Private Meditations Preceding the Holy Communion
MEDITATION BEFOKE THE COMMUNION”.
“The Master is come, and calleth for thee” (John xi. 28). These familiar and memorable words were spoken at Bethany on a very different occasion from that of a Communion Season. But they may be warrantably and appropriately adapted as a summons and invitation to the Great Feast of love.
Jesus at all times is invisibly nigh to His own people. As doubtless, though unseen, He marked every tear of sorrow in that Bethany home during the mysterious “tarrying days” beyond Jordan, — so on His throne in Heaven is He still ever imparting and manifesting, by His grace and Spirit, the comforting sense of His presence. But there are times and seasons ’ when He draws especially near; and at no time nearer, or more graciously, than at this His own blessed Sacrament of Communion. In these memorials of His bleeding love, He is evidently and impressively “set forth crucified and slain.” In the preaching of this blessed Gospel I hear of Him. In the Holy Ordinance 1 of the Supper I am privileged emblematically to behold Him. There, as in the case of Mary and Martha, He summons me to His feet, to listen, on that hallowed ground, to utterances of love and promises of glory.
He takes me, as He did them, to a Gave: — but it is that of no human friend. It is the Sepulchre into which He Himself entered as my Surety and Substitute. It is to see the Grave-stone rolled away for ever; and over these symbols of suffering to hear Him proclaiming, as He did to the Bethany sisters, that He is Himself the Resurrection and the Life, and that] because He lives. His -people shall live also.
How does the summons sound in my ears? “The Master is come.” Do I — can I — respond to the Name? Am I able, experimentally, to rejoice in Him as ‘Eabboni, my Master,’ — an all-suf&cient Saviour; whose blood has purchased a full, free, everlasting remission of my sins; and whose intercession is so prevalent at the right hand of God, that I am warranted, as I meet Him at this Bethany-gate of love, to say in the words of Martha’s first utterance — “I know that even now whatsoever Thou wilt ask of God, God will give it Thee “? Yes! that mourner of Bethany presents me with a divine watchword, a golden key for the Table of Communion. The riches and promises of grace are to be there, in visible emblem, spread out before me, — the garnered blessings of Salvation “hid in Christ;” and whatever be my trial, or weakness, or infirmity, I am encouraged to behold the Sceptre of the Heavenly King stretched forth, with the challenge and invitation — “What is thy petition, and what is thy request?”
“I will hear what God the Lord will speak: — He will speak peace unto His people.” I will go to His appointed Ordinance, and there unburden and unbosom to Him all my wants and necessities. He will not send me uupty away. “Jesus wept.” — He wept tears of sorrow as He stood before Martha and Mary in the Bethany graveyard; but this day He is to manifest Himself, in significant symbol, as shedding, not His tears, but His blood. He gives me the blessed pledge and assurance that He will, after the greatest of all boons and blessings — the gift of Himself, freely dower me with every lesser mercy. The Table is about to be spread; the Feast is prepared; the oxen and fatlings are killed, and all things are ready. As, in the name of the rich Provider, I listen in thought to the summons, as if from some herald-angel — “The Master is come, and calleth for thee;” be it mine to respond — “I will go into Thy House with burnt offerings, I will pay Thee my vows.” Lord, to whom can I go but unto Thee, Thou hast the words of eternal life! Bring me to Thy Banqueting-house, and let Thy banner over me be love! Hide me in this Cleft of the Rock, and let all Thy glory pass before me!
MEDITATION BEFORE THE COMMUNION.
II.
“Ephraim shall sapj, What have I to do any more with idols? I have heard him and observed him. I am like a green fir tree. From me is thy fruit found” (Hosea xiv. 8). The whole of this precious chapter — a jewel among the Minor prophets — consists of a dialogue between a penitent and his God; and seems peculiarly suitable as a theme for thought and reflection, in the prospect of this day’s solemn Ordinance. May
I seek devoutly to commune now, alike with my own heart and with the great Heart-Searcher. Be it mine, with the docility of a little child, to say, “Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth!”
God Himself begins the conversation: — He is the first to address overtures of mercy to backsliding Ephraim. We might have expected words of threatening, and upbraiding, and retribution. But. there is no terror in His voice. They are rather the tender breathings of a fond father over his erring and wayward children. The marvellous entreaty and expostulation break upon our ears — (v. i, 2) “0 Israel, return unto the Lord thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity. Take with you words, and return to the Lord: say unto Him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously; so will we render the calves of our lips.”
The invitation is obeyed. Humbled and sin-stricken, yet overpowered by a sense of the divine forbearance, they pour out a full confession of their guilt. Hitherto, they had been trusting to an arm of flesh; but they now recognise where their true strength lies — (v. 3) “Ashur (or Assyria) will not save us; — we will not ride upon horses, neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, Ye are our gods; for in Thee the fatherless findeth mercy,” The Lord hearkens. He gives ear to the penitents’ breaking of heart, and replies — (v. 4) “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely, for Mine anger is turned away from him, I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily and cast forth ’ his roots as Lebanon.” Even Ephraim, the apostate and obdurate — we might have deemed irreclaimable — listens to the gracious pleadings. As the scales are falling from his eyes and the chains from his soul, he feels the desire rising within him to give himself to this God in whom compassions flow. As he awakes from his sleep of death, the past, with all its record of sins, passes before him. He gets a glimpse into the chambers of his spirit. He sees they are thronged with idols — usurpers of Jehovah’s rights. Amazed that so long, in guilty unconcern, he should have surrendered himself to these, he exclaims, in words of unqualified renunciation — “What have I to do any more with idols?”
Taking this one verse for my present meditation, let me note, as an intending communicant, these three points: — The Penitent’s resolution. The Divine recognUtion. The added Promise.
(i.) Is this my vow and resolve, in the prospect of meeting God at His Holy Table — “What have I to do any more with idols?” In my case, as in that of Ephraim, it may well be a resolution evoked by the contemplation of God’s wondrous, unmerited love. Guilt and unworthiness have been met with Ion”;- suffering kindness. How often have I fainted and grown weary of Him; yet He has never fainted nor grown weary of me! What determination can be move fitting, when about to stand, so to speak, under the shadow of Calvary’s Cross, — contemplating alike the mightiest manifestation of God’s mercy and the mightiest testimony against sin? With such affecting memorials and symbols before me of my own transgressions, and of the awful price demanded for their remission, may I be enabled firmly to resolve, that all “svliicli dishonours and displeases Him shall be dethroned, saying, ’ 0 Lord my God, other lords beside Thee have had dominion over me. But this God shall be my God for ever and ever.’ — “What have I to do any more with idols?”
(2.) But the conference — the dialogue — does not end here. The verse admits us further into the secrets of the audience-chamber. We have, next, tJie Divine recognition: — “I have heard him and observed him.”
What can be more touching? No earthly auditor may have listened to Ephraim’s breathings of self-reproach. The penitential sighings of his broken spirit may have fallen on no human ears except his own. But One eye, though not of earth, marked these tears. One ear listened to the groanings of the travailing soul. The Almighty Spectator and Hearer now discloses Himself — “I have heard him and observed him!” Beautiful picture, surely, of the interest God takes in His children! His anxiety for their peace and happiness; the delight, above all, with which He hears the still small voice of penitence: — the wail of conscious yet sorrowing estrangement, — longing through tears for restoration — “Oh that I knew where I might find Him!” He is watching these feeble pulsations. The tear wept in secret He has registered in His Book. The cry heaved in solitude has been borne to His Throne, and entered with acceptance into the ear of the God of Sabaoth. “I am poor and needy,” said the Psalmist, when he was himself buffeting the waves in a midnight of gloom: — but he adds the experience of Ephraim — “Yet the Lord thinketh upon me” (Ps. xl. 1 7).
(3.) This, however, is not enough. With my foot about to stand on holy ground, I cannot help forecasting, with trembling anxiety, the future. So it was with penitent Ephraim. He remembers how frail he is. Even with the consciousness of new love and fresh consecration, he recalls past backsliding and declension. He is filled with desponding fears for the days that are to come. Memory cannot obliterate the just upbraiding and reproach for former treachery and unfaithfulness — “0 Ephraim, your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away” (Hosea vi. 4), No strength in himself, the tender sapling dreads the hurricane. Help he needs; where is this help to be found?
God meets his case and mine, with a twofold promise of Protection and Grace. “I am like a green fir (or. cypress) tree. From Me is thy fruit found.” The cypress-tree — alike so beautiful and so common in Eastern lands, with its long, tapering, graceful form and its dark clothing — was one of the precious woods employed in the Temple of old; and forests of them are still to be found in the less frequented parts of Lebanon. From its undying verdure, owing to a perpetual supply of sap, winter and summer, — so dense, moreover, and strong in foliage, as to afford shelter and nesting-place even for the stork (Ps. civ. 1 7) — it forms surely an appropriate type, in inanimate nature, of the sheltering protection, safety, and security, the believer has in God!
If I am now self-distrustful, — troubled with misgivings for the days to come; — let me be cheered with the assurance of Him who has promised to be a shelter from the storm and a covert from the tempest. He reveals Himself here to me as an Almighty Friend; who will fortify against all temptations; unravel all perplexities; and overrule all providences for my well-being. He will impart strength in the hour of weakness, and courage in the hour of despondency, and peace in the hour of trouble, and victory in the hour of death. — “I,” says a protecting God, “am like a green fir-tree.” “As thy days, so shall thy strength be.”
May I not further think of that green fir-tree, as pre-eminently the emblem of my gracious Redeemer; — the God-man Mediator, — “the Tree of Life in the midst of the garden “: — its roots struck in the soil of humanity; its top reaching to heaven: — the “Brotherborn,” yet “mighty to save “? He makes known, elsewhere, the secret of continued support — “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not” (Luke xxii. 31, 32), “I have prayed for thee.” A sinking disciple, a praying Master: Satan tempting, Christ upholding, — “From Me is thy fruit found!”
Let me take, as the motto and watchword for an unknown future — “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me:” — “By the grace of God I am what 1 am.” By the aid of that promised grace, may I be enabled specially to keep close underneath this Heavenly Fir-tree: — to live near to Jesus. The tribe of Ephraim, whose soliloquy I have been pondering, was selected and honoured to follow immediately behind the Ark in its way through the wilderness. Let this be ever my coveted position, — not on high
Communion Seasons only, but all through the pilgrimjourney, — to be close to Him whom that Ark symbolised, as my Protector and strength and salvation. Let the song of the many thousands of Israel be mine to-day; let it be mine from week to week and from year to year, until Grace is merged in Glory: — “Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up Thy strength, and come and save us!” (Ps. lxxx. 2).
MEDITATION BEFOEE THE COMMUNION.
III.
^’Bloio up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed, on our solemn feast-day. For this was a statute for Israel, and a law of the God of Jacob,” &c. (Ps. lxxxi). The 8 ist may be called “The New Moon Psalm,” or “The Psalm of the Silver Trumpets.” While these trumpets were blown every morning, at daybreak, in preparation for the morning sacrifice, they were specially sounded at each New Moon. There was one occasion, specially designated “The Feast of Trumpets,” which took place on the ist of the seventh month, the holy month of the Jewish year, — when, instead of the one matin blare, their sound was heard all day long, accompanying the eucharistic and expiatory sacrifices. A longer preliminary blast summoned the worshippers to prepare for solemn service. They are reminded in this Psalm of the divine Institution and authority of the Feast: “For this was a statute for Israel, and a law of the God of Jacob.”
One among other designs of this Jewish Festival, was to prepare the hearts of the people for the celebration of the Great Day of Atonement.
The silvery tones of the Gospel trumpet are sounding in my ears its herald notes for to-day’s Gospel Feast. How solemnly and vividly is the Jewish great Day and Feast of Atonement recalled, with its wondrous typical significance; when the High Priest of the nation sprinkled the blood on the Mercy Seat! He disrobed himself of his gorgeous dress, — his tiara of gold, his ephod and sparkling jewels, — and was arrayed in a simple garment of spotless white. Meet emblem and prefiguration surely of Him, who divested Himself of His eternal glories, and came into our world attired in the pure white vestments of a holy humanity, to suffer and die; — Antitype alike of priest and victim. Alone He went into the most Holy Place, the divine presence chamber; alone He carried the censer; alone He sprinkled the blood: — “I have trodden the wine press alone!”
I am to see all this, to-day, in impressive symbol: — the blood sprinkled on the Mercy-seat and he/ore the Mercy-seat. In the blood cast, or sprinkled on the pavement “before the Mercy-seat,” I behold a type of the blood of Jesus speaking peace to His people on earth,: “above the Mercy- seat,” speaking peace from before the Throne, where He now pleads as Intercessor. “For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.”
I would seek to hear the preparation-trumpet calling
MEDITATION BEFORE THE COMMUNION. 16i
me to devout thought and meditation in the prospect of the great Gospel Festival: — “Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed; on our solemn feast day.” It was a universal belief of the Jews of old, that on this their Feast of Trumpets, Jehovah seated Himself on a Throne, and that His people “passed before Him as a flock of sheep before their shepherd.” In the presence of a heart-searching God, let me listen to the New Testament exhortation of the Great Apostle, as he too, in a spiritual sense, sounds the herald note — r” Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup.” Let my feet be shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace, as now the summons is heard — “Prepare to meet thy God, 0 Israel!”
Yes, “tJiT/ God.” This is His own message to me, and to each intending communicant. Let me hear it addressed in this Psalm (verse loth), “I am the Lord THY God: open thy mouth wide and I will fill it.” He will there — at His own appointed ordinance — reveal Himself as my God in Covenant; and, if I ‘open my mouth wide,’ i.e. if I go with longing desires after Him and longing earnestness for His help and blessing, — He will not mock my approach by sending me away unblest. “He satisfieth the longing soul with goodness.” True to the closing promise of this new-moon Psahn, He will feed me with the finest of the wheat, and with honey out of the rock; — with spiritual treasures hid in Christ, the true Piock of Ages, — will He satisfy me (v. 1 6).
MEDITATION BEFOEE THE COMMUNION.
IV.
“Come, ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest awhile” (Mark vi. 31). The hour of noontide rest was a special one of old in Palestine: when the labourer suspended his toil; when the oxen were unharnessed from the j’oke, and the ploughshare reposed on the upturned furrow; when the Caravan of Pilgrims, as they may be seen to this day, gathered under the shade at some well, eating bread and fruit, with their burdened camels moored around. In a diviner spiritual sense that noontide rest is about to be mine. “Come,” is the Saviour’s gracious invitation, addressed to His disciples of old — “Come, ye yourselves apart, and rest awhile.” “This is the rest wherewith He causeth the weary to rest, and this is the refreshing.” Let the world be for a little time shut out: its cares hushed, its duties and business suspended; as with my fellow-communicants I repair to the Well of Living water, the Fount of Gospel mercies “springing up unto everlasting life,” and there “rehearse together the righteous acts of the Lord” (Judges v. 11).
Let me note, as its chiefest and divinest feature; it is rest in the fellowship of the Great Master. It would have afforded little joy or refreshment to His disciples if they had been sent away to that desert place alone. This brief season of suspension from work would have been denuded of all its blissful peace and holy gladness, had they been unaccompanied by their Beloved Lord. The consciousness of that Presence and Love and Sympathy was all in all to them. They did not heed the passing away of the splendid vision of the Transfiguration Mount, when in their descent in the grey mists of early morning, “they found no man, save Jesus only” (Matt. xvii. 8). The summons from the Table of sweet communion on Zion, to the mysterious gloom of the Kedron and the Olive Garden, had sufficient music and heart-cheer to them, from one word embraced in it — “Arise, let us go hence.” “And when iheT/ had sung an hymn, they went out (together) to the Mount of Olives.” A subsequent night of unrecompensed toil on the Sea of Galilee was all forgotten in the morning’s joyful recognition — “It is the Lord!”
So is it with Master and disciple still. That Feast of love has its holiest, sweetest, most consecrating thought in this, that it is “the Lord’s Supper.” It is the presence of the King which makes it, in the truest sense, a Communion. “There,” is His own promise, “I will meet with thee and commune with thee from off the Mercy Seat.” If Thy presence, 0 Saviour God, go not with me, carry me not hence! May I be able to say, both in the prospect and retrospect, “He brought me to His banqueting house, and His banner over me was love.” “Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.”
We have need of such “quiet resting places” in the Pilgrim journey; breathing-times amid the din and turmoil and harassing cares of the world. Let me now leave its soiled garments, its coarse wearing drudgery, behind me in the outer court; and unembarrassed and unencumbered, enter with sacred footstep to be ’ alone with Jesus.’ Many are the circumstances and seasons when the choicest of all His sayings is applicable, — none more so than regarding this “Feast in the desert,” — “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest!”
MEDITATION BEFORE THE COMMUNION.
V.
“AivaJce, 0 north wind; and come, thou south; blow
wpon my garden, that the spiecs thereof may Jloio out. Let
my Beloved come into His garden, and eat His pleasant
fruits” (Song of Sol. iv. 1 6). Come! Blessed Spirit, in
all the plenitude of Thy gifts and graces: and as I am
about, this day, to go to the sacred Feast, breathe upon
me and my fellow-communicants, and say,” Receive
ye the Holy Ghost!” Come, as the North wind; —
bringing with it conviction of sin — my own sin — seen
in the light of my Saviour’s Cross and sufferings. Come,
as the South wind; — with all soothing, comforting,
sanctifying influences, — bearing on its wings the
Beloved’s own balm-words of mercy: — revealing the
wonders of His love, — the tenderness of His sympathy,
—the riches of His grace. Let the spices — the fragrance
of a grateful heart filled with all joy and peace in
believing — flow out. One of the sublimest prayers on
record, is that of the Apostle, for the special bestowment
of the Holy Spirit preceding the dwelling of Christ in
the soul: a beautiful and befitting prelude-utterance
MEDITATION BEFORE THE COMMUNION, ift;
to a Communion season and service: — “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man.” “He shall glorify Me,” says the Redeemer Himself, “for He shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you.”
Awake, then, 0 North wind! come, thou South, blow upon my garden! Make this sacramental season, — one in which heaven and earth seem to touch one another; — an occasion of hallowed and blissful intercommunion between my soul and Jesus. Yes, ‘intercommunion.’ The joy of this permitted fellowship, delightful to His people, would almost seem, with reverence be it spoken, as if shared by His own Infinite heart. The Beloved comes into His garden “to eat Ris 2yleasmit fruits.” — “I am glorified,” says He elsewhere, “in them.” Who can ever fail to be struck in the Gospel narrative, with the intense — the vehement earnestness of the Saviour’s longing to meet His own disciples at the first institution of the Supper, immediately before His death? His own soul was — I was about to say — stra7igcbj engrossed with the preparation and arrangement for it. “TFith desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Luke xxii. 15). The disciples, knowing and noting how singularly that Festive hour seemed to fill their Lord’s thoughts, came to Him and said — “Master, where wilt Thou that we go to prepare for Thee to eat the Passover?” When they met the man bearing the pitcher of water, they address him thus: — “The Master saith, my time is at hand, I will keep the Passover at thy house with my disciples.” Moreover, when the Feast itself was being partaken, the season of hallowed and confidential fellowship proved evidently to Him a sweet “song in the night” — a gleam of joy amid the gathering, thickening darkness: — “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.” It is the same now as it was then. While to all disciple-guests it is primarily a blessed occasion and opportunity of unburdening their inmost thoughts to their divine Lord; of having faith strengthened, — love deepened, — misgivings lulled, — troubles healed, — they may exult in the assurance that it is distinctively also a season of complacent joy to the Redeemer Himself. The blessedness, felt and realised by His covenanting people, is most deeply shared by the true Solomon: — It is “the day of His espousals, the day of the gladness of His heart” (Song of Sol. iii. 2). As the Great Master of assemblies, He there sees of the fruit of the travail of His soul and is satisfied. “Satisfied!” wondrous thought! as if His own intensest joy were in the happiness of His redeemed people. “Father,” He said, on that same betrayal night, when fresh from the Institution of the New Testament Passover, and when the shadows of His own Cross were projected on His path — “Father, I will:” — (what is this mighty boon which Omnipotence is about to invoke at the close of His intercessory Prayer? It forms the climax of His pleadings; as if He had reserved the crowning solicitation to the last) — “Father, I will:” — (with what does He fill up the formula? — He knows that He can write under it what He pleases: — what then is the great yearning, filial wish — the richest reward and recompense of His soul-travail?) — “Father, I will, that they also whom Thou hast given me, may be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory!”
May that glory — the glory as of the only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth — may the distant rays of it, at least, be revealed to me, to-day, on the holy ground of Communion. May the meeting in the earthly Garden prove a blessed pledge and foretaste of that diviner communion and fellowship in the better Garden above; — that Garden in which there is no sepulchre, no funeral spices, no “why weepest thou?” whose precincts can be invaded and saddened by no sin — no sorrow; — no broken vow or forgotten resolution; — no Lebanon storms to dread; no “lions’ dens or mountains of leopards” (Song of Sol. iv. 8), but where disciple and Master, and that for ever and ever, shall rejoice together with joy unspeakable and full of glory!