Sermons
Inside Sojourn
Communion Gone Bad: The Curious Case Of Lachlan Coffey
It’s not every day that you get to speak in front of people. And when you do get the opportunity, you want it to be awesome. Sometimes I like to picture myself speaking to many people, and then I’m whisked to the future 60 years laters, and all of those same people are saying in their old person tones, “Some 60 years ago, a young man spoke and blew my mind! My life was changed from his 20-minute sermonette. And he was a stud.” Then they enjoy prunes. Well, I can say I’ve had my chances and a minimal amount of minds have been blown yet.
One such example was in Sojourn’s fourth year. Daniel asked me to lead a brief communion meditation after his sermon. After his immediate disapproval of my suggestion to use pyrotechnics to take communion “to the next level”, I decided on just speaking a short bit. Now, at this time in Sojourn’s history, we were renting space out of another church and meeting in the evenings for only one service. Multiple candleholders were filled with white candles all aglow and adding to the ambience of a service.
Wearing my favorite black hoodie, I began my spiel speaking passionately about Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. Murmuring from the crowd began. I figured them for “Amen”s or “Preach it” so it fueled me more. I launched into Christ’s demand for us to not forget the cross and the resurrection. A couple of people stood up from their chairs. This, of course, had to be the beginnings of a standing ovation. Wow! A standing ovation! Who ever got a reaction like this to a communion meditation. This surely meant I was the next Charles Spurgeon.
Nope. It didn’t. What it meant was that I was way too close to the candles and my hoodie was directly over the flames. I was seconds away from being engulfed in fire…and not of the Holy Spirit, and everyone knew it and was trying to get my attention and warn me without interrupting my speaking.
This was the last time I led communion at Sojourn.
About Bobby Gilles
The first time I took communion as part of Sojourn, I didn’t pay close enough attention to the direction to dip the bread into the wine. I assumed that, since we were filing up in line to take the bread and wine, it was like the church where I grew up: we eat the bread and then take a sip of wine.
I didn’t understand, till later, why the dude holding the communion cup didn’t want to turn loose of it when I took it from his hands to have a sip. The look of confusion or horror on his face told me something was amiss. I thought, “Man, the communion servers here need a little practice in letting go of the cups.”