09/06/2026
COMMUNION MEDITATION:
This coming Friday marks the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks that we now refer to as 9-11. Each of us probably remembers where we were that Tuesday morning in 2001 when we first heard the news or turned on our televisions to see what was happening. For those of you of a certain generation probably can recall where you were November 22, 1963, when you learned that President Kennedy was assassinated. Those of my generation might remember the classroom when our teachers wheeled in a tv to watch the Challenger that tragically exploded. Where were you when the second plane hit the tower? We remember how terribly saddened we were and the sickening feeling that came over us: a stunned disbelief that such attacks had been carried out on our soil.
This is what’s known as an impact event. An impact event is something that is so dramatic in your life that it changes you forever. It’s something that you can’t forget. An impact event changes everything.
The way we felt 25 years ago is likely not that different from how the followers of Jesus felt some 2,000 years ago when they watched, not two towers coming down, but one cross going up, and watched the man whom they believed was the Messiah dying a shameful death there. In the Gospel of Luke {chapter 24}, The two men on the road to Emmaus spoke for many when they said of Jesus, “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”
Eventually these two men came to realize that the man walking with them that day was in fact the very man whose death they had been mourning. Jesus was alive. And he said to them, “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?”
What appeared to be a heartbreaking tragedy was in fact a heavenly triumph. The cross was no accident, no unfortunate turn of events; it was a plan designed by the grand Designer “before the creation of the world” to rescue lost humanity. From his suffering to his glory.
Communion is a time of worship devoted on the first day of each week to remembering our Savior’s suffering and glory, as an act of remembrance of Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins.
Communion is especially inexplicable unless the Resurrection is true. Why would Jews make up a practice where they symbolically eat the body and drink the blood of Jesus?
Only an “impact event” like the Resurrection could explain such a swift and monumental shift in Jewish thinking and practice. An impact event known as the resurrection of Jesus Christ the anointed Messiah changed everything for thousands of Jews two thousand years ago, and today it can still change you, me, and the rest of the world.
