Well, hey everybody, I'm Adam Schell, the pastor of Melbourne Heights, and welcome to our sermon podcast. And I just want to start out by thanking you for spending part of your day with us. And if you're blessed during our time together today, let me invite you to come and worship with us live on Sunday mornings at 10.30 a.m. Eastern Time.
You can worship with us live on our church website at mhbclouisville.com slash live, or if you're in the Louisville, Kentucky area, we would love to have you come and join us in person. With that, let's get right into this episode's sermon. So during our time together last week, we started a new series of sermons called At the Table. And in this series, we're talking about what happens at this table, the communion table, because the communion table is more than just four legs with the top.
The communion table is a place that challenges each of us to become more like Jesus, who willingly laid down his life for us. So we need to spend some time talking about what happened at this table. But personally, I can't help, but whenever I start to think about tables, I'll also start to think about food. I guess that might be part of why I'm a Baptist.
Maybe you feel the same way. Maybe when you start thinking about tables, you can't help but think about food, too. So when you think about tables, you may start thinking about sitting together around a table with your family at Thanksgiving time, and somebody carves up that Thanksgiving turkey. Or maybe you'll think about the way that your grandma put one of her pies out on the dining room table to let it cool down every summer when she was baking them fresh at home.
Or maybe when you think about tables, you can't help but think about sitting down at a kitchen table in your dining room and having a nice bowl of homemade ice cream at some point during the summer season. But all of these foods that we think of, all of these dishes that we sometimes think of when we think about tables, all these dishes, they start out as recipes, right? And some of the recipes that make their way onto our table are recipes that have been passed down from our families for generations. Other recipes that make it out onto our tables are things that we find as we're scrolling on social media stumble upon some recipes that we think will sound good.
And some of the recipes that make it out onto our tables taste great. But other recipes that make it out onto our tables don't end up turning out quite so good, right? And that was definitely the case for a recipe that was scribbled down on a sheet of notebook paper by a classmate of a boy named Andrew Marcus in the book Freakle Juice. And not only was this recipe not very good when it was all put together, Andrew would later say that it was just plain awful.
And what is it that made this recipe so awful? Well, let me give you the ingredients that are in this particular recipe. This recipe includes grape juice, vinegar, mustard, mayonnaise, juice from one lemon, pepper and salt, ketchup, and just a touch, just a speck of onion, all mixed together in one serving. Now, for those of us sitting in this room, we know that there is nothing inherently wrong with any of those ingredients when they're on their own.
But when you mix all of those ingredients together, there's just ain't no way that any of that's going to taste very good. But that doesn't keep Andrew Marcus from mixing up this entire recipe at home. So in the book, Judy Blume tells us what happens when Andrew makes this recipe, and this is what she writes. When she tells us what he made at home with this recipe in hand, Andrew climbed up on the kitchen counter so that he could reach the cabinets.
He found everything there except the lemon, and that was in the refrigerator, and the onion. His mother always kept onions in the basement and the bin. Andrew ran downstairs and selected the small ones, since the recipe called for just a speck of that onion. With or without the skin on it, Andrew wondered.
He then chose a big blue glass to mix all of it up in. He'd start out with just one glassful, and then he'd drink another if he still needed more. There's no point in overdoing it the first time. That's what his mother always said.
Now, first it was the grape juice, Andrew thought. So he filled the glass halfway with grape juice, and then he added an ice cube. Because all drinks always taste better when they're cold, and he was sure that this one would, too. Then he added the other ingredients one by one.
His mother had two types of vinegar, wine vinegar and plain vinegar. Andrew picked the wine one. He put in some hot mustard, one spoonful of mayonnaise, and plenty of pepper and salt. Then he added some ketchup, which was hard to pour.
But what about the olive oil that the recipe called for? His mother had vegetable oil, but no olive oil. Maybe the stuff that looked like water in the olive jar in the refrigerator was what the recipe meant. So he put in a few spoonfuls of that, too.
Now it was time for the lemon. Andrew cut one in half, and he squeezed it. But a seed dropped in by mistake. He picked that out with a spoon.
He hated pits in his juice, after all. Now all he needed was that speck of onion, and he was all set. He put it together, he stirred it, and mixed the drink up, and then he smelled it. And, oh, it smelled awful.
Just plain awful. He was going to have to hold his nose while he drank it. So he stuck his tongue into the glass to taste it. Ick!
It was terrible. He didn't know how he would ever manage to get it all down and drink it fast, too. So Andrew held his nose. It was that bad.
There is no possible way that this combination of ingredients was ever going to taste good. As a matter of fact, this is the worst combination of ingredients that I've ever heard of in a single recipe. But you know what? Andrew drank it anyway.
Even though it smelled awful, Andrew still drank it. Even though it tasted disgusting, Andrew still drank it. Even though it had a weird combination of ingredients that no one would have dreamed of putting together, Andrew still drank it. But why?
Why in the world could have motivated anyone to have drank such a horrible concoction? Well, Andrew drank this concoction because he wanted to change himself. He drank this concoction because he wanted to be transformed. He drank this concoction because he wanted to become a new person.
And he was told that by drinking this disgusting concoction of ingredients that he would be changed. He was told that this concoction would transform him as a person. He was told that by drinking this concoction he would become a new person. Because he was promised if he just drank this weird concoction of ingredients that he would get freckles.
That's right. Freckles. Those little brownish spots that a lot of us have someplace on our bodies that are usually bigger than the size of a nail head. That's what Andrew wanted.
He wanted freckles. Because he wanted to look more like one of his best friends, a kid named Nicky Way. And Judy Blume explains to us a little bit more about Nicky when she writes that Nicky had about a million freckles. They covered his face and his ears and the back of his neck.
But Andrew didn't have any freckles. He had two boards on one of his fingers, but they didn't do him any good at all. But if he had freckles, if he had freckles like his friend Nicky, then his mother would never be able to tell if Andrew's neck was dirty. So he wouldn't have to wash his neck anymore.
And then Andrew would never have to worry about being late for school again. So Andrew gulps down this sickening concoction, finishing every last drop of this so-called freckle juice. Because he dreams of waking up the very next morning to find that his skin has been covered in these beautiful brown spots. But Andrew doesn't get freckles from drinking this freckle juice.
All Andrew gets is sick. Well, that and the last one that he was actually a pretty cool kid, whether he has freckles or not. Because that's really the point of the book. That's why Judy Blume wrote Freckle Juice more than 50 years ago.
But even though this book has been around for a long time, I can still remember the very first time that I ever heard this story. The first time it was ever read to me. It happened while my family was out on a road trip. And you have to remember this road trip happened when I was a kid.
So this was before kids had cell phones or tablets or anything like that that they could have in the car with them to keep them entertained on a long road trip. So my brother, my sister, and I, we begged our mom to read us a book. And with four rambunctious kids in the car, I'm sure my mom would have done anything that it took to settle us down. So she started reading Freckle Juice for us.
But by the time that she made it to the recipe for Freckle Juice, about 30 pages into the book, my mom was starting to get a little bit queasy. And by the time Andrew bolted the whole thing down a few pages later, we had to stop the car. And I don't know if it was because of this recipe or listening to Andrew drink the whole thing, or she just got a little motion sick because she was reading to us in a moving motor vehicle. But my poor mom had turned green around the gills.
And that's why, to this day, I still consider Freckle Juice to be one of the most sickening books that I have ever read individually. I mean, just hearing all of these ingredients in it is enough to make my stomach start to turn. And thinking about Andrew drinking down this whole concoction, yeah, it's kind of gross. But we can still learn something from Andrew's story.
And that's because Andrew's story teaches us that sometimes change can be hard to swallow, right? Sometimes changes can be hard for us to swallow. But what does any of this really have to do with us? I mean, why did I spend the first few minutes of this sermon talking about this horrible concoction, this horrible combination of ingredients that Andrew drank when he was making his Freckle Juice?
I mean, was I just trying to gross you out as part of the sermon? Well, the answer to that is actually yes. That's why I told you this story. And I wanted to try to gross you out just a little bit during the sermon because I'm trying to help you feel a little bit of the way that the crowd in the scripture passage I wanted to take a closer look at today probably felt when they were listening to Jesus teach.
But what is it that Jesus is going to say in the passage we're looking at today that's going to end up grossing out the people who are listening to him? Let's take a look together and find out. If you've got a Bible closed by or Bible app on your phone, I encourage you to go ahead and open it to John chapter 6. John chapter 6.
We're going to start reading in verse 51. Together we're going to see what it is that Jesus says to this crowd that sounds kind of gross. So let's start reading in John chapter 6, verse 51. This is what Jesus says.
Jesus says, So did you hear what Jesus says in this passage? Did you hear what he says? In this passage Jesus says, I assure you that unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. And that sounds pretty gross, doesn't it?
But I'm guessing that you didn't have the same reaction when I read this passage of scripture when Jesus was talking about eating his flesh and drinking his blood that you had when I was talking about Andrew Marcus drinking freckle juice. Right? And that's because when we read passages like this one in John chapter 6, our brains automatically go toward communion. We think about eating the bread that symbolizes Jesus' flesh.
We think about drinking from the cup that symbolizes his blood. But you know the people in the crowd that were listening to Jesus teach that day? Their minds didn't automatically go to communion. And their minds didn't automatically go to communion because communion hadn't happened yet.
There had never been communion. So whereas we start thinking about communion, that's not what the people in the crowd have been thinking that day. Probably. When the crowd heard Jesus say to them, I assure you that unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, there is no life in you, their first thoughts were probably, Ew, that's gross.
But that's not how we react when we hear this today. No, when we hear this passage read in our services, in our worship services today, we think about our tidy little communion services. We think about getting our little crackers that we can snack on in church. We think about getting our little cups filled with grape juice.
But that's not how the first people to hear this message would have responded. We don't respond with that, ooh, gross kind of feeling. Instead, when we hear Jesus talk about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, we think about our comfortable little communion services. But I can't help but think that that's not the way that our communion services are supposed to feel.
I don't think that our communion services are always supposed to make us feel comfortable. As a matter of fact, I think that there are sometimes when we eat our communion crackers and we drink from a communion cup, that we should feel the same way that members in the first congregation that I served in one Sunday, when I was leading a communion service there, not too long after I was called to become a pastor of this church. And I will never forget that particular Sunday. I don't think anybody else that was in a congregation that day will ever forget that particular Sunday either because of what happened during this communion service.
Now, this communion service happened on World Communion Sunday back in 2010. It's about 15 years ago. And like a whole lot of churches all around the world on World Communion Sunday, that congregation was going to be observing and celebrating communion together. But I'm willing to guess that our communion service that day in that church, the First Baptist Church of Carlyle, Kentucky, was unlike anyone else's communion service on World Communion Sunday.
And that's because we haven't had something happen during that communion service that I have never had happen in any other communion service I have ever been a part of. So what happened during that service? The crackers went bad. And when I say the crackers went bad, I don't mean that they were bad because they were those, like, crackers that are marketed as communion wafers.
And y'all know what those communion wafers are? They're the ones that taste like styrofoam crackers, and there's no way that those things are ever going to taste good. But let me tell you, on that particular Sunday morning, eating one of those styrofoam communion wafers would have been a treat for everyone in the congregation after what we experienced. Because when I say the crackers went bad, I mean they went really, really bad.
And that's because that church, like our church here at Melbourne Heights, and so many other churches, at some point in a long way, got tired of eating those little styrofoam communion wafers, and we decided that instead of having those nasty little wafers, we were going to replace them with oyster crackers. But there can be a problem with using oyster crackers for your communion crackers in church, too. You may or may not be aware of this, but oyster crackers are made with some sort of oil. And that oil can separate from the crackers if you keep them long enough.
But let's be honest, churches have a bad habit of keeping our communion crackers longer than we should. And when that oil separates from the crackers, that oil turns rancid and is absorbed back into the crackers. You'll probably see where this is going. Well, we didn't.
We didn't see where it was going that day. We didn't know the communion crackers had gone bad. So during that service, I put my normal spot behind the communion table, like I always do whenever I'm officiating and leading a communion service. And we took the time, we passed the elements around the room, and we started with the crackers, like we always do.
So as the crackers were passed, everybody inside of the congregation grabbed their little oyster cracker out of the tray, but no one had any idea about the near-biological warfare that was about to be unleashed inside of that church. Well, the trays came back up to the front. I did what I always do at that point in the communion service. I held that cracker up, and I said, This is the body of Christ broken for you.
Take it and eat. And as soon as I popped that cracker into my mouth, I realized we had made a horrible, horrible mistake. Because as soon as that cracker touched my tongue, I had with the IFOCE, that's the International Federation of Competitive Eating, called Reflexes Contrary to Swallowing, which means I almost got sick. And as soon as I'm sitting there trying to choke down this cracker in front of a congregation that was all looking at me, the first off that ran through my mind was, I think we need to have a do-over.
Because I don't think that you can really say that you celebrate a communion at the church when everyone in the congregation is contemplating if it's okay to spit out the body of Christ. But that's what everybody in that congregation was doing. But as I was thinking that, we needed a do-over that day. That's when I realized something important.
And that is that communion isn't supposed to be a comfortable experience. It's not. Communion is not supposed to be a comfortable experience for us. And that's because communion is meant to remind us of what Jesus experienced, what Jesus went through for us.
And communion is supposed to remind us of what it means for us to follow Jesus. And that's what Jesus was really talking about in John chapter 6 when he's talking with this crowd. He talks with them about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. Jesus wasn't trying to gross them out.
Jesus was trying to prepare them for what it meant for them to really follow him. So what does it really mean for us to follow Jesus? Well, I think Jesus gives us the best explanation of that in another passage where he's speaking with another crowd. But in Luke 9, chapter 9, Jesus tells us this.
He says, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up the cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it. But whoever loses their life for me will save them. So what does it mean to follow Jesus?
Following Jesus means that we deny ourselves. Following Jesus means that we take up our cross. Following Jesus means following him wherever he leads, even when it's difficult. That's what it means to follow Jesus.
Following Jesus means following him wherever he leads, even when it's hard. And if we're being honest with ourselves, then every one of us should be able to admit that there are times when following Jesus' every bit as appealing to us is drinking that concoction of grape juice and vinegar and mustard and mayonnaise and the juice from one lemon and ketchup and olive oil and salt and pepper and a speck from an onion. There are times when following Jesus just isn't that appealing to us at all. And why is it that there are times when following Jesus isn't appealing to us?
Jesus tells us that we have to deny ourselves if we're going to follow him. So that means sometimes if you're following Jesus, you're not going to get what you want. Jesus tells us that if we are going to follow him, we must take up our cross daily. That means that following Jesus might actually cost us something.
Jesus tells us that following him means putting his way ahead of our own way, even when our own way feels a lot easier and more comfortable to us. So when we gather at this table, the communion table, what we need to realize is that we're not just participating in some nice religious ritual. It's not just about getting a little snack before the worship service comes to an end and enjoying a little bite of oyster cracker and a little glass of grape juice. No, when we come together around this table, when we observe communion together, we're opening ourselves up to be changed by God from the inside out.
When we gather at this communion table, we are saying yes to letting the light of God shine into the places in our life that we sometimes prefer it stays dark. When we come and gather around the table and observe communion, we're saying yes to letting God's hope replace our comfortable despair. When we gather at this communion table, we are saying yes to letting God's peace interrupt our addiction to chaos and busyness in our lives. When we gather around this table, we are saying yes to letting God's hope overcome our despair.
When we gather around this table, we're saying yes to letting the love of Christ overcome our desire to hate. And that kind of change can be hard to swallow. It can. It can be hard to deny ourselves.
It can be hard to let the light of God shine in the places that we prefer it stays dark. It can be hard to let God's light show us how we should love instead of hate. It can be hard to let God's light bring us hope when we just want to wallow in our own despair sometimes. It can be hard to let God's peace step into a world where we prefer a little bit of chaos and hecticness and busyness.
But it's worth it. It's worth it to swallow this change, this transformation, no matter how hard it may seem sometimes. Because when we eat this bread, when we drink this cup, we're supposed to be changed. When we eat this bread, when we drink this cup, we're supposed to be transformed.
But we eat this bread and we drink this cup, we are supposed to become new. So today, as we prepare to observe communion again around this table, I want you to know. I want you to come to this table knowing that when you eat this bread, that when you drink from this cup, it's going to change you. It's going to challenge you.
It's going to lead you to become more like Jesus. And that's not always going to be a comfortable thing for you, but it's a necessary thing. So come to this table realizing that you're getting more than just a piece of bread and a drink from a cup. So come to this table knowing that you are meeting Jesus here, and that when you meet Jesus, you need to be changed.
Let's pray together. Guys, we come to you in this word of prayer. You know that there are times when we prepare to come to this communion table where we don't really stop and think about what it's supposed to mean. We approach this table with the comfort of a religious ritual that we've all participated in in our lives more times than we can remember.
And because of its familiarity, we don't recognize what's supposed to happen here. Because God, when we come to this table, it's not just about eating a cracker and drinking from a little cup. Now, when we come to this table, it's about having the blood of Christ, the body of Christ flow through us, challenging us to become more like him, realizing that when we eat of the bread and drink of the cup, that we are God, that we are Christ's body in this world, his hands and his feet, serving this world the way that Jesus loved and served us all. So as we prepare to observe communion again today, God, help us realize what really happens at this table.
Because this table is more than just an ordinary piece of furniture with four legs on top. And what happens here is more than just an ordinary meal. What happens at this table is meant to change us, God. So let us meet you at this table.
Let us be changed by you here. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Hey, it's Adam again.
I just want to thank you for tuning in to this episode of our sermon podcast. And I hope that you've been blessed during our five together. And if that's happened, once again, I want to invite you to come and worship with us live on Sunday mornings at 10.30 a.m. Eastern time.
You can do that by joining us on our church website at mhbclouisville.com slash live. Or if you're in the Louisville, Kentucky area, you can also worship with us in person. And that's going to do it for this episode of our sermon podcast. But I want to invite you to come back and join us again when our next episode drops next week.
But until then, I'll be praying for you. I hope that you have a great week. And we'll see you back here soon for another sermon podcast.