The Sunday Eucharist - Page 5

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And it was to enter into that fact and experience before the throne of God that, in the great persecutions, the Christians of the Early Church went in weekly peril of their lives as they made their way through the still darkened streets to the house of one of their number, there to take part in the Sunday Eucharist.  They included all kinds of people, rich and poor, old and young, soldiers, slaves, housewives, shopkeepers, civil servants, doctors, lawyers.  The room in which they met would be large but ordinary, yet the occasion was the most significant action in their lives.

They lived in the Roman Empire, but God had transferred them to the Kingdom of his beloved Son (Colossians 1:13), so that their citizenship was now already in Heaven (Philippians 3:20), and each week in the Sunday Eucharist they were lifted up by his Son into the very heart of that Kingdom.  For that they lived, and for that they died.