I Will Tell Your Name

Roland Allen tells of a veteran missionary who came up to him one day after he hd delivered his sermon. The missionary introduced himself and said “I was a medic missionary many years in India and I served in a region where there was a epidemic of progressive blindness. People were born with healthy eyesight, but there was something in that area that causes people to lose their sight as they matured.”

But this missionary had developed a process which would arrest or prevent the progressive blindness. So people came to him and he performed his operation. After receiving this “miracle” operation, the left realizing that they had been spared a life of blindness because of what this missionary did.
He said that the never said “Thank you.” There wasn’t such a word in their dialect. Instead, they spoke a word that meant “I will tell your name.” Where they went, they would tell the name of the missionary who had cured their blindness. They had received something so wonderful that they eagerly proclaimed it.

Communion is also a time of proclamation. At this table we proclaim the most important even in human history; the event that saves us from a life of spiritual blindness. And when we take these elements; the bread and the wine, we say together that “we will tell His name and proclaim our gratitude for being saved from sin.

1 Cor 11:25-26: 25In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me." 26For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.