Food for the Journey

the following is a great post about communion. to me the communion that we take each week is the center point for all the worship service is about. this post was adapted from another
blog, that i linked to from another blog. i wouldn't be re-posting this if i didn't like it. i hope you like it. (if you attend port city, you may hear this again in the future.)

In 1 Kings 19 we read about Elijah, the prophet of God, as he's running scared from queen Jezebel. Figuring he's about out of time, he plops down under a tree and asks God to take his life. "Kill me now, Lord, I'm as good as dead anyways. And it’ll hurt less coming from you…" Exhausted, he falls asleep under the tree until a messenger from God wakes him, offering him a meal. Picking up the story in verse 5:

⁵Then he lay down and slept under the broom tree. But as he was sleeping, an angel touched him and told him, "Get up and eat!" ⁶He looked around and saw some bread baked on hot stones and a jar of water! So he ate and drank and lay down again.

⁷Then the angel of the LORD came again and touched him and said, "Get up and eat some more, for there is a long journey ahead of you."

⁸So he got up and ate and drank, and the food gave him enough strength to travel forty days and forty nights to Mount Sinai,^[a] the mountain of God. ⁹There he came to a cave, where he spent the night. (NLT)

Elijah could not have known what he was about to go through to meet with God. I mean, who wakes up in the morning and decides to walk 200 miles (the approximate distance from Beersheba to Horeb) without stopping to eat or drink for 40 days? But God knew, and God provided Elijah with the food and drink he would need to make the journey to meet with Him.

Why does it matter? Well, because He does the same for us.

In John 6, Jesus teaches a hungry crowd. He breaks five loaves and two fish, and from them He makes a meal for maybe as many as 10,000 men, women and children. Their bellies were full, but their hearts still missed the point. So Jesus begins teaching them (starting in verse 49):

⁴⁹Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. ⁵⁰But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. ⁵¹I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."

⁵²Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"

⁵³Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ⁵⁴Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. (NLT)

Well, the crowd was understandably upset at this teaching, for even beyond the human taboo of cannibalism, they had been taught from times ancient that they were never to partake of human flesh or of blood. "…for the blood is the life," says God in Deuteronomy 12:23.

The LIFE is in the blood…

This passage, to me, because of the straightforward promise it makes: those who partake have LIFE., has so much meaning. We will be sustained in our journey to meet God. Not just physically, mind you -- this isn't about nutrition. It's about putting the Risen One into us, into our hearts, with all of His power and glory.

Please understand that I'm not talking about transubstantiation here. I'm fully aware that the emblems -- the bread and the wine -- are just that, emblems. Symbols. But symbols with great substance, with enormous significance. In a spiritual sense, when I partake of them I believe that in a very real way, I am putting Jesus into me, filling myself with His LIFE. Like Elijah, it is this food, this drink that sustains me on my journey to meet God. I need it desperately, because I have no idea where that journey is going to take me.

But God does.

"Get up and eat some more,” he says to us “for there is a long journey ahead of you."