NOTE: The following notes include several sections drawn / adapted from commentaries
or messages (with credit given). These were not quoted or even stated in full but merely
served as a reference for the idea.
INTRODUCTION
Some people will go to great lengths to preserve the memory of another. We have
monuments that dot our globe which were intended to preserve the memory of a
worthy event or person. There is perhaps none so spectacular as the Taj Mahal.
Most of us have seen pictures of this architectural specimen that has been labeled
one of the seven wonders of the world. The Taj Mahal is located in Agra India and was
built in the 1600’s by the 5th Mughal emporer, Shah Jahan as a tomb for his beloved
wife Mumtaz Mahal. The Taj Mahal is an octagonal building with walls measuring 130
feet long by 70 ‘ high and it is surmounted by a dome adding an addition 120’ in height.
It is constructed entirely out of white marble, which is reflected by a huge pool. The
interior design is magnificent, containing 12 types of inlaid stones, and mosaics of great
beauty. English poet Sir Edwin Arnold has written of the building, “Not a piece of
Architecture, as other buildings are, but the proud passions of an emperor’s love
wrought in living stones.”
(Clark Bates – SC Sermon)
> Today we are presented with a symbol of love that transcends the Taj Mahal…
that is truly the greatest wonder of the world… and that was established out of a love
that transcends all others… a love for YOU… and for me.
Let’s pick up with what mark describes in his Gospel… Mark 14:12-17, 19-25 (For
the sake of focus, this skips the portion focused on Judas.)
Mark 14:12-17, 22-25 (NIV)
On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when it was customary to sacrifice
the Passover lamb, Jesus’ disciples asked him, "Where do you want us to go and make
preparations for you to eat the Passover?"
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So he sent two of his disciples, telling them, "Go into the city, and a man carrying a
jar of water will meet you. Follow him. 14Say to the owner of the house he enters, ’The
Teacher asks: Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’
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He will show you a large upper room, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us
there."
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The disciples left, went into the city and found things just as Jesus had told them. So
they prepared the Passover.
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When evening came, Jesus arrived with the Twelve. ....22While they were eating,
Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take it;
this is my body."
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Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, and they all drank from it.
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"This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many," he said to them.
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"I tell you the truth, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I
drink it anew in the kingdom of God."
Larger Background…. Breakthrough at every turn… but now we enter into the
climax… most prophetic and profound…. Enters Jerusalem… hailed as King…weeps
over Jerusalem (speaks of it’s destruction which indeed came to pass)…. Because he
would become the new temple…
> Now he clears away the sacrifice itself… as he reconstitutes in himself… the
Passover Meal.
Passover meal…is what bonded the people… to God and one another.
> It was symbolic of the covenant that God had established with the people of Israel.
Covenant is not an agreement between two equal parties but rather an arrangement
established by one party, in this case God. The other party can only accept or reject it.
And God had long told of a day when he would create a new form of covenant… and that
was precisely what was unfolding in this last meal with Jesus. God was establishing a
new covenant symbolized in this meal.
But it begins with preparation… Jesus initiates… had likely met an owner who he
made plans with… but now while outside the city proper (perhaps to maintain the
potential for a safe and secure time with his most intimate relationships)…he sends two
in.
Always sent in twos… among other reasons in such times two witnesses were required to
substantiate the veracity of anything… the testimony of two maintained integrity.
Picture of ministry… Jesus initiates wanting to meet… gives them some direction to
start with… and they obediently prepare what is needed. It’s a beautiful reminder that
while the purpose is central – that of meeting with the Lord …the practical preparation
matters… Jesus had cared to make sure that this important gathering would be able to
happen… and they help. The natural and supernatural work together. [“Getting up a church
service, organizing lighting and sound, making sure of the room temperature and comfort is not
“supernatural,” but it sets the stage for worship, teaching and the power of the Spirit” (DW) ]
The hosting team, sound/lighting, etc… are just as much a part of meeting
together.
The ultimate purpose is that Jesus wants to have intimate time with those who are close
to him.
Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, Eucharist, Mass …captures the greatest bond
that has ever been extended.
Begins in the context of the Passover Meal…
Opening words of Passover meal… ‘“What makes this night different from all
others?”
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That night was a horrific night… the end of the long process of God seeking to bring
freedom… and the hard heart of a Pharaoh that refused to surrender… judgment after
judgment… ending with a night of firstborn being killed. Imagine the horror… all day
long the most tender and unblemished of lambs are being slaughtered… blood being
painted upon doorposts…then night falls… and it begins… screams of deepest
anguish…but the blood of these lambs proved to cover.
(Might seem to horrific to accept as a necessary good… yet no one that night missed
the reality… they would have gone down with Egypt itself. They weren’t being spared
because they were better people… but because of grace… because the living God had
made a covenant with them that had nothing to do with merit.
> They were surrounded by the reality of the same human autonomy that ran
through themselves.
1. In this new sacred meal we are bound with God in the sober
consequences of our SIN (human autonomy).
Paradox of our human nature: we long to belong… yet hold a love for autonomy.
> To appreciate this meal… this intimacy offered… we must come to terms with the
consequences of ultimate and utter autonomy.
And who invites who to this meal? Christ invites. He takes the initiative.
At this point in the meal it was customary for the head of the family to give thanks for
the bread… (word “Eucharist” means ‘thanks.’) Jesus, as head of his “family,” having
given thanks for the bread, added words which gave the bread a new significance: “Take
it,” he said to the disciples, “this is my body.” In the explanatory narrative which
preceded the meal, the bread was said to be “the bread of affliction which our
fathers ate when they left Egypt” (see Deut. 16:3).
Jesus would now become the bread of affliction.
2. In this new sacred meal we are bound with God in the SUFFERING
and SACRIFICE of Christ’s body (the bread.)
In what way is this bread his body?
For several reasons we understood that his words are not literal but spiritual.
• The Passover bread was never considered to be the same as the bread eaten by the
Jewish forefathers during the exodus…
• Jesus had spoken of himself as the ‘Bread of Life’… clearly symbolic of spiritual
substance. Earlier he had also said, I am the Vine, you are the branches. “I am the
door of the Sheep . . . .” “I am the good shepherd.. . . .” … always symbolical of
the spiritual substance.
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But there is far more her than sentimental symbolism… there is a truly spiritual
substance… and presence.
The choice to identify with the Exodus is what bound the Jewish people to their life with
God… for “in each generation,” the prescription ran, “it is a duty to regard oneself as
though one had oneself been brought up out of Egypt.” And in the same way… to
identify with the suffering and sacrifice of Christ is what binds us to our life with him.
• Jesus knew that this set of actions would explain the meaning of his death in a
way that nothing else-no theories, no clever ideas-could ever do. After all, when
Jesus died for our sins it wasn’t so he could fill our minds with true ideas,
however important they may be, but so he could do something, namely, rescue us
from evil and death.
• Like a handshake or a kiss, doing it says it.
• Past and present come together. Events from long ago are fused with the meal
we are sharing here and now. If the bread-breaking is one of the key moments
when the thin partition between heaven and earth becomes transparent, it is also
one of the key moments when God’s future comes rushing into the present. Like
the children of Israel still in the wilderness, tasting food which the spies had
brought back from their secret trip to the Promised Land, in the bread-breaking
we are tasting God’s new creation-the new creation whose prototype and origin
is Jesus himself.
• That is one of the reasons why he said "This is my body" and "This is my
blood." We don’t need elaborate metaphysical theories with long Latin names to
get the point. Jesus-the real Jesus, the living Jesus, the Jesus who dwells in
heaven and rules over earth as well, the Jesus who has brought God’s future into
the present-wants not just to influence us, but to rescue us; not just to inform us,
but to heal us; not just to give us something to think about, but to feed us, and to
feed us with himself. That’s what this meal is all about.
- by N.T. Wright (Simply Christian p. 153-154)
This isn’t the movies… this was suffering at it’s most intense… physically… but also
in heart… misunderstood and abandoned… forsaken…
One thing Christ would make very clear… his suffering and sacrifice for us was
CHOSEN.
(“No one takes my life from me… I give it.”)
I’ve often heard it said that Jesus ‘had to die for us.’ Not true. He chose to.
And that choice… in terms of surrender… is ours to follow.
The cup was poured out...Jesus was a willing sacrifice.
Next….
“At the end of the meal, when the closing blessing or “grace after meat” had been
said, a cup of wine was shared by the family. This cup, called the “cup of blessing,” was
the third of four cups which stood on the table. When Jesus had said the blessing and
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given this cup to his companions, without drinking from it himself, he said to them, “This
is my covenant blood, which is poured out for many.” (The Pauline version says, “This is
the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you; do this as my memorial,
every time you drink it.”)
When Moses, at the foot of Mount Sinai, read the law of God to the Israelites who
had come out of Egypt and they had undertaken to keep it, the blood of sacrificed
animals was sprinkled partly on the altar (representing the presence of God) and
partly on the people, and Moses spoke of it as “the blood of the covenant which the
Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words” (Exodus 24:8).
> To the disciples, who had the Passover and exodus narratives vividly in their
minds at that time, Jesus’ words must have meant that a new covenant was about to
be instituted in place of that into which their ancestors were brought in Moses’
day—to be instituted, moreover, by Jesus’ death for his people. If, then, when they
take the memorial bread they participate by faith in the life of him who died and
rose again, so when they take the cup they declare and appropriate by faith their
“interest in the Savior’s blood.”
(FF Bruce, Hard sayings)
3. In this new sacred meal we are bound with God in the new covenant
of SALVATION through Christ’s blood (the cup.)
Since no man can keep the law the people were ever in default. But Jesus says, "I am
introducing and ratifying a new covenant, a new kind of relationship between God
and man. And it is not dependent on law, it is dependent on the blood that I will shed."
That is to say, it is dependent solely on love. The new covenant was a relationship
between man and God not dependent on law but on love. In other words Jesus says, "I
am doing what I am doing to show you how much God loves you." Men are no longer
simply under the law of God. Because of what Jesus did, they are forever within the
love of God. That is the essence of what the sacrament says to us. (Barclay DBS Comm.)
(Charles Scott)
In Mark 10… he tries to explain the suffering he will walk through… to which he
asks his followers, “Can you drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the
baptism I am baptized with?”
“We can,” they answered. Jesus said, “The cup that I drink you shall drink, and the
baptism I am baptized with shall be your baptism.” And it was so. Those two, like
their Master, died as martyrs. In the context of Jesus’ teaching and in the context of
the understanding of the early Church, these rites we call Baptism and Eucharist
were closely tied to a sacrificial life, the giving up of self and following the martyrs
path. To eat with Jesus and drink the cup at His last supper was to take a blood oath
to follow Him and His Way, even to the end of the Age.
This is a blood oath, a covenant in blood, requiring commitment by all parties to the
contract. We are going together. “I will be with you on the Way,” is Jesus’
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commitment. “We will go with you all the way” is the commitment of the Disciples.
So they at the table came slowly to realize this was no ordinary Passover. This was
the beginning of something new. It was indeed, a new contract between God and His
people.
Final Vow….
After consecrating the third cup – the cup of redemption – as his blood, Jesus refused
from that point to drink the fourth cup, which is the cup of consummation. Instead,
he vowed never to drink wine again until he would drink the cup of consummation with
his disciples in his coming kingdom.
God… the Creator of the universe… all time and space…wants to spend eternity
with you.
That is what is at work around us… and that is what Christ was calling to be at work IN
US.
I’ll be waiting for you… and even with you until that final consummation… fellowship
symbolized by a banquet that never ends.
In a very real sense, the meal we share in this morning is the very same meal which
Jesus celebrated with his disciples 2,000 years ago. It is a Passover meal which Jesus
never concluded. It is, in a very real sense, still going on. What we do this morning is
not so much a re-enactment of that meal with his followers as it is a continuation of
that first meal.
Jesus is still the Lord of this Table. The bread that we take and eat, it is still Him, as he
said it was. It is, as Paul tells us, a communion in the Body of Christ. The cup from which
we will drink – it is as Paul tells us, a communion in the blood of Christ. Jesus is not only
here, as he promised his disciples he would always be with them, he is and has always
been present at the Eucharist, for it is the same Eucharist which he instituted 2,000 years
ago. It is the unfinished feast at which are privileged to be admitted as his disciples.
As we commune with our Lord and with one another, we also commune with all the
saints of all the centuries who have partaken of the Passover bread and the cup of
redemption. And, so shall we continue to drink from that cup until we with all the
redeemed join with Jesus one day to drink the cup of consummation with him in his
Kingdom.
(Adapted from William Mouser, SC sermon)
(Charles Scott)
In that last supper… last meal… was no ordinary Passover. This was the beginning
of something new. It was indeed, a new covenant between God and His people This
is a blood oath, a covenant in blood, requiring commitment by all parties to the
contract. We are going together. “I will be with you on the Way,” is Jesus’
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commitment. “We will go with you all the way” is the commitment of the Disciples.
But such a pact should be taken with hearts fully captured…
Familiarity…
Ex – of death of a loved one that always touches us… sacred place… never to become
lost in familiarity. (Story below in post notes of Roger Rose… or better … one in which
it was purposeful…soldiers… or seeing Passion of Christ.)
As such we can understand and hear the Apostle Paul’s warning… that we should
come prepared. We should come sober of what we are partaking of…
• The soberness of our sin.
• The life of surrender and sacrificial love… as symbolized by the bread.
• The covenant of a blood oath… symbolized in drinking of the cup.
If this is not a life that you have received… extend to you… this morning you have
an opportunity to receive… or to simply let these elements pass by… no shame.
PASS and RECEIVE ELEMENTS
