CPCBA Sermon: One Bread, One Body
Rev. Heather Schoenewolf • October 4, 2026 • World Communion Sunday
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 11:23–26
What do a communion table, a Zoom gathering, and a childhood search for UPS trucks have in common? In “One Bread, One Body,” Rev. Heather Schoenewolf connects these ordinary experiences with a question at the heart of Christian living: How do we learn to notice Jesus among us?
Preached on World Communion Sunday at Community Presbyterian Church of Ben Avon (CPCBA), this sermon invites us to consider both what we receive at the table and who we are called to become together. We remember Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. We also remember that we—with our differences, gifts, and imperfections—are called to be Christ’s body in the world.
A church still under construction
Heather begins with memories of communion during the COVID pandemic: sealed cups, tiny wafers, and people gathering around screens with whatever bread and drink they had at home. Familiar practices required fresh thought, careful coordination, and a willingness to adapt.
That experience offers a way into Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. The early church was also trying to understand how to gather faithfully and share the meal Jesus had entrusted to them. But their gatherings reflected the divisions around them. Some ate before others arrived. Some drank freely, while others found nothing left.
Paul’s correction reaches beyond the practical details of a meal. A community called to be Christ’s body must pay attention to how its members treat one another.
Different gifts, one shared table
Unity does not require everyone to become the same. As Heather explains, Paul recognizes and celebrates the differences within the church. The problem comes when those differences become a hierarchy—when some voices, gifts, or people are treated as more important than others.
Our particular gifts are meant to serve the common good. At communion, ordinary bread and juice remind us of a shared calling that extends across congregations, nations, and generations. Jesus is the host, and those who gather are invited to recognize one another as members of his body.
This calling includes an honest acknowledgment of our brokenness. We still hurt others, absorb the hierarchies of our culture, and try to place ourselves above our neighbors. Yet we remain people through whom God’s love can take shape.
Learning what to look for
On childhood road trips, Heather’s parents encouraged her and her sisters to spot brown UPS trucks. At first, the trucks barely registered. Once the children knew what to look for, they began seeing them everywhere.
Communion can help train our attention in a similar way. We notice Jesus in the bread and cup, in the faces around us, and in the people whose gifts make worship possible. That practice prepares us to recognize Christ’s presence in everyday encounters: at the grocery store, at the bus stop, and amid the rush of an ordinary day.
The sermon closes with an invitation to approach the table openly—to be fed and transformed, to know that we are loved, and to remember that everyone else is loved, too.
As you read, consider:
What memories of sharing communion have shaped your understanding of belonging?
Where might our habits leave someone without a place or a voice?
How could your particular gifts serve the common good?
What helps you notice God’s presence in ordinary moments?
How might remembering that everyone is loved change your next encounter with a neighbor?
Key Quotes from the Sermon
“The individuals are called to work together for the common good.” — Heather explains that the church’s different gifts are meant to support the whole community, rather than establish a hierarchy.
“We are different and we are many and we are one. One in purpose, one in call, one in love. We are the blessed and broken body of Christ.” — Our shared identity holds together our differences, our imperfections, and our calling to embody God’s love.
“But once our eyes knew what they were looking for, we couldn’t miss them.” — A childhood memory of spotting UPS trucks becomes an illustration of how practice changes what we notice.
“Jesus doesn’t just show up when the table is set and we gather in these pews.” — The presence we recognize in worship accompanies us into the everyday world.
“May we know that we are loved and know that everyone else is loved, too.” — Heather’s closing blessing connects receiving grace with recognizing the belovedness of others.
Read the Sermon
I remember the many Sundays that punctuated the COVID pandemic. In the extended, unprecedented time, we forged together to create a new normal.
Now, I was not serving this church. I was still serving my former congregation. But I know for us that season was marked with those little sealed individual cups of juice where you could peel back the top and find this little teeny tiny wheat wafer. I can’t even say that. Did you have those here?
I remember gathering around a screen on Zoom and seeing folks gathered around their coffee tables in their living room or on their porches or at their kitchen table, with juice or coffee or wine and an English muffin or a bagel broken between them to be the bread of life, as we would gather and share communion from our different homes, in different zip codes, in different neighborhoods, but on the same day.
As months turned to years, worship felt a little bit like a construction zone, with the blueprints being continually rewritten. And I know you don’t really erase blueprints, but continually redrawn to incorporate the essential elements of our sacramental life together with the ever-evolving dynamic of public health guidelines.
The things we once took for granted, like breathing the same air or sharing a common meal, required thoughtful coordination. If we messed up, people might get hurt.
Now, Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth is a familiar one, though perhaps not so much the verses we read for today. Paul’s letter to this church was actually the earliest written account we have of the Last Supper that Jesus shared with his disciples. It is the earliest account in writing that we have about the Christian communion meal being practiced decades after Christ had died and resurrected and ascended into heaven.
Now, Paul’s words to the church in Corinth were words written to a church under construction. They were trying to figure out how to follow Jesus and to do the things that he commanded when there were no blueprints or worship liturgies or Book of Order. All they had were stories. Stories that were passed down voice to voice, table to table, by those who told about that night that Jesus was betrayed and of the words he shared with his disciples over the Passover meal.
All they had was a command: “Do this in remembrance of me.”
But before Paul’s letter, these words had not even been written down, to our knowledge. They had been shared and they had been practiced. And the body of believers were trying to draw the blueprints for what it meant to be the people of God in the earliest incarnations of Christ’s church.
They were trying to figure out how to faithfully follow Christ’s command, to gather as his people, and to share the meal together. They were trying to discern this in a messy world with no clear road map. And frankly, Paul tells us all throughout this letter, this beautiful letter, that they really got it wrong.
He writes in the rest of the 11th chapter there that some people would show up early to this communion meal and eat all of the food before others got there. Some would show up and start drinking the wine and keep drinking the wine and keep drinking the wine and keep drinking the wine.
There were others then who showed up around the table and there was nothing for them. They did not get a seat. They did not get a morsel or a crumb, though they too had been called to keep the feast.
Now, the Corinthian church was a church known for its squabbles. They were filled with fits of arguing over whose gifts were the best and the most necessary for the well-being of the church. They would argue about whose voice mattered, who was called to serve and how and how much.
They were people trying to be people of faith in a world that was rich in hierarchies, and they were compelled to bring this awareness to the church of Jesus Christ, just like Christ’s own disciples wanted to fight for a seat near him in heaven.
Now, all throughout this letter, Paul reminds this fledgling, growing church that they are both individuals and one community.
Paul does not ever diminish the differences of those who are gathered. He sees them. He names them. He celebrates them. He invites them. But he reminds them that the differences are not meant to create a caste system. Rather, the specific, unique talents of those who have gathered are supposed to collaborate and work together for a common goal. The individuals are called to work together for the common good.
And so Paul points the Corinthian church toward the essential focus of the communion meal: the body of Christ.
And we gather around the communion meal today, gathering soon around this table, as will churches of every denomination and nation, as they have across time and place. We will break bread, and the breads will be different, but they will all be ordinary, made of the regular local grain. They will be accessible and available to all.
The cup that is poured will be regular old juice or wine. It’s just juice for us here. And as the table is prepared, we are reminded that it is that table prepared by the Good Shepherd. Jesus is the host.
And so, as we gather, we remember the meal that Jesus shared with his disciples when he washed the feet of even the one who he knew would betray him. And we do our best to heed his words to do this in remembrance of him.
Now, as we eat the bread and drink the juice, we remember that this language of the body of Christ means a lot of things. We recall the body of Christ that was crucified, that died, that was buried so that we and all of humanity might be released from the hold of sin. And we remember that his wounded body rose from the dead so that we and all could receive the gift of eternal life.
And we remember the call that is fundamental to that church in Corinth, but indeed fundamental to the church that gathers at Community Presbyterian Church of Ben Avon. Those of us who gather to eat this bread and drink this cup do so because we are called to be the body of Christ.
We acknowledge that we are broken still. We mess up. We feed into the hierarchies of the culture around us. We try to place ourselves above others. We hurt others and we get hurt.
But still, we are those through whom God’s love is enfleshed today. And it’s not just us who gather at 7501 Church Street, but by the power of the Holy Spirit and the providence of God, we are united with believers of every time and every place.
We are different and we are many and we are one. One in purpose, one in call, one in love. We are the blessed and broken body of Christ.
Now, Paul commands us what Jesus commands: that we are to take notice of this truth. We are to notice this reality within ourselves and among one another, and that we are called to do that which Christ invited us to do. That as we approach this communion table, we are to engage our collective memory.
We are to engage this bread and this cup. We are to gather as a community and remember that in all of these things, Jesus is here.
I remember when I was a young girl and my parents would pile my sisters and I in the backseat of the station wagon, and we would drive through the mountains to go visit our aunt in Maryland. This was for us a never-ending journey, even though it was only four and a half hours.
But as we drove through the mountains, our parents invited us to look up and look out the windows. And they invited us to see how many of those boxy brown UPS trucks we could find as we were driving along the highway.
Now, at first, we would look out the window and barely notice a thing. But once our eyes knew what they were looking for, we couldn’t miss them. And our three little young voices would cry out from the backseat, “There! Over there, on the other side of the road! Did you get that one?”
As these UPS trucks traveled along the arteries of the roads, connecting state to state and mailbox to mailbox, we became more aware of our interconnection. Both as a family riding in that car and as a community sharing the road, all of us going somewhere alone and yet together.
We, in a moment, will fill the arteries of these aisles and come forward to share this communion meal. And we might see in the ordinary elements of bread and juice, and in the faces of those with whom we share a pew and to whom we sang happy birthday, that Jesus is here, showing up in our very midst.
When we break the bread and smell the juice and taste the crumbs on our tongue, we receive encouragement and wisdom and hope that sustain us as a people of faith and ready us to step out into the world as the body of Christ.
But it is in all of these things that we get better at noticing that Jesus is always with us. Jesus doesn’t just show up when the table is set and we gather in these pews. Jesus is with us always, showing up in the ordinary, using us in our own unique particularities and calling us to a unified witness of love for God and for our neighbor as ourselves.
So, as we approach this communion table, may we use our senses to ready them to pay attention to the God who is always with us. So that the more that we notice Jesus in the choir and in those who are running the livestream and those who handed us a bulletin and those with whom we extended God’s peace, we might become more and more capable of noticing Jesus among us when we check out at the grocery store, when we pick up a kid at the bus stop, when we are rushing here and there.
So may we approach this table of grace with an openness to become increasingly aware of God with us. May we become increasingly open to the presence of the broken, resurrected, and living body of Christ within us and among us and at work through us.
So may we be fed and transformed. May we know that we are loved and know that everyone else is loved, too. May we share this feast, noticing our living God in Christ at work among us and through us now and always.
May it be so. Amen.
