O Redeemer God, as we gather in worship on this World Communion Sunday, we ask that you send your Holy Spirit to fall afresh on us. We pray for your Spirit to awaken new hope in us. Grant us the vision to see the coming of your kingdom. Help us to celebrate the glimpses of grace that you have given to each of us. Knit our hearts together in worship and communion so that we know we do not struggle alone in working for your Reign of peace and justice.

We gather today around the Lord’s Table, with many different gifts, opinions, experiences, ages, and so on. We bring these as gifts to our Lord.

We also share a characteristic.

MY FRIENDS, WE COME TO WORSHIP AS BROKEN PEOPLE.

Some of us have broken bodies. How do I know my youth has been spent? My get up and go has got up and went!

As I prepare the prayer requests for morning worship, it seems like everybody has had some concern over illness, stress, and suffering.

Some of us have broken relationships. Broken relationships happen even in the church.

Paul’s big problem with the church at Corinth had to do with divisions. Even at the Lord’s Supper some were excluded while others got drunk.

Paul was not about to condone such behavior so he said, “I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good.”

Jimmy Carter, in an article in Christian Century, laments: “The most serious blight that presently exists among believers is a division within this powerful river of faith. These divisions and even animosities are a cancer that is metastasizing within the body of Christ, presenting to the world a negative image of Christianity.”

Even on World Communion Sunday, we are conscious that numbers of people are not welcome at many tables of Communion around the world.

Sometimes our broken relationships are much more personal. Henry Nouwen once said, “The men and women who love me and are very close to me are also the ones who wound me.”

Some of us have broken souls. Paul says, “A person ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.”

Examination is not one of my favorite activities. I never liked tests in school and I have come to enjoy medical exams even less

When it comes to an examination of the soul, I would like to pass. But the Lord doesn’t let me off that easily.

So we come to Communion with confession on our lips, “We have erred and strayed from God’s ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have not loved our neighbors and we have not heard the cry of the needy. Forgive us, we pray.”

Friends, the one we meet at Holy Communion is the one who was broken for us.

HERE WE ENCOUNTER THE BROKEN CHRIST “The body of Christ, broken for you!”

The Christ who appears to us at Holy Communion is not the Triumphant Lord but the Suffering Servant.

Here God is neither a picture of success nor a portrait of prosperity, but someone despised and rejected by others, a man of constant sorrow, one well-acquainted with grief.

Presiding at the Communion Table you will find The Lord Christ Jesus. And you will know him by the nail prints in his hand.

A well-known painting of the Vietnam Memorial depicts a young widow and her daughter standing at the wall, reaching up and touching the name of a husband and father who died in combat.

But the reflection in the polished granite, is not the mother and daughter, but that of the husband and father, reaching out his hand to touch theirs.

Brother and Sisters, that is what happens at Holy Communion. We bring our brokenness, our sins, our sorrows, to the Lord and find him reaching out to us. He is the one who always cares and understands.

We bring our brokenness and place it under God’s blessing. God uses broken things.

He uses broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give us rain, broken grain to give us bread, broken bread to give us strength.

The body of Christ was broken for you, that your brokenness and mine may be redeemed for the glory of God and for the good of others.

Closing Prayer

Dear God, we come today searching for you. We search for your presence in our lives your guidance in this world. We come bearing today’s challenges, concerns for the future and question in our minds. 

We search for you, forgetting in each of us you imprinted your divine image so you are always in our life and being.  There is no concern or care you do not already know and bear with us. Remind us of your abiding presence and that we are your children.

We search for you overlooking in every other person your divine image is also present.  Remind us to suspend our prejudices so we can open our hearts and minds to discern you through the lives of others. 

Though we are scattered in different places, speak different languages, or come from different races and cultures, you are our common heritage so that with others we can learn your truth.

We search for you, yet in Christ you came into our world to find us, to call us, to share in our delights and mourn with us when we endure losses. 

Through Christ we know your table is wide, welcoming everyone with a cup freely given that is truly bottomless, and a love that is endless.

We pray for those who are suffering from illness body, mind, spirit or relationships and ask for your mercy. 

We ask for you to guide us in being your healing presence, your healing touch, your healing calm.

We pray for wisdom and guidance in our daily lives.  Open us to feel your loving presence each day to strengthen us. For this is our prayer, in the name of the one who taught us to pray saying:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.