Someplace in the hierarchies of the Christian churches there is a committee whose responsibility it is to develop something that we call the Lectionary, or the common lectionary, or more recently the revised common lectionary. What it is is a list of Scripture readings that are to be used in churches throughout the world on a given Sunday. It is a systematic, coordinated set of readings that, over the course of a three-year cycle, will have us reading all of the important stories or themes in the Bible. Myrna, and the rest of us, therefore do not simply take the Bible and let it flop open to a page and say "This is what God wants me to talk about today."

For those churches who follow the lectionary – and I am talking about Methodist churches, Baptist churches, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, and most others that I may not have mentioned, all of us will be hearing and preaching, and thinking on the same passages when we go to church today. From New York to California, Maine to Texas; Honduras, Germany, Korea and India, all of us will be hearing the same Bible lessons this morning. One of the principles behind this concept is that over a period of time we get to hear the whole Bible. An even more significant principle, to me, is that there is strength in numbers. What a beautiful concept it is that everywhere in the world, people going to church today are hearing the Ten Commandments. Wouldn't it be great if all of us went out from church and lived through the coming week with the Ten Commandments uppermost in our minds? What an amazing thought that the entire Christian world could spend even just one week living the Ten Commandments!

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I told you all of that as background because I want you to know that I departed from the revised common lectionary this morning – I just didn't like the Gospel reading! So I changed it. But I did it from the standpoint of the principle of there being strength in numbers. There are two central themes I want us to spend some time on this morning – both in my opinion, central, core beliefs of Christianity.

A year or so ago we had a series on conversations here about the core beliefs of the Methodist Church. I would like broaden the conversation a bit this morning and talk about two of the core beliefs of Christianity.

The first, from the Old Testament, is obviously, the Ten Commandments. As we go about our business in the world people see us doing whatever it is that we do. We cannot avoid telling people something about who we are and what we believe by virtue of the actions we take, the things we do. One set of standards for behavior (that we incidentally share with our Jewish friends and our Muslim friends, because we all hold what we call the Old Testament as holy) is the ten commandments.

We all know what they are and we all know – pretty much – what they call us to do. Some of them are easy for most of us. You shall not murder. Honor your father and mother. You shall not commit adultery. We do all those.

Some of them are a little harder. You shall not steal. On the face of it you say, oh no, I don't do that. But is there anyone here who can HONESTLY say that you have never come home from work with a handful of paperclips, or a pencil, or something else that belongs to your office.

You shall not misuse the name of the Lord. Is there anyone here who can honestly say that you have never ever in your entire life used one of those little four-letter words that we shouldn't?

You shall not covet. Who among us is willing to say that you have not looked at a house in a nicer neighborhood than yours and said boy I wish I lived there. Or, since we are at the Jersey shore, has anyone ever looked at one of those big boats in the neighborhood marina and said wow, that would be nice to have. Or the latest 40-inch flat-panel TV. In our status- and possession-obsessed society, it's next to impossible not to want some of the things we see around us.

Here's one I've always had trouble with – remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy. I try. But it always seems, doesn't it, that the list of chores needing to be done in a week always has a few things left over by the time we get to Sunday.

Ten Commandments are a standard held up for us to aspire to.

We follow them because in so doing, the world becomes a better place. And the way we act says something about us, about who we are and about what we believe, and about our relationship to God.

The second core belief I want to talk about is that mystery of our faith that we recall in our observance of Holy Communion. And since today is world communion Sunday I felt authorized to change the Gospel lesson to reflect that based on strength in numbers. All over the world, Christians today are supposed to be celebrating Holy Communion.

I'm a life-long Methodist. I was baptized into, and grew up in the Methodist Episcopal Church – remember? In the little parish where I grew up, in the coal mountains in Pennsylvania, we celebrated Holy Communion once a quarter – four times a year.

Somewhere along the way – in my opinion around the time that Pope John XXIII created the ecumenical movement - we began to re-think some of our worship practices that had been with us for decades, if not centuries. And one of the things we realized was that Holy Communion is, or should be, at the very center of our worship life, and of our daily life.

When you walk into a Christian church and sit in one of the pews, what is your attention drawn to? In every Christian church I have ever been in, the front of the church, the focus of our attention, is an altar. It can be a grand and glorious altar like that of some magnificent cathedral. Or it can be a simple table with a white cloth on it. But whether plain or fancy, its importance is that it is at the center of our attention.

And what does that altar bring to our mind? The central belief of our faith – that Jesus died on our behalf, as a sacrifice to God to bring forgiveness of our sins. And the night before he died, he sat at a table with his disciples and shared a meal, and told them to continue to do that in his memory.

Then, immediately following His crucifixion and resurrection, he appeared to his disciples. Keep in mind here that they were eyewitnesses to his death. They did not yet have the history we have now to know of his resurrection. And so when they saw him they did not know who he was. How did they come to know? He took some bread and broke it and shared it with them. And their eyes were opened and they remembered that night at dinner. They knew him in the breaking of the bread.

That's a strong metaphor for how we live our own lives as Christians. We know each other, and people know us, in the breaking of the bread. Because we make it a frequent practice to gather around this table and remember His life and teachings, the breaking of the bread reminds us to live our lives in such a way that others will know us as Christians. He was known, we are known, in the breaking of the bread.

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