderful night. For it was on this stone, on which the night before he had driven like a wild animal, almost exhausted with despair, that he had dreamed the great dream of his life. It may not have been a pleasant lull for his head, but it was all the better for his soul. It was on this that Jacob's head rested when the living God Himself appeared to him, whom he had only known before by the word of others. It was here that the miracle happened to him that the God of his fathers became truly God and Lord to him. It was here that he experienced the miracle of a glimpse of heaven through the hopeless mist that surrounded him, as if eternity had opened up for a moment. Thereupon there descended from on high that wondrous and mysterious ladder of light, on which angels were walking up and down between heaven and earth, bringing the blessings of God and carrying the prayers of men to the living God, on the top of which he saw the Lord himself in all his glory, and heard his voice.
In this Jacob, this strange man, experienced the thrilling joy of the immediate nearness of God, the greatest experience a man can have on this earth. You might say that the stone meant to Jacob what the Lord's Supper means to us. For here, at this table, it is as if we too can glimpse for a moment into heaven, into eternity. For us, too, this communion is a place and an occasion of the very special presence of God. Here God opens up eternity, as it were in visible form, to our earthly world. It is in the broken bread and the wine, in the tokens of these, that the ladder of God's grace descends from heaven, and it is here that the living God himself comes among men. It is here that we hear the most wonderful and powerful words of our Lord when he says, "This is my body and my blood, take, eat and drink! Here our Lord gives himself completely to the sinner Jacob. This holy hospitality is the stones on which we, too, not only dream but live again and again the reconciled communion with God.
But then we read that Jacob woke up the next morning - and this next morning, this is always a very critical time for dreams. Because the next morning, when the sun rises and shines, at daylight, dreams tend to dissipate all over the place. They disappear and sink back into the subconscious depths of the soul as silently and noiselessly as they emerged from it. What happened to Jacob's dream the next morning? Imagine when this man wakes up in the twilight of the approaching dawn, in that lonely wilderness, looks around, and all that he saw in his dream is nowhere to be found. There is no ladder, no angels, no glory of the Lord anywhere, only himself there, just as miserable as the night before, with the same problems, burdens, sins on his soul as the day before, the same Jacob. Oh, how hard to grasp it the next morning, to go on with the dream!
Even after our communion experience, it is always the same the next morning. And it can and often is very cold and grey for us too. None of us knows what we are waking up to. And Monday morning is always difficult, because it means that work is waiting again, people to deal with are waiting, the office, the factory, the workshop, the shop, the household, the problems. We have our loneliness, our desolation, our crosses, our sorrows, our miseries, our temptations, our problems of every kind. The cold, heavy, dark reality of everyday life.
What will you have left over the next morning from the previous day's communion? Because it is in the reality of the life that begins the next morning that you will find out whether you have taken communion correctly or not? Have you truly partaken of the Lord's body and blood with blessing, or is it just out of habit? Will not all that you have received dissolve the next morning as a dream dissolves in the light of day? Does something of it remain, does it mean anything, has it helped you, has it strengthened you in the daily struggle and tasks of life, the nourishment that Jesus has given you here? Do you even remember on Monday, Tuesday and Saturday that God has bent down to you on Sunday? That you have been renewed in His grace, forgiven of sin by the living God? Do you even think of it the next morning when you go out to do your work, or when the waves of trouble are crashing high around you, when you are choked with a bitter atmosphere of misery, sin and the malice of men? Is it true that the next morning, when you wake up, there is no ladder in heaven, no angels, no nearness to God? Is the next morning the end of the devotion of the broken bread and the wine poured out, the communion with the body and blood of Christ? Who else thinks of the Lord's Supper in the midst of the bitter problems of daily life, or in the midst of the joy of the Lord's Supper? The divine hospitality of Sunday? The forgiveness of sins received? The divine grace experienced anew? That next morning, alas, so very different from Sunday morning! But good was the dream, good was the dream, good was that little bit different! But solemn and majestic was it there at that table, And what a pity that the morrow's coming, To wake to the cold reality!
Look what Jacob did the next morning: he took the stone which he had put under his head, he took hold of it, as it were, and grasped the dream of the night, and did not let it sink back again into the unconscious depths of the soul. He did not say that it was all a dream, but that he clung to what he had seen in his dream even when he was awake. He kept on living what he saw in his dream. What a definite certainty is in his words when he says the next morning, "Surely the Lord is in this place" (v.16) He does not say, "Alas, it was all a dream! No! The Lord is in this place, He has assured me of His love. And that's what he clings to the next morning, that happy certainty when he wakes up from a beautiful dream to the sobering reality of a troubled everyday. And then Jacob does something very practical. We read, 'he took the stone which he had put under his head and set it up as a pillar'. Let not this stone be greyed out among the scattered stones of that land, for it is a strange stone. Let it be a visible warning, which will always remind him of what God has said to him. What blessing he has received from the Lord. The next morning, when Jacob awoke, he did not look after his urgent business - though he had urgent business enough, for we know that he was fleeing from the wrath of Esau. He was not thinking about where to go, although that was also important to him, but above all he wanted to record the vision he had received at night, to make that dream permanent and use it in his life.
Jacob does what a man does when he plucks a flower from a place where he has had a particularly good time and presses it down so that he will always remember the experience. Or when he underlines in red pencil a verse in the Bible in which God has said something particularly important to him. Or how a wedding ring always reminds us of the one we love. So Jacob set a memorial stone as a reminder to himself. Let this stone be an everlasting sign for him, so that if he might forget the Lord again, this stone would remind him: remember Jacob, God has chosen you, blessed you, you are a child of God! And for the believer, such a warning is enough. If Jacob should find himself again plunged in the darkness of sin, of hopelessness, of despair, let this stone always stand there as a shining pillar of God's falling love, a visible encouragement.
Do you know why I wanted to talk about Communion again today? So that we might do something similar with the Lord's Supper, as Jacob did with that stone. Let's set it up in our lives as a memorial pillar, as a sign of God's redeeming love, high and tall. As a warning sign to remind us again of who we are and who God is. What we have been given, and not to forget out there in life. For at this table we have met the Lord! We have seen the Lord, we have taken the body and blood of the Lord and fed on it! God has embraced us, so let this special blessing not be a thing of the past, let it not remain a nice Sunday morning or a blessing for one hour in our lives, but let it be a source of encouragement and strength for the next morning, and the third day, and the next day, and the day after that, for the rest of your life, every day!
The fact that you have taken communion, that you have received the power of Jesus' death and resurrection, don't relegate that fact to the church, but take it with you into life. In the very struggles and tasks of the coming weekdays, hold on to it and use it, live with it, from it. For with communion something does not end, as we might be wont to think, that the relatively long service ends in this way, but with it something begins. Here, purified and strengthened, life begins again with its thousand problems and troubles, but now in a different way. More Christlike, that is, by taking more strength out with me into life, into the world, into people, to love people, to serve people, to understand people, to fight against my sins. I take with me more power to do my tasks well and rightly.
Let Communion be such a pillar of remembrance in our lives. It is a sign and token of God's forgiving and redeeming love. May the encouragement radiate well beyond the church, into the practice of our daily lives, and when you are dragging your yoke on the weary roads of life, when your soul is weary in the atmosphere of sin and misery, look up to the memorial pillar! Not to the fact that you once came here to take communion, but to the other fact, that God has stooped down and embraced you, that God has forgiven you! That God has adopted you as a child! That He has covered you with the mantle of His grace and assured you of His eternal love!
I have so often stood at the bedside of the dying and seen what it means to them to receive the broken body and shed blood of the Lord. How that dying person is strengthened in spirit to take that great journey. Even in this life on earth, Jesus nourishes us with His body and blood to walk in ways that are always beyond our strength. He wants us to become people on whom His light shines through, like sunlight on a stained glass window.
Do you know how much everyone around you longs for this light? Your family members, friends, acquaintances are longing for this light. Jesus wants to strengthen and feed you at this table. So let Communion, as a sign of God's redeeming love, be at the centre of our lives everywhere. In our homes, in our work, in our fun, in our sorrow, in sickness, in death, and may our whole life be a sign and sign of God's redeeming love!
This saying, which has become a historic landmark, is still valid today: In hoc signo vinces - In this sign you will triumph!
Amen
Date: 2 October 1960.