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The scripture reading of the morning is from the Gospel according to Mark, the 14th chapter. I begin the reading at the verse which is numbered 12. And on the first day of unleavened bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, "Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?"

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And he sent two of his disciples and said to them, "Go into the city and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him and wherever he enters, say to the householder, 'The teacher says, 'Where is my guest room where I am to eat the Passover with my disciples?'

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And he will show you a large upper room, furnished and ready. There, prepare for us.' And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.

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And when it was evening, he came with the twelve. And as they were at table eating, Jesus said, 'Truly I say to you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.' They began to be sorrowful and to say to him and also to one another, 'Is it I?'

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He said to them, 'It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the dish with me. For the Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.'

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And as they were eating, he took bread and blessed and broke it, and gave it to them and said, 'Take, this is my body.' And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank of it.

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And he said to them, 'This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly I say to you, I shall not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.' And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word.

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Amen. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Adolf Jülicher is one of the great German biblical critics of the 20th century. And in one of his works, he suggests that what occurred in the upper room the night of the Last Supper, was in fact a pair of parables given to the disciples by their master.

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Jülicher writes, "The last parables which we process from the mouth of Jesus are the parables of the upper room." Now that is a rather interesting thought. There is no doubt that Jesus often told his parables in pairs.

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The first parable designed to make the point, the second parable usually to emphasize the point and often to expand it. We think immediately, for example, of the parable of mustard seed and the leaven. Or the parable of the hidden treasure and the pearl of great price.

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Or the parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin. What Jülicher is suggesting is that here in the upper room, we have the parable of the bread and the parable of the wine. Different, and yet mutually supportive one of the other.

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Now the simplest definition of a parable is of course, an earthly story with a heavenly set of symbols. The bread and the wine at the center of the sacrament are not there accidentally. Any more than the twelve disciples who were about that table were there accidentally.

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Jesus was seeking for a universal symbol. Now there are only three things that all human beings do. One is breathe, another is sleep, and the third is to eat. And eating is the only one of these acts which takes initiative on the part of the individual.

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Jesus then has taken that one thing that all of us do and must do by an act of will to make it the center of the sacrament. I think it also interesting to notice that all of the races and peoples on the face of the earth look upon food and upon eating with a kind of reverence.

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The Jews of course look at food as the staff of life. There are beautiful traditions from Ireland and from Sweden and from Switzerland, the African people, the Asian people. We have our own celebration of Thanksgiving in this country

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which is built around the produce of the earth. All peoples everywhere revere food and the necessity of it in our lives. It is again a universal reaction. And then think of this too.

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In the first century when Jesus uttered these words, presented these parables if you will, almost everyone was engaged in one way or another in the production of food. If you didn't sow the seed or reap the harvest or prune the vines or winnow or press or guard these things or buy these things or sell these things,

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you were a rare person indeed. And even now when we have such a variety of occupational advantages in our society, when you think about it, it's amazing how many of them impinge directly on the production or the distribution or the consumption of food.

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Jesus then picks food to put at the center of the sacrament because bread and wine speak of all the world. And the message of course to us is this, that our Lord Jesus Christ came for all the world,

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that no one is outside the circle of his caring. I remember back in 1973 visiting Togo on the southwest coast of Africa. Lomé is the capital of Togo. And one day we went inland from Lomé to the original village of Togo,

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which gave its name to the whole country later. First we went by Land Rover, then we went by River Barge, and the last 50 yards we had to be carried by natives from the village there to this remote place of Togo.

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It was quite a remarkable adventure. The thing I remember most vividly about it is that we visited a church which had been built by some of the Germans who originally colonized that area. They were the first European colonials in that part of Africa.

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Now the stained glass windows in this church depicted a white Jesus. But some years after the original church was built, it was enlarged by the people of Togo, and in their painted windows Jesus is depicted as black.

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And incidentally, in the art which we have from the first century, it is generally so that those who are represented as coming from the Fertile Crescent or the Mediterranean Basin are painted with a very dark complexion. It is much more likely that Jesus was very dark than that he looked like most of us.

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So we celebrated communion there in that church at the feet of a black Jesus, and we used coconut milk and a very hard, grainy kind of bread, the name of which I do not remember. There we were, in that corner of the world, so celebrating the sacrament.

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As I rummage through the drawers of my memory, I can remember other times celebrating the sacrament with Coca-Cola and crackers in the high Sierras of California, or celebrating it with 600 in Mbujimai in Africa, 600 under a tin roof when the temperature was 127 degrees

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and the service took four hours to complete. Celebrating the sacrament with the very finest wine and the most fine bread in a cathedral on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Celebrating with iced tea and Hollywood diet bread in a basement in Grove City, Pennsylvania.

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Celebrating it with Kool-Aid and graham crackers beside a home oak in Southern California. Or with robed students in the 14th century St. Salvator's Chapel in Scotland, or with hooded Benedictines at their monastery in Valermo. All of these places, all of these people, all over the world, for 2,000 years it has been so.

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Crowns and thrones and empires have gone whistling down the wind, but the sacrament prevails. It may be served in different manner and in different style. The theology, the administration of the sacrament may be different in one place or another,

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but the bread or the wine or the substitutes used for them are always present. And why? Because they speak to us of the universality of the love of Christ. And that is the reason the sacrament endures. If I this morning were to ask some 500 of you to write down on a piece of paper

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why you come to this table, what is on your heart as you come, what you seek from Jesus as you come to this place, it is not at all outside the realm of possibility that I would receive 500 different answers. But that's as it should be.

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For no one is outside the circle. The bread and the wine say Christ is for all the world. Now think, too, of the appropriateness of these symbols. Have you ever thought about how it is that bread and wine are made? The bread begins as seed. That must be buried.

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Then it rises as the blade. Then it must be sickled, toppled. Then it must be ground up and baked. The wine begins as the juice of the grape. The grapes are pruned with sharp knives.

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The blossoms are torn away from the vines even before they have the opportunity to flower. The grapes are plucked. They are thrown into the press. And there they are crushed either by machinery or under the feet of men. In other words, both the bread and the wine must lose their lives in order to become a source of life to others.

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And what a perfect symbolism for the supper. For what we are told at this place is that Jesus was crushed. Jesus was trodden underfoot. Jesus was wounded with sharp knives.

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Jesus, if you would, entered into the oven, the cauldron, the hot heat of all the separation and hurt of Calvary, offered up his life in order to become life hereafter and life now in eternity for all of us. I think of this oft times in terms of Paul's interesting words used to describe Jesus in the third chapter of Romans. There in the 25th verse, he says that Jesus is the propitiation of our sins.

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Now in order to understand that word propitiation, you must have a little knowledge of the Old Testament's sacrificial system. You see, when someone sinned against God, it was understood in the Old Testament that the relationship between that person and God had been broken by that sin. The problem then was how was the relationship to be restored.

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And the methodology which was developed was by the offering of sacrifice. Now the sacrifice had no magic power in and of itself. The sacrifice in fact meant absolutely nothing if there were not behind the sacrifice a genuine repentant heart and spirit, a true desire to be at one with God again.

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Now remembering that background, think of what Paul means when he says Christ is our propitiation. If you take that word as a noun, and that is a legitimate way to interpret it, then the word propitiation would be translated in the Bible as mercy seat. Now the mercy seat was a very interesting thing.

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If you went into the temple, which was the center of Judaism, and you went to the holiest place in that temple, it was called the Holy of Holies, there you would find the ark which contained the Ten Commandments and manna and some of the other holy relics of Israel, and on top of that ark there was a golden lid.

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And that golden lid was called the mercy seat. Now it was called that because whenever the high priest of Israel wanted to pray for the people to God, he would go and stand before that mercy seat to make his prayer. You see way back in Exodus in the 25th chapter, God says,

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"I will meet thee and commune with thee above the mercy seat." So when the priest went to pray for the people, he went to the mercy seat. And also, one time each year, he would sprinkle onto that golden seat the blood of sacrificed animals. Now this had no magical power.

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It simply represented the sincere repentance on the part of the people so that the mercy seat became two things. It was the place where God and man met, and it was the place where blood was shed in order that the union of God and man might be restored.

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And Paul says, "Jesus is our propitiation." Jesus is the place where God and man meet, very God of very God and very man of very man. And Jesus is the place where the perfect blood of sacrifice is poured out on the cross

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to restore the relationship between God and man. Think for a moment on the marvelous philanthropy of God, that when it came time for Him to do what we could not do of ourselves, He hired no one to do the job,

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but spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all. This is what Jesus means when He says, "I am the bread of life, and he who comes to Me shall not hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst."

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When you go to the mercy seat, God and man are one, and the sacrifice is made which unites God and man in continuing oneness. And all of this is spoken to by the bread and the wine that pour out their lives in order that we might have life eternal here and hereafter.

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And before we leave this picture, let me point out one sideline. We are called by Christ as His disciples to sacrifice ourselves in the service of others. You remember how He said, "He who would be My disciple must take up his cross daily and follow Me." Just this last week I had a birthday,

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and I gave myself to thinking on that birthday of just how little I've had to sacrifice in life. I've never suffered for the sake of Jesus. I've never gone hungry or thirsty for the sake of Jesus.

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I've never been jailed or persecuted for the sake of Jesus. I've never had to carry out any really costly discipleship. I inherited this free land. I inherited the faith which is mine. I have claimed it for my own, but it was no fight or war to do so.

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In a very real sense, I can say at 53 years of age that I have never shared Calvary. I have just reaped its benefits. And mind you, I have done this at a time when thousands and thousands of people have paid a tremendous sacrifice for their believing.

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More Christians have died in the service of Christ in the 20th century than in the previous 19 centuries added together. And at such a time and in such a world, I've not been called upon to suffer at all.

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And it came home to me with great power that if I haven't been called upon to die for Christ, then I ought to at least be willing to live for Him. That I ought to be seeking out those who are carrying crosses

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and in whatever way I can, make their burden lighter. At whatever cost I have to pay, the bread and the wine gives up its life in order that we might be fed. And it speaks to us as we take it into our hands.

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And it says, "I represent that Christ who offered Himself, and I call you to self-offering." Are you ready? If you ever go to Midlothian, Virginia, you'll see a very odd thing.

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Right in the middle of the main street, there's a statue of a doctor. He was a country doctor, very popular in that town, and the citizens wanted to honor him by erecting a statue in his honor, but he was very, very modest and refused.

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He simply said, "Wherever I die, just bury me there." And just a few weeks later, he died while going on a very late night call to one of his patients, and he died right in the middle of the road. And that's where they erected the statue in his honor.

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And I guess what I'm trying to say this morning is this. If we are not called upon by the bread and the wine to die, we are at least called to be always on the road to those who are dying, who are hurting, who are suffering, making their burdens our own.

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This is the appropriateness of the symbolism of the sacrament. Just one last thought very quickly. Think also of the necessity of these symbols. The fact of the matter is we can't live without food.

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So bread and wine is put at the center of the sacrament by Jesus to point out that we cannot live without participating in him. When you miss Christ, you spiritually starve. Now, this isn't a great mystery.

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This is not at all profound. All of us understand. When you're in the presence of a good friend, his words, his wisdom, his strength encourages you.

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It builds you up. Just so, when we are in the presence of Christ, when we come to this place and receive these elements and enter into intimate fellowship with him,

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we are strengthened and we are encouraged and we are given wisdom in the Lord. How is it then? Explain this to me, please. How people can call Jesus friend.

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What a friend we have in Jesus. And yet so rarely do they come into the presence of his people. So rarely do they come to the table. If you are a friend, you wish to be with someone.

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These people who do not commune with Jesus, who are not close to him in their walk through devotion and worship and Christian fellowship, their bodies may be healthy, but I believe their souls are starving.

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Christ left us this memorial in order that we might be close to him and receive him into ourselves. For as necessary as food and drink is to our physical lives,

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so oneness with him is necessary for our spiritual lives. One of my greatest teachers was Dr. Addison Hardy Leach. He was my professor of theology and president of Pittsburgh Seminary. It was my privilege to know him very well.

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And I never once was in his presence that I did not go away stronger than when I came. I was with him at a time, I was a student sitting under him and meeting with him each week at a time

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when his wife was going through a dreadful physical illness. And I saw the man suffer for his wife. And I remember how he told me, not once but a number of times, how he never would have been able to do the things he was called upon to do

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if he had not spent time with Christ. "Never miss worship," he said. "Never miss the sacrament," he said. "Never miss daily devotion," he said.

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"Never miss any occasion to be with the Master." Well, just a few years ago, it came Addison Hardy Leach's time to die. And he had a long and a dreadful illness. And on the last day of his life, speaking now very rarely,

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he suddenly said, "He will lift me up." And his daughter sitting next to him was not quite sure what he said, so she leaned over the bed and she said, "Dad, who will lift you up?" And he said, "Jesus Christ will lift me up."

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And saying those words, he died. Now, how can you be that strong at such a time? How can your soul have that kind of strength at such a time? Only when you've missed no opportunity to receive the bread and the wine

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that speak to us of Jesus. "I am the bread of life, and he who comes to me shall never hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst." These, then, are the symbolisms of the sacrament.

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They speak to us of the universality of Christ's love. No one is outside the circle of it. They speak to us of the appropriateness of Christ's love, of how he poured himself out and calls us to pour ourselves out,

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to die that others might live. And they speak to us also of the necessity, the urgent necessity, of our being at one with him as oft as we can be, in order that when everything else goes whistling down the wind,

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we, in him, will stand sure. I echo the poet, then. The symbols of the sacrament, I feign would make them mine. Thy body is the broken bread, thy blood the poured-out wine.

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What blessed significance they hold! What graciousness divine! In Jesus' name, I invite you to receive the bread and the wine and to be taught by these precious parables of his.

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Let us pray. O God, if any word has been spoken which is true, then grant that we might never forget that word. And if any word has been spoken which is in any way less than true,

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then drop that word into the deepest seas of our forgetfulness. For we would remember only that which honors and is honored by thee. We pray our prayer in Jesus' name. Amen.

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[Music] (rushing water)