Tavern Talk #94 - Why Communion Matters

This month, we celebrated World Communion Sunday. Communion is one of the oldest practices in Christianity. For nearly two thousand years, Christians have gathered around a table, taken bread and a cup, and remembered Jesus. But why? Christians often say that “Jesus died to save us from our sins.” That may be true, but if we stop there, we can miss what it actually means.

Sin is more than breaking religious rules. It is the brokenness that damages our relationships with God, with one another, and even with ourselves. We see it in selfishness, resentment, fear, violence, injustice, and every way we fail to love as we were created to love.

The Christian story says that God does not respond to that brokenness by abandoning us. God moves toward us. Hence, Jesus.

At his last meal with his disciples, Jesus took bread and a cup and told them to remember him. The people sitting around that table were far from perfect. One would betray him. One would deny him. Others would run away. Yet Jesus fed them anyway. That is grace.

Grace is God's love offered before we have earned it. It is forgiveness, reconciliation, a new beginning, and a place at the table. Communion reminds us of that grace in a very tangible way. We come with empty hands and receive something we did not earn. Instead of sacrificing TO God, God is giving TO us.

Communion also reminds us that the Christian faith is not simply about what happens after we die. It is about God's work of healing what is broken now: restoring relationships, breaking cycles of hatred and revenge, teaching us to forgive, and helping us learn to love.

Perhaps that is why Jesus gave us something so simple. Bread. A cup. A table. Because we forget. We forget that we are loved. We forget that other people are loved. We forget that grace cannot be earned. We forget that forgiveness is possible. We forget that God has not given up on us or on the world.

That is Communion. And that is why it still matters.

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Additional Readings:

• Matthew 26:17–30 

• Mark 14:12–26 

• Luke 22:7–23

• 1 Corinthians 11:23–26