Communion Meditation 5/3/15

In our church, people rotate giving a short meditation before communion each week. People typically do this for one month at a time and then rotate. It is my turn this month, and these are my thoughts I shared today in our communion meditation. 

There's several different degrees to the word different. That may not be quite so obvious at first, but let me give you an example. My wife says that I'm "different" sometimes. All the wives know what I'm talking about here. That meaning is usually somewhat funny and in jest. Husbands , quite honestly, tend to think the same thing about their wives. Youth, some of you might call people at your school "different." They don't blend in. Don't look like you. Maybe you don't quite understand them. Likely, everyone pressures them to not be different. This kind of different can have a little more of an edge to it, especially when you're a teenager and simply worried about fitting in.

Then, there's Jesus' brand of different. That's the whole "I'm going to allow myself to be hung a Cross to save you even though I'm blameless" different. That's a whole 'nother level of different. Yet, that is what we're called to. In an American culture and even church culture that is placing more and more emphasize on blending in and not being different, Jesus says no. Jesus asks us to be different, demands it from us even.

We see this in 1 John 2:15-17:

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world-the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions-is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

What Christ did on the cross, what we commemorate now around this table, was different. Whoever puts their hope in worldly things, in being just like everyone else, will perish, but for those of us that come around this table this morning, being different is the key to life. Let us remember that our lives should reflect that.