Communion

When it comes to the ultimate test of devotion, fewer than half of Americans would give a piece of themselves to save someone they care about. A revealing new survey has found that just 39% of Americans would be willing to donate an organ to family or friends—a striking discovery that sheds light on where people draw the boundary of personal sacrifice.

The study of 2,000 U.S. adults, explored various dimensions of loyalty in both personal relationships and consumer behavior. While organ donation may be a step too far for many, Americans demonstrate commitment in other meaningful ways.

More than half (53%) would endure waiting in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles for someone they care about. Additionally, 62% would put their reputation on the line by acting as a reference for a loved one’s apartment or job application.

Perhaps the most revealing statistic is how Americans would handle unexpected good fortune. An overwhelming 82% said they would share a windfall of $100,000 with family and friends—indicating that while many might hesitate to share their kidneys, they’re quite willing to share their cash.

Possible Preaching Angle:

1) Selfishness; Self-centeredness – It is amazing how selfish people are becoming when called to make a very personal sacrifice for their very “flesh and blood” relatives; 2) Christ, sacrifice of – This also highlights the amazing sacrifice Jesus made for his “brothers and sisters” when he said “Take and eat. This is my body” (Matt. 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19; 1 Cor. 11:24) and “he himself bore our sins in His body on the tree” (1 Pet. 2:24).

According to a French story, a drowned girl's body was recovered from France's Seine River sometime in the late 1800s. Her body, displayed in a Parisian mortuary in an attempt to identify her, captured the imagination of one of the mortuary's pathologists. So, he had a sculptor take a plaster cast of her face. The beautiful, enigmatic mask—named "L'Inconnue de la Seine" ("The unknown woman of the Seine")—was soon for sale among artists and writers who found it a muse for their work. In fact, no fashionable European living room of the late 1800s was complete without a mask of the Inconnue on the wall.

But her image didn't stop there. And this is where the story gets really interesting: In 1955 Asmund Laerdal saved the life of his drowning young son, grabbing the boy's motionless body from the water just in time and clearing his airways.

Laerdal at that time was a successful Norwegian toy manufacturer, specializing in making children's dolls and model cars from the new generation of soft plastics. When he was approached to make a training aid for the newly-invented technique of CPR, his son's brush with death a few years earlier made him very receptive.

He developed a mannequin which simulates an unconscious patient requiring CPR. Remembering the mask on the wall of his grandparents' house many years earlier, he decided that "The unknown woman of the Seine" would become the face of Resusci Anne. She has a pleasant, attractive face, with the hint of a smile playing on her lips. Her eyes are closed but they look as if they might spring open at any moment.

So, if you're one of the 300 million people who's been trained in CPR, you've almost certainly had your lips pressed to the Inconnue's.

Possible Preaching Angle:

How like God's work of redemption this is: to take the very worst things imaginable—like the horror of death—and make something new that would save countless lives. This is what God did for us on the cross, which we remember each Easter and Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:26). The difference between the cross and the “unknown lady” is that our Lord was raised triumphantly from the grave and we serve a risen Lord (1 Cor. 15:1-58).

These days, Americans seem divided by almost everything. But you know what has proved successful at bringing Americans of different backgrounds together? Unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks. Also, riblets, onion rings, chicken crispers, and other crowd-pleasers from affordable chain restaurants such as Olive Garden and Applebee’s.

Though sometimes banned by municipalities wanting to "preserve neighborhood character” or slow gentrification, these chains actually provide a hidden social service: They promote much more socioeconomic integration than do independently owned commercial businesses—or, for that matter, traditional public institutions.

That’s according to a provocative new paper from Maxim Massenkoff and Nathan Wilmers. The authors analyzed a massive trove of geolocation data to assess where Americans come into contact with people of different income classes than themselves—if they do at all.

Sadly, the paper also found that many public institutions we might associate with facilitating encounters across class lines instead reinforce seclusion. Parks, schools, libraries, and churches. There are exceptions, but on average, each of these establishments leads to less socioeconomic mixing, more within-income-group hobnobbing, and even more class isolation.

David Brooks writes in The New York Times:

Rabbi Elliot Kukla once described a woman with a brain injury who would sometimes fall to the floor. People around her would rush to immediately get her back on her feet, before she was quite ready.

She told Kukla, “I think people rush to help me up because they are so uncomfortable with seeing an adult lying on the floor. But what I really need is for someone to get down on the ground with me.”

We all need someone to get down on the ground with us. This is what God has done for us in Jesus Christ.

Most of us regularly lose things: keys, wallets, TV remotes, glasses, and phones. Some of us are more prone to misplacing things than others. It’s not surprising that men are twice as likely to lose their phones than women. One study concluded that the average person misplaces nine things a day and spends an average of fifteen minutes looking for lost items.

Why does this happen? What is the psychology and science behind it? It comes down to a breakdown of attention and memory. When we misplace our belongings, "we fail to activate the part of our brain responsible for encoding what we're doing." The hippocampus part of our brain is responsible for taking a snapshot and preserving the memory in a set of neurons that can be activated later. We lose things when we do not have a clear reference point of when or where we put down objects like our keys or glasses.

One of the ways we can improve our memory is through practicing mindfulness. We do this by stepping back and calming our thoughts, focusing on being present in the moment.

Possible Preaching Angle:

We can lose more than our physical possession! We can misplace our hope, peace, joy, and love. Advent is a season where we can refocus and become mindful of what we have received in Christ's coming.

With hundreds of things to see in Berlin, few tourists pay attention to what lies under their feet. The four inch by four inch blocks of brass embedded in the pavement are easy to miss. But once you know they exist, you begin to come across them with surprising frequency.

Each stone is engraved with the name and fate of an individual who has suffered under the Nazi regime. They are known as Stolpersteine, or “stumbling stones.” There are over eight thousand of them in the German capital, and tens of thousands of them are spread across European countries, making it the largest decentralized monument in the world.

The idea was first conceived by German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992 to commemorate individual victims of the Holocaust. Each block, which begins with “Here lived,” is placed at exactly the last place where the person lived freely before he or she fell victim to Nazi terror and was deported to an extermination camp. Unlike other holocaust memorials that focus only on Jews, the Stolpersteine honor all victims of the Nazi regime, including Jews, the disabled, the dissident, and the gays.

Although not everyone supports the drive, Michael Friedrichs-Friedländer, the craftsman who makes each Stolperstein, spoke in support of the project. “I can’t think of a better form of remembrance,” he says. “If you want to read the stone, you must bow before the victim.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In his lowly life and death, the person of Jesus Christ can also be a stumbling stone, or the stone that was rejected by men that is precious to God.

During World War II General Douglas MacArthur wanted an island airfield from which to launch his forces and so he invaded the Indonesian island of Biak. Six months after they secured the island, in June 1944, a chaplain named Leon Maltby arrived on the island to minister to the troops. He had a 20x60 canvas structure to serve as his chapel but nothing in it except for a floor made out of packed coral and a roof made from a yellow parachute. So with the help of some carpenters he built pews, a platform, and an altar.

He wanted to serve communion but had nothing to serve it with. He found some unused 50 caliber bullets. He used new shells because he didn’t want to use any that had been used to kill. He pulled out the lead, gunpowder, and firing caps. He welded them, pressed them into the right shape, and shined them. Each took about two-hours to complete and he made enough for 80 communion cups which he used to serve his men.

In 1945 Chaplain Maltby sailed into Japan and was actually the first Protestant chaplain to enter Japan. He became good friends with a local Japanese pastor and used that same communion set to serve the Lord’s Supper with him, which moved the Japanese pastor deeply. The set is now on display at the Veterans Museum in Daytona Beach where a sign reads, “The pastor clearly understood the significance of ‘Instruments of death becoming a symbol of eternal life.’”

In an interview on NPR’S Fresh Air, Joshua Mezrich, an associate professor in the division of multiorgan transplantation at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, reflected on saying a few words about the donor before the operation begins:

I want to reiterate as many times as possible how important the donors are. How much they are heroes to us and we always want to remember their stories and this gift that they're giving. It's very emotional when … we're in the operating room, we always take a pause. Our people from our organ procurement team, after a moment of silence, will read something. Often it's a poem or something that one of the loved ones asked us to say about the person. Maybe a little bit about who they were and what was important to them. Sometimes it has a religious base, sometimes it doesn't.

And we all think about it, and it is very special. It's emotional. And then the second that's over, we move on and really go after the task at hand. So it's interesting. You have this emotional experience. Then you have to very quickly kind of push it out of the way and move on to the operation. But it's always very special.

How much more should we as Christians seek to remember the gospel story and what we have been given?

In a 2017 lecture, Mark Meynell addressed the connection between identity and memory:

BBC Radio 3, the U.K.'s primary classical music station, ran a fascinating series of articles on music and memory. Adam Zeman, a Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology, wrote about amnesia and memory loss and their relationship to epilepsy. Zeman mentioned two patients, Peter and Marcus, who described their amnesia in very similar terms. One said: "My memory of my past is a blank space. I feel lost and hopeless. I'm trying to explore a void." Both described how disconcerting it is to look at photos. Even though they recognize themselves, they have no recollection of the moment. One said that it's like "reading a biography of a stranger." He's conscious of recent memories slipping away from him, like ships sailing out to sea in the fog, never to be seen again.

Two things stand out in Zeman's essay. First, without memory, it's hard to cling to an identity. So one of the patients said: "I don't have the moorings that other people draw on to know who they are." Second, it's hard to have hope when we don't know our past. As Zeman explained, "The inability to invoke the past greatly impedes their ability to imagine a future."

Possible Preaching Angles: In the Lord's Supper Jesus has invited us to be a community of remembrance. The Lord's Supper gives us our spiritual moorings. It gives us the "ability to imagine a future."

Epitaphs are a powerful thing. What is said about us when we die is a window into how we lived our lives and what we think was most important. Ludolph van Ceulen, a Dutch mathematician who was the first to calculate pi, died at the age of seventy in 1610. He had 3.14159265358979323846264338327950 engraved on his tombstone. He wanted his proudest achievement to be known to all as he entered eternity.

Martin Luther King Jr. had the following epitaph: "Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty I am free at last."

Benjamin Franklin once wrote an epitaph for himself in one of his journals: "The Body of B. Franklin, Printer, like the Cover of an old Book, Its Contents torn out, And stript of its Lettering and Gilding, Lies here, Food for Worms. …" Despite his many achievements, Franklin wanted to be known first and foremost as a printer.

Thomas Jefferson's read: "Author of the Declaration of Independence [and] of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom & Father of the University of Virginia."

Possible Preaching Angles: Cross; Jesus' death—The cross was Jesus' ultimate epitaph with a resounding message from God to us: "It is finished," or "I died for your sins," or "I have set you free," or "My blood shed for you."

Nabeel Qureshi, a Muslim convert to Jesus Christ, had a "resolutely" Muslim friend named Sahar who was attracted to parts of Christianity but couldn't accept the idea of God becoming a human being. On one occasion she honestly asked, "How can you believe Jesus is God if he was born through the birth canal of a woman and that he had to use the bathroom? Aren't these things beneath God?"

Qureshi affirmed her questions and then asked her one in turn: "Sahar, let's say that you are on your way to a very important ceremony and are dressed in your finest clothes. You are about to arrive just on time, but then you see your daughter drowning in a pool of mud. What would you do? Let her drown and arrive looking dignified, or rescue her but arrive at the ceremony covered in mud?

Her response was very matter of fact, "Of course, I would jump in the mud and save her." Nuancing the question more, Qureshi asked her, "Let's say there were others with you. Would you send someone else to save her, or would you save her yourself?"

She responded, "If she is my daughter, how could I send anyone else? They would not care for her like I do. I would go myself, definitely."

Qureshi said, "If you, being human, love your daughter so much that you are willing to lay aside your dignity to save her, how much more can we expect God, if he is our loving Father, to lay aside his majesty to save us?"

The biblical story of God eventually won Sahar's heart. As Qureshi reported, "The message of God's selfless love had overpowered her, and she could no longer remain a Muslim. She had accepted Jesus as her Savior."

London witnessed a spectacular scene when a giant wooden replica of the city ignited and burned brilliantly to the ground. The conflagration was planned, however, in honor of the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London. The original fire began on September 2, 1666, in the early morning at a bakery on Pudding Lane. The surrounding structures were soon engulfed, and the fire spread to the rest of the city, lasting four entire days. The modern-day festival to remember the disaster is known as "London's Burning" and contains four days of free art events, concluding this year with the grand burning of the replica of medieval London.

At first glance, it seems a bit odd to celebrate such a catastrophe-especially with another fire. However, as gruesome as the Great Fire may have been, it now has its place firmly etched into the city's history as a turning point: the beginning of a time of regrowth and resurgence for London.

Christians arguably perform the same "odd" type of ritual when we take communion and decorate our homes and sacred buildings with crosses. We not only commemorate the brutal murder of Jesus, but we adorn our worship with the murder weapon: the cross, one of the most widely known torture devices of that time period. And yet it doesn't seem strange to us—because we know that what Satan intended to be the ultimate act of evil, God turned around to be the ultimate act of love.

Potential Preaching Angles: Redemption; Cross; Crucifixion; Easter; Communion

3,975 The number of feet of the longest loaf of bread in the world, made at a bakers' party in Portugal in 2005. When sliced, it fed over 15,000 people. (Note: This record still stands in 2024)

1777 The year wheat was first planted (as a hobby crop) in the United States.

1928 The year pre-sliced bread was invented in Chillicothe, Missouri, after being worked on for 16 years.

12.6 The grams of protein in a 3.5 ounce serving of hard red winter wheat, almost equal to the grams of protein in the same serving of soybeans.

10 The years a family of four could live off the bread produced by one acre of wheat.

6 The number of wheat classifications: hard red winter, hard red spring, soft red winter, durum (hard), hard white, soft white.

1.25-2 The hours it takes for Saccharomyces cerevisiae (common bread yeast) to double in numbers, making it easily cultured.

1 A single loaf of bread, when partaken at Communion, is a powerful symbol of Christian unity: "Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf" (1 Cor. 10:17).