Communion as a Symbol of Hope During the Advent Period

You know what many people don't understand about Advent, that Advent is the introduction of the kingdom of God coming on earth. It is Christ issuing in and bringing in a new way of living, a new way of being, a new way of seeing the world. And so this is why Advent is so contradictory to so many churches. Why? Because what Christ is doing through Advent, what Advent happens, is saying that Christ now has entered the world, so the way that we used to do church and the way that we used to follow God no longer applies, but God is creating a new world, which means everybody you, me and everybody else have to get outside of our comfort zone and move now to the ushering of the new kingdom of God. Well, hello, words for Change podcast. This is your man, lionel. I am so glad that you decided to listen to another episode of the Words for Change podcast, as we talk about the tradition of faith within religion in particular, we're going to talk about Advent. Do you guys know what Advent is? Well, we're going to talk about it here today. I'm your host, lionel. In today's episode, we're going to really explore the Advent season. So let's let's first begin by talking about the history of Advent. So many people don't know that the history of Advent is pretty, pretty deep as we talk about how Advent is celebrated around the world, and it's important for us to understand that. The history and the origins of Advent are deep within the liturgical year on the Christian calendar that leads up to Christmas, so started back in the fourth century sometime somewhere between the early celebration of Advent during the first century. It was a period where primarily it was a time of preparation. It was people being baptized who had come into the faith. New Christians were being baptized around the time of January, in the Feast of Epiphany, and, which means the revealing of God and so the celebration of God's incarnation in Christ. When, in Matthew 2.1, when the Magi came and brought gifts at Jesus' feet, the whole purpose of that episode was to announce, or the whole purpose of that practice was to announce, that Christ was coming, and so King was here, so Israel's long-awaited King that would deliver them from Roman domination was now here, and so people would go down in Matthew 2 and get baptized in the River Jordan by John the Baptist and John, chapter 2, verse 1, to sort of talk about how the Advent or the coming of Christ had arrived Now, during the Middle Ages, advent had become more connected to the second coming of Christ, and this was a large part of focusing on the season of preparation. It was the expectation or some theologians like to say, or call it the eschatological expectation the second coming of Christ right. And so this led to a lot of different practices, liturgical practices in particular. So the Christian church, for instance, began to observe by ringing different bells, by observing Advent doing on Sundays. Different types of ceremonies were then connected. A rief ceremony was connected. A rief was adopted somewhere between 19th century in Germany to symbolize for Sundays, for candles were lit. If you go to a church today, you'll see if you go to a congregation or church, their practice is Advent or celebrates that this part of the year, this Christian season or Christian holiday, a holy day, we also call it. You'll see sometimes four candles burn, but those four candles are representative of the four Sundays up leading up to Christmas. So it's a time of preparation, it's a time of penance, it's a time of reflection and it has evolved over so many years. Advent has has has evolved quite a bit, and so if we keep this focus in mind, I think we we don't lose anything If we keep a focus in mind that what I haven't really gets, that is that it is the coming of a new day. Right, it's the coming of something great. It's the coming of change lives, change minds, not only locally, not only in your house or in your community or in your neighborhood, but Christ came to change the world.

The great revolution is taking place in the world today. In the sense it is a triple revolution. That is a technological revolution with the impact of automation and cybernation. Then that is a revolution in weaponry, with the emergence of atomic and nuclear weapons of warfare Then that is a human rights revolution, with the freedom explosion that has taken place all over the world. Yes, we do live in a period where changes are taking place. That is still the voice crying through the vista of time, saying the whole I make all things new.

I remember my experience of things being made new for me, coming from a very traditional Christian, conservative background, evangelical background, and going to college, going to school having an opportunity to meet people who were from the Christian faith but believe quite differently than I. That experience was profound as I began to interact with people who were different, who practiced the Christian faith but believe things differently than I did. They didn't care so much about where you, if you went to the movie theater or not. In my traditional background, going to the movie theater and seeing certain movies was considered a sin. It was considered something that a Christian, a good faithful Christian, should not do. So going to movies or wearing certain clothing or hanging out with certain people, these were things that I, as a good faithful believer, should not practice these things. So when I got to college, I began to meet people who considered themselves Christian, that were faithful in their faith tradition but believed quite differently and practiced things quite differently, practiced their Christian faith differently, and my first initial response was to judge them because I didn't understand that background, nor that I understand that the entirety of my newfound faith belief system. I lived in a box. I only understood what my teachers taught me. I never saw another perspective. I was put into willfully, but I was put into a thought pattern that my way was the way and it was the right way. And so, after going to college, having experiences with Christians who were quite different from mine, then going to graduate school, I remember one day doing a chapel service, I had always practiced communion. Communion, for those of you who don't know, is also called a Eucharist. In the Catholic Church and some Lutheran churches or Episcopal churches is called the Eucharist. It's where you take the loafer, bread or wafer or some kind of bread product and it's used as a symbolic expression of the body of Christ. And then you take grape juice. Some faith traditions actually use real wine, fermented wine, and that is considered the blood of Christ, not literally, as you will like. In the Catholic, traditional Roman Catholic tradition they consider it as the actual body and the wine can be considered the actual blood and so that Christ is embodied within the Eucharist, within the bread and the cup. I was never introduced to it, to the communion, in that way, and you went to my church and you probably have a little cup with a little wafer on top and that's how you took communion. So it was never considered the actual body or the actual blood of Christ, but rather representation. So but I remember going to graduate school and I was in a chapel service one day and I remember hearing a sermon about the Eucharist, how the Eucharist is not only or communion, it's not only just a private event. You bow on your head in service and sing a prayer to Lord forgive me for my sins, but the Eucharist is actually preaching and teaching. It's a missional focus in that it is taking a fragmented body, a fragmented world, a fragmented faith, a Christian faith that's a practice by people all over the world Jews people, messianic Jews or people who are in Asian communities who are practicing communion, and people in the French community or people in the German community right, you can go on and on and on and that communion represent. Whenever all of these people came back together to celebrate communion on a Sunday morning, it was the body coming back together, or Christ body metaphorically coming back together again. And that was a powerful display to me, because you saw the embodiment of Christ in the people, not so much in the bread and the grape juice, but people from all over the world, no matter what your background, racial, ethnicity, upbringing, no matter what that meant, but that the coming of Christ and the coming of Christ in the communion that is symbolized through the taking of this wine, this cup and this body, this bread, is reuniting the body. Right. Christ said in the gospel that you are my hand, you are my feet, that within the body of Christ we all need each other. Right, they're gifts that we all need. If you think of the body of Christ like a physical body, the hands have a job, the arms have a job, the feet, the mouth, the eyes, the ears, we all have a job, and Paul talks about this in the feats is that we are the actual body of Christ. So here I am, sitting in a service and I see it and I understand it. That light goes off and I understand what communion represents. And from that point it became a powerful display of faith to me. That it was not only for my personal spiritual experience, but now I begin to see the communion and the Eucharist as missional. It is a reminder to get back out into the world, continue doing the work of God in the world, and that had a profound effect on me, that the coming of Christ was bringing people together from all over the world. You know, I have to think long and hard about what celebrating communion really means, not only to people in the United States but in the struggle for liberation of people all over the world. And I'm reminded of, back in Columbia, how some of the priests, like Camillo Torres, who usually celebrated the Eucharist only among a disadvantage in the armed struggle against the Colombian state, or a Peruvian priest who fought against the state government in Peru, against the government to lead a penel shade who tortured Christians and kept them from practicing their faith in the only way they were able to maintain, gathering together right as they were pushed underground from practicing their faith, that whenever they were able to get beyond the walls of the eyes of the government and practice their faith, a Christian faith, underground, the first thing that did was take communion. So, even though the state inflicted pain on the body of these individuals, the state saw to dismember the body, state saying that we have control over the body. You can't practice this faith because if you do, we're going to make sure that you suffer. We have control over your body and we'll inflict pain and suffering on you so that you cannot practice that faith. These individuals, these fateful few, rejoin the body of Christ back together again through the act of practicing communion or the Eucharist. And so when we talk about the coming of Christ and Advent, and we talk about what all of these symbolic expressions mean, there's a lot of deep meaning behind these things, and we would be remiss if we think that taking communion into the United States with a little grape juice, a small wafer, totally represents what this symbolic expression of faith means to people in a world where they can't practice their faith without experiencing pain inflicted upon the physical body. And so this is the power of the Advent. Now that Christ has come, christ is saying that, even though you want to dismember my body, it is the Eucharist that brings us back together again. Even though racial injustice wants to dismember the church, communion brings us back together again, even though the political atmosphere is so riled with division. That one thing that will bring us back together with people in Rio de Janeiro or priests in Brazil or those who are practicing the Christian faith in other parts of the world, that is the Eucharist. Whenever we take, it once again shows that we are one church, that we are the body of Christ, those spread around the world, we are one. So when we take that Eucharist, it is a symbolic expression that the presence of Christ has not only been re-invited back into our lives and into our community, but is now open for the entire world. That's the power of the communion, that's the power of the Advent of Christ. So, dear listener, I want to encourage you to reflect on what we talked about, share your experience, invite listeners to reflect on their own experience and understanding of Advent. I want to encourage you to share your stories and your thoughts on social media at our Words for Change podcast page. I want to thank you, our listener, for joining this episode of the Words for Change podcast. Our closing prayer is may the Lord bless you and keep you and you experience peace in this life and in the life to come. Thank you for spending time with us. May this Advent season bring you closer to the light of faith and a warmth of faith in your heart. Until next time, they bless happy 2024. We'll see you next year. Peace.