John Sherrill tells this story. “I remember a snowy evening in an Austrian village walking with Tib to the home of friends. The Schneiders had invited us to attend a house-church meeting in what was literally an upper room, their living quarters above a grocery store. It promised to be an interesting time with a visiting American Rabbi, who had accepted Jesus as the Messiah, explaining the Jewish roots of “Holy Communion.”

We shook off snow and stepped into a room with antlers on the wall, embroidered runners on the tables and shelf after shelf of carved wooden animals. I knew one of the guests, a German, whose family had perished in the firebombing of Dresden during World War II. Another man wore a collar of a catholic priest. There was an African-American woman, a staff sergeant from an army base across the border in Germany. There was a number of Austrians in their thirties and forties who, our host whispered, were meeting a Jew for the first time in their lives.

Yet here we were, gathering together to celebrate the Lord’s Supper: friends and former enemies, people of different nationalities and ages, races and denominations breaking bread and drinking wine together in the celebration common to every branch of the Christian Church. This was a wonder, not of man’s organization but God’s faithfulness.

Jesus knew there would be sad divisions among his followers. The night before he died he gave them a commandment. “Love one another” (John 15:12) And because he knew we cannot love without His help, He gave us a sacrament stronger in meaning than all our separation.”