As a communion meditation this morning, we're going to look at three passages of Scripture, two from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 8, and one from 1 Corinthians, chapter 10. So turn with me, first of all, to Luke, chapter 8, beginning our reading at verse 1, reading the first three verses, and then we'll skip down to verse 19, read three verses there. and then turn to 1 Corinthians 10. So beginning our reading at Luke chapter 8 at verse 1, let us hear God's own word. Soon afterward, Jesus went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities. Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuzah, Herod's household manager, and Susanna, and many others who provided for them out of their means. And then down to chapter 8 at verse 19. Then Jesus' mother and brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. And he was told, your mother and your brothers are standing outside desiring to see you. But he answered, my mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it. And then turning over to 1 Corinthians 10, verses 16 and 17. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body. For we all partake of the one bread. So far the reading of God's Word. As the people of God today, we gather not just to worship, but we gather around the table of our Lord. And the Scripture reminds us that we gather around that table because we are one body. The Lord has made us into His body. Scripture often talks about Christ as the head and the church as the body. And that oneness of the body, that unity of the body, is expressed in part through our all partaking of the one bread. And although some nice ladies have cut the bread up into pieces so that we don't have to do that work ourselves, we shouldn't lose track of the fact that we are really all eating from a single loaf, expressing our unity in faith and our newness in Christ as his body. And thinking of ourselves as one body is another way of thinking of ourselves as a new family that Christ is creating. There are many images used in the Scripture to describe us. We are the people of God. We are the body of Christ. But we are also a new family in Christ. We have a new connectedness with a new set of people. And while many of us here also have physical families that are here, The fundamental reason we are here is because we are a new family that Christ is creating and uniting. And each of these texts that we have read give us an element of what that new family is all about, and therefore also what it means for us as the one body, as the new family, to come to the Lord at his table. And these passages show us in the first place that the new family of Christ is a family of faith. I know you will not find that earth-shattering news. It's not fantastically new, but it's tremendously important. We are a family of faith. We are a family united by our believing in Jesus Christ. And that is absolutely foundational. That's absolutely essential to who we are, to why we gather, to what we're doing here together. Like the people described here in the scripture, we are the people who have heard the word of Christ and have responded to it. We have believed it to be true. And so we are gathered around it. And as Jesus said there in Luke 8, verse 21, my mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it. Though we need to be those who hear the word of God, respond in faith to it, and then live out that word as we live it. That's what is foundational to being the family of God. Think of that. that Jesus says through his word to each one of us today, if you are a believer, if you have heard my word and believe my word and are seeking to live out my word, then you are my mother and my brothers. You're not a stranger. You're not even a third cousin. You're intimately close and related to me, as close as a mother and brothers. And so this is the new family of faith, the new family of the new life that Jesus Christ has given to us. He's not denying here the value of his own physical family or our own physical families. But he's saying that's not what really unites us. When we first moved here in 1981, I think it's fair to say that probably 60, 70% of the congregation was all related to one another in four big families, clans, and you needed a kind of roadmap to be clear about who was related to whom, and there were many good things about that. We had a babysitter who announced one evening as she came over to babysit our kids that she had just had her 100th first cousin. I remember the shock I felt. I grew up with two first cousins. And those physical connections can be great. But Jesus is saying here very clearly, isn't he, that the most important thing for us must be the new family that Christ is creating. Jesus never lost an interest in his own family when he was hanging on the cross, right? He was concerned about his mother and gave the Apostle John charge of her to take care of her and protect her. But he's saying very clearly here that physical connection to him is not what gives you a leg up in the kingdom. It's not what is critical to be central in the family of God. It's interesting, there are Christian traditions that pay a great deal of attention to Mary as the mother of Jesus. And I think it may sometimes be true that we as Protestants so react to that that we never mention Mary at all. And the Scripture says that all generations should call her blessed, and so we do call her blessed. But you notice what Jesus says here very clearly in verse 21 of Luke 8. He says very clearly that Mary has no special access to him beyond what every one of us has as a believer. We may come immediately and directly to Jesus as if we were the most intimate member of his family. One of you has a daughter who is elected president of the United States. See how with it I am. If one of you has a daughter who will be elected president of the United States, you'll expect to be able to visit the White House and sleep in the Lincoln bedroom. Well, we are sons and daughters of Jesus, and we have a better bedroom than the Lincoln bedroom. We have better access. We have immediate access. We are part of that family of faith. And in our family, the faith says Jesus has come inaugurating the kingdom of God. You notice how that's how Luke chapter 8 begins. It talks about Jesus traveling to various cities and villages. And as he goes, we're told he's proclaiming or heralding and also good-newsing. It says here, preaching the good news, but it's really all a verb in Greek. Good-newsing. He's proclaiming and good-newsing the kingdom of God. And what does that mean, that he's talking about the kingdom of God? It means he's talking about that he is the king who has come. And he's inaugurating, he's beginning, he's introducing the kingdom of God, the power of the kingdom of God shown in lives changed, that one day will be completed when he returns again in glory. And to be part of that new family is precisely to accept and believe and trust that Jesus is the king who's bringing the kingdom of God. And that already we have an anticipation of it. An anticipation as we gather together as his people, as we care for one another as members of the new family. as we eat together around his table. That's the new family that Jesus is creating among us. So it's first of all a family of faith, and it's second of all a family of fellowship. While faith can often be a very individual thing, Jesus wants to make clear that the family is a communal reality, not just an individual reality. That's why it's so important that we be part of a congregation. That's why the Christian life is not lived alone and in isolation. That's why we traditionally as Reformed people, and I think rightly biblically, have stressed the importance of being a member and part of a congregation. Because that's how we fellowship together as a people. That's how we express our new family life in Christ. And it's a diverse people. I thought at one point, maybe making this sub-point, that it's a strange people. I maybe thought that just because I know some of you. But the emphasis here is not on the strangeness, but on the diversity. And we see that in these opening verses of chapter 8. There's Jesus, and there's the 12. Well, we expect that, don't we? But the 12, who are they? Well, they're a collection of not all that distinguished, certainly not particularly learned, not particularly powerful, not particularly wealthy, not particularly distinguished. They're the people Jesus chose to be the foundations of his new family and his new people. And they're following him around really as sort of interns. They're in job training. They're not yet to be trusted on their own. And so they're walking with Jesus and learning his ways. But it's not just Jesus and the Twelve. That would have been a fairly ordinary pattern for a rabbi, a teacher, to follow in this world, to have those in training around him to carry on his work and understand his message. But Jesus also has, we're told, women with him. This is very unusual in this society. It would have been somewhat scandalous, we might say, for these men to be traveling around with women. And yet, Luke wants to highlight the devotion and the commitment of these women to Jesus. They are a remarkably diverse group of women. We have Mary Magdalene, who maybe in the New Testament is one of the more famous women. She's partly famous because in church history her story was often confused with other biblical stories. But we know enough about her for sure to see she's a remarkable woman. Her name is Mary, one of the difficulties of life in the New Testament. There are a lot of Marys, sort of true in Hungarian families too. My wife's relatives, half of them are Marys. You've got to pay attention who you're talking about. Mary from Magdala. Magdala was a town, that's why she's Mary Magdalene. Magdala was a town about five miles south of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee. And Mary was from there. She's identified as being from there. But she's more famous for being identified as a woman from whom Jesus cast out seven demons. We'll be in the weeks to come, Lord willing, looking at Jesus healing the Gadarene demoniac. And we'll see what a horrible thing it was to be possessed by demons. How destructive it was, how socially alienating it was. And this poor woman had no doubt suffered greatly, but Jesus had delivered her. And she, in thankful response, is traveling with him, is devoted to him. And then we have Joanna. Now, Joanna is identified as the wife of Chusa, who is an important figure administering King Herod's household. So, here's a woman of some social connection, a woman of some prominence. Mary Magdalene may well have been homeless at some point when she was demon-possessed, but Joanna is a woman who came from a, no doubt, very fine home in which she lived. And yet she has, too, been ministered to by Jesus. We're not told specifically. Generally, we're told he healed infirmities as well as cast out demons. Perhaps she was healed from some disease, but she's devoted to Jesus and following him. And then there's Susanna. You know, we could have a Bible trivia test and say, what do you know about Susanna? Well, the truth is we don't know anything about Susanna. It's the only place she's mentioned. And we're not told anything about her but her name. You know, when you pause to think about it, it's kind of wonderful, isn't it? Susanna's remembered in the Bible. We don't know exactly what she's remembered for except her devotion to Jesus, her commitment to Jesus. And here she is, along with, we're told, many other women. And these women are really important to the ministry of Jesus. They are the ones who are funding his ministry. Now, obviously, they're helping in other ways as well, but this is very significant. This is what Luke records, that they, these women, out of their means are providing for the food, for the shelter, for whatever is needed in the ministry of Jesus. These women are devoted. And Jesus is encouraging them in their devotion and in their service in a way that is really strange for the society in which we live, in which they lived. And these women are noted by Luke not only for their service, but also for their faithfulness. because when we come towards the end of Luke's gospel, at Luke 23, verse 49, for example, we're told that standing at the cross were the women who had followed him from Galilee. So these very women mentioned in Luke chapter 8 have gone along with him through his whole ministry and are there, still faithful, at the cross. And it's these very same women, then, who come to the tomb on that early Easter morning to be the first witnesses of his resurrection. Luke 24.10 says, Mary Magdalene and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and the other women, they were there. So this new family is a wonderfully diverse family, and that's very important for us to reassert, particularly in a world, in a culture in our day, where diversity is being so highlighted and stressed and valued, and it's a good thing in many ways. And Jesus is showing us right from the beginning. He had a diverse family. A family where all who came in faith were welcome. That's the important thing. All who came in faith were welcome to the fellowship, to the following of Jesus, to the faithful persevering. And that's what the Lord provides for us, a picture of his family. So it's a family of faith, it's a family of fellowship, and it's a family of feeding, of feeding on Jesus. Paul in 1 Corinthians 10 expresses it very, very powerfully, very intriguingly, that the bread is a participation, a fellowship in the body of Christ. It's that Greek word koinonia. It's having in common, the root word of koinonia is having in common. It's having in common the body of Christ. We are one body because we have the body of Christ. We are one body because we share in, we have in common the blood of Christ. We are called to be a people who in faith feed on him. We feed on him in his word, but we feed on him also in his sacraments. Our catechism expresses that so well in question 65. Where does true faith come from? True faith is worked in our hearts by the preaching of the Holy Gospel. True faith is worked in our hearts by the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Holy Gospel and confirmed to us by the holy sacraments. The sacraments do not bring to us anything that is not in the Word, but it brings to us the Christ of the Word in a different form to reassure us, to build our confidence, to confirm us in the faith we have in the Word of Christ. Because at the very heart of the Word is that Jesus Christ died to save sinners. That Jesus Christ hung on the cross, His body given, His blood poured out to save sinners. And so we come to this table to be confirmed in the very heart of the Gospel that it's the body and blood of Christ that save us. He's present with us to say to us, I still give myself to you. I still bless you. I still share the fruit of my sacrifice with you, that in my death you might live. And so Jesus comes to feed his family. The physical feeding doesn't amount to much, does it? It's a very small piece of bread and a very tiny bit of wine. But it links us to the great meal of Jesus as the one who provides for his people the very foundation of life, the bread of life. And so we are called by the Scripture to come to this table, to say to the world, to one another, and to God, we are a new family. Slightly strange, some stranger than others, but a family, a family of faith, a family of fellowship, loving fellowship and caring. That's why I think it's so appropriate that we take a benevolence offering whenever we have communion, because the benevolence offering says we care for one another. We want to provide for the needs of one another. We're a family of faith, we're a family of fellowship, and we're a family that feeds on Christ and Christ alone. That's what this table says. That's what Paul warns us about in 1 Corinthians 10. You can't eat from this table and eat from the table of other gods. There's an exclusivity to the claims of Christ. Christ wants us to know and believe that he alone is the Savior. And that's what this table says. He alone feeds us. He alone preserves us. He alone provides life to us. And so let us come as his family to his table with confidence that we are the family of faith, the family of fellowship, the family that feeds upon the Lord. Amen. Let us pray. O Lord our God, how thankful we are that you are creating a new family and that you have called us to be part of it. And so as we gather, may we gather in faith, faith that Christ alone is our Savior. May we gather in fellowship with Christ and with one another, knowing that we are a part of a loving and caring family. And may we truly feed upon him in our hearts by faith so that we grow closer to him and share in all the blessings of his grace. Hear us then, for we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.