LENT 2016 – GOING TO JERUSALEM

Tuesday, March 15

The Institution of the Lord’s Supper:  Matthew 26:  26 – 30

             We have always been a family that has enjoyed eating together, even now. A family dinner is a loud, noisy, raucous affair - full of laughter, conversations, and sharing memories.

Inevitably, we will get reminiscing about the past including family vacations and trips, cottage times, growing up, special events like weddings, birthdays and Christmases, etc.  We tell the same stories over and over again. It never seems to get old or tired. We are now creating and adding new memories for our grandchildren, which they will tell when they get older.

            Curiously, Matthew has chosen not to include the familiar words, “Do this in remembrance of me,” (Luke 22:19).  Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Supper is short and to the point. Take. Eat. This is my body. Drink from the cup, all of it.

            I like the simplicity here.

            It is not difficult to remember this story. It is a memory that sticks.

            It is the story which we will tell often when we, plain and simple church folk, gather around the Table.

            It is the story which gathers us together in close communion with Jesus and one another. It is the special story which aches with Jesus’ inclusive Love, compassion, grace and forgiving mercy.

It is not any more or any less complicated than that – Jesus personalizing the elements of bread and wine from the Great Story of the Passover, so that we recognize him by their substance and symbolic nature. He could have chosen some of the other customs of the Seder, but he especially chose bread and wine because they are rich and easily understood as signs of God’s redeeming Grace.

These two things are as common and everyday as to be taken for granted, but now because of this particular story, bread and wine taste differently and hold special significance.

This Bread and Wine take us out of the ordinary, mundane task of toiling for our daily bread and fetching that which will slake our thirsts and they work together through the Spirit of Jesus Christ to strengthen us for the journey into the future of God’s making through Christ. “I tell you, I will never again drink of this fruit of the vine until I drink it with you on my Father’s Kingdom.”

It is a wonderful mystery how a little piece of bread and a sip of grape juice or wine can have any such energy. There are times in my life when I would like to tear great big chunks from the loaf and gulp down buckets of the fruit of the vine, because I am so spiritually hungry and so thirsting after righteousness. But then I remember the story and I remember the One who has brought me into this story.  I remember the One who hands me the bread and passes me the cup. I remember the One who poured out his life for the many, for me.

I love to tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love.