A Feast to Remember

It has been several long and busy days without reliable internet access since I last posted about my sabbatical adventure in Myanmar.  In the next couple of blogs I will share a few highlights from my recent activities.

The Bread and Cup

The Mynamar Baptist Convention's celebration of the bicentennial of Baptist Mission in Myanmar, which is dated from the arrival of Adoniram and Ann Judson on July 13, 1813, concluded with a communion service on Sunday evening (December 8).  The service was attended by an estimated 44,000 people.  Many were seated in the assembly hall.  Every available of inch of space was filled.  People jammed the aisles. Others sat row upon row in the narrow space between the first pew and the communion table. An equal number were beneath the auditorium in a large basement meeting area that had been outfitted with flat screen monitors and speakers.  Thousands more surrounded the hall listening as the service was broadcast to them.

The choir reflects some of the diversity of the MBC.

The American Baptist delegation was seated at the front of the hall. While it was a hot and humid Yangon night, intensified by the thousands of bodies packed into building, the discomfort was insignificant when compared to the palpable presence of God's Spirit during the final act of worship.  A woman, the Rev. Dr. Greeta Din, outgoing General Secretary of the Karen Baptist Convention, led the massive congregation as we received the elements of the Lord's Supper. Baptists from across Myanmar and around the world - people from a rich tapestry of ethnicities and languages - together received the cup and bread.

Dr. Greeta Din, KBC General Secretary (Center) at the Lord's Table.

Each time we break the bread and drink the cup we look backwards and remember Christ's sacrifice on our behalf. But, we also look forward in anticipation.  In the Lord's Supper we receive a small taste of the great banquet feast John the Revelator describes for us in the final book of the New Testament.  I have rarely had such a powerful sense of God being at work bringing a broken and fractured world together and reconciling all things in Christ as I did this past Sunday evening as I received the bread and cup.

The Bread and Cup are distributed to worshipers.

The evening concluded as so many Baptist communion services do.  We sang "Blessed Be The Tie." Around me I could hear the words being sung in English by my ABC companions.  Nearby, it was by sung in Burmese. I sang the second verse in Karen, as is our tradition at Tabernacle.  Throughout the hall others were singing in various Chin dialects, Kachin, Karreni, Naga, Mon, Lisu, Lahu, Shan, Wa and many other tongues.  It was a beautiful foretaste of the Marriage Feast of the Lamb!