It is communion Sunday, and this morning I have for my text 2 Corinthians 4.  I do not plan to pull the whole text apart this morning, but rather only to share a couple of thoughts.  What I say, I want to relate to communion.

    What does it mean for us to come to communion - we have looked at that question probably a hundred different ways.   But as I listen to Paul speak about his ministry - though he does not intend to speak about the Lord’s Supper - I hear some things in this passage that really strike home about a group of believers living together - eating together - speaking to one another’s lives.

 

    We who believe do not preach ourselves.   We do not claim to be the people who have figured out God’s spiritual secret - and who now Walk Alone On the High Plains of Spirituality.  As a matter of fact, says Paul, let me give you a better picture - we are keeping the treasure of the Gospel of grace - of the promise of resurrection and the new heavens and the new earth - of the promise that we will one day be like Him - Holy - we keep that treasure in dirty, everyday, tupperware - (the modern equivalent of clay pots).  

    We tend to keep our treasures tucked away in safe-deposit boxes, locked up to protect it.  For a while we kept some silver that had belonged to Sue’s Great Aunt Myrtle in our closet in a box- no one, including us, ever saw it or used it.   That’s what we do with treasure.

    What I am saying is that this treasure of the Gospel is being kept in battered up, tupperware people - that’s how God displays it.   We come to communion not to put the crowning glory on our gloriously happy week - untouched by trouble and sorrow and sin.  The beauty of communion is that I bring this battered, frustrated at times, sorrowful at times, apathetic at times, sinful tupperware up to the throne of God - and he pours grace into us.  You and I are drinking the magnificently valuable blood that washes us clean.  We are eating the magnificent body of Christ torn apart for us - resurrected - filling us with life.  This is what we preach - not ourselves, we are just tupperware, who ever preached about tupperware?   We preach the magnificent treasure that Christ pours out freely into us.

 

    I have already explained vs.7 - I want to focus on vs.8-11.   If vs.7 explains who we are - the next verses explain what the churches corporate suffering looks like.

    Churches nowadays want to look needless.  They have coffee bars, playgrounds, all kinds of programs, big beautiful buildings, staffs.  I’m struck by the contrast of the Apostle Paul’s ministry team in these verses.  No coffee bar is mentioned.

 

 The Last thing I want to say comes out of vs.16-18 - What is the benefit of seeing ourselves as spiritual tupperware - it’s not an inspiring image.   If you saw a church that advertised - “Come to our  tired, frustrated, persecuted fellowship” - would you go there?  

    Yet, Paul says that though outwardly he and his fellow workers are wasting away, inwardly, when they come as weak, broken down tupperware, before the Lord and receive the Gospel, they are being inwardly renewed.  

    There is...  in our troubles, the ones that we don’t deal very well with, we struggle through ... a glory being produced in us.   We are beaten down with trouble, but as we turn to the Lord, as we come to communion this morning, confessing our need for Jesus, we are bringing glory to God and being changed into glorious children - though we cannot see it.  The Treasure of the Gospel is remaking us.  

    In a crushed, fallen world, where everyone is claiming that they are fine - life is fine - while their souls are melting away and their lives and relationships fester - we are living with our eyes open.  Seeing our own damage and sorrow and failure - but receiving treasure and being renewed.

 

    This morning, I want to encourage you to come and eat the bread and drink the cup with a bunch of - broken, oppressed but not crushed, perplexed but not despairing, persecuted but not abandoned - believers who need treasure.