In most churches there is the opportunity on Sundays to participate in the Eucharist, to eat  bread and to drink wine in remembrance of what Christ has done for us on the cross and to give thanks for the salvation which His death and resurrection have secured for all people throughout history,

This is the central act of worship for Christians. It anchors us firmly to Christ’s death and resurrection and reminds us of God’s miraculous work on our behalf.

To outsiders, this ritual and remembrance are anachronistic and bizarre. Christians have debated for centuries what ‘actually happens’ during this ceremony. Nonetheless, this act is a fundamental part of our worship, echoing the Jewish Passover meal but firmly rooted in both the act of remembrance and anticipation.

How can this apparently insignificant ritual be such a vital part of Christianity? What is the significance of this act?

All four gospels tell us of the Last Supper where this ritual was instituted.Paul writes about it in 1 Corinthians 11. Jesus spoke about the bread representing His body and the wine His blood, pointing to the significance of His death for our sins as the means of our reconciliation with God.

Every time we celebrate this, we focus on the means of our salvation and what Christ’s death actually achieved: the forgiveness of sins and our reconciliation to God. There is nothing more important in the world than this.

Today, if you have the opportunity to participate in ‘taking Communion’, ‘sharing in the Eucharist’ or ‘participating in Mass’, take it. Be thankful for this ceremony. Don’t take it for granted or treat it with indifference. To be reconciled to God is the most marvellous thing that can ever happen to us. What happens here is a connection ‘between an irreducible core of historical data, a faith in the presence of the living Lord and the inner responses of personal prayer’ (Eugene Peterson, ‘Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work’, P 63) and is a vital means of spiritual nourishment.

Dave spoke tonight from Luke 10:30-42. In this passage, we see Jesus and His disciples stopping at Bethany, at the home of Lazarus, Martha and Mary. Martha seems to have been proactive in welcoming Jesus and looked after Him well. Jesus used this opportunity to continue teaching, with all apparently able to listen to Him. Mary certainly spent time listening, but she did not just listen. She adored Him; she was oblivious to everything else. Martha was distracted by all the other things she had to do and resented Mary’s devotion to Jesus. She tackled Jesus about this, asking Him, ‘Lord, don’t you care…?’

It’s always a mistake to assume that Jesus does not care when life does not go our way. It was easier for Martha to assume He didn’t care and to blame Mary than to look at her own agenda and adjust this accordingly. Jesus responds lovingly to her, but brings her attention firmly to the most important thing. Martha was missing out on being in God’s presence by all her preparation and busyness. Being in God’s presence is the greater thing; a pure heart of devotion and adoration that delights in God’s presence is what is truly important.

Being busy and overworked is often seen as a virtue, but so often we are like this because this is where we get our sense of worth and identity from. We must not serve God simply out of a sense of duty, but must understand and value the role of adoration. Sitting without serving is empty ,but so is serving without sitting. We need to sit at the feet of Jesus before we go out to serve. Adoration and devotion are the starting place of service.

The Bible is full of names, many of them unpronounceable to English tongues, and often skipped over as we read the Bible because of their unfamiliarity and our impatience with lists. They remind us, nonetheless, that giving something or someone a name is a vital process for communication and identification, and these lists also serve the purpose of showing us that each individual matters to God. We are not just numbers or statistics to Him; we are known by name.

In the same way, we attempt to give names to objects and feelings so that we can identify them and know how to treat such things, starting with Adam naming the living creatures in the Garden of Eden (Gen 2:18-19). Giving a name to something is incredibly significant, for it helps us to move from vagueness to true understanding and leads us to a deeper appreciation of the individual.

Over time, however, words change their meaning and some get lost altogether, which (to someone like me) is a shame. One such word is acedia or accidie.

This word means spiritual listlessness, often listed in the seven deadly sins as ‘sloth’, but we tend to associate that word simply with laziness these days, and acedia or accidie is not really laziness per se. Etymologically, acedia joins the negative prefix a– to the Greek noun kēdos, which means “care, concern, or grief”. It sounds like apathy, and certainly it is a debilitating emotion, leaving us with things to do but no energy, desire or will to do them. Anyone who has suffered a debilitating illness knows how hard it can be to get ‘back to normal’ afterwards, and acedia is that kind of feeling, but is also linked to a sense of despair, helplessness and hopelessness. When we experience this emotion, we feel paralysed, unable to do anything really, trapped. It’s often known as the ‘noonday devil’, because there are things to do but no desire or energy to do them.

Many people are, I believe, feeling this way at the present time because of the limitations on human contact and activity being imposed on us. The barrage of bad news in the media can seem overwhelming at times, but usually we cope through a combination of work, rest and play (and possibly Mars Bars!) When these are interfered with, particularly our physical contact with friends and family, anxiety rises and this can lead to a sense of listlessness and hopelessness which form acedia. People need people: that is simply the way God has made us, and so to remove this normality from our lives for prolonged periods is very harmful.

Does it matter to have an accurate name for how we feel? I think it does. Jonathan L. Zecher says, ‘When an experience can be named, it can be communicated and even shared.’ I believe it’s important to name things because naming is a form of identification, and once we can identify something, we can do something about it. Instead of being overwhelmed by inertia (I felt during the first lockdown that I was in a state of suspended animation, waiting daily for ‘something’ to happen without ever feeling in control of anything), we can address the issue and recognise that this is an emotion, not our whole identity. Jonathan L. Zecher goes on to say, ‘Naming and expressing experiences allows us to claim some agency in dealing with them.’ As we journey through the next four weeks of lockdown in England, we need to learn to name and express our experiences and understand that we are not alone in how we feel, even if we are physically alone. There is freedom in naming and sharing these things.

Many people at this time are looking for an exit strategy out of lockdown, but perhaps more important for Christians is to learn God’s entrance strategy into joy, a joy which is not dependent on happy circumstances or sunny personalities.

The joy God gives us is not dependent on circumstances. Jesus could talk about giving His disciples His joy hours before He died possibly the most painful death imaginable. (John 15:11, John 16:24) He could talk about their joy being complete even though He knew many of them would die a martyr’s death for His sake. Many years before, Nehemiah had spoken words which have proved true down the ages: ‘the joy of the Lord is your strength.’ (Neh 8:10) Paul knew all about this. He knew that the Philippians didn’t have to be frightened in any way by anyone who opposed them. (Phil 1:28) He knew that faith involved not only glory but suffering (Phil 1:29), but he knew, as James did, that all suffering, trials and tests have a redemptive purpose. James said, ‘Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.’ (James 1:2-4) None of us naturally view trials in this way. Any adverse circumstance is more likely to provoke fear, anxiety, resentment and anger in us than it is to produce joy, and yet the constant witness of the Bible is that we can know joy despite our circumstances. We can know contentment whether we have much or whether we have little. (Phil 4:12) We can live in a totally counter-cultural way that becomes the greatest witness imaginable because we know that Jesus loves us and is working for our good in every situation and every circumstance.

Joy is found in knowing who God is and realising He is Lord of all, He’s always good and He is working for our good in every situation. When we get to that point, we are free, no matter what physical chains may be on us. When we get to that point, we can ‘stand firm in the one Spirit, striving together as one for the faith of the gospel.’ (Phil 1:27) We can dance in the darkness and sing in the shadows, as Rend Collective sing. (‘Joy Of The Lord’)

My granddaughter has recently discovered the joys of a warm summer and public fountains… At the same time, however, she was initially nervous of these fountains because they were pre-programmed to disperse water at different speeds and heights and she was wary. She needed encouragement to jump in and get wet! (Once in, she loved it!)

In many ways, I think we are the same when it comes to letting others know the good news about God. We are wary. What if people think we’re weird? What if people don’t listen to us? What if they have questions we can’t answer? What if they don’t want to know?

There’s always a risk when we take that step of faith into the unknown and introduce faith into a conversation that perhaps wasn’t expecting that response. But, as we will be considering the next time we look at ‘the wells of salvation’, there’s a difference between paddling and swimming. We need, perhaps, to learn to get wet for God! Taking every opportunity to speak of the God who has saved us is a liberating and exhilarating experience… but you have to get wet!