The Communion Feast

At the church I attend, they do something kind of unique after they pass the bread and juice (its a huge church so we pass trays…). Every week, they explain it so that newcomers won’t be surprised, and also as a reminder to the rest of us of WHY we do it. You see, after everyone has eaten their wafer and sipped the little cup of juice, you hear this massive sound as everyone shatters the little plastic cups. It is meant to symbolize that what Jesus has done on the cross is finished. The accusation against our lives (in all forms) is shattered. It might sound weird, but it’s pretty cool. I think I even wrote about it in a previous blog a while back.

I love when the body of Christ celebrates communion, as Jesus commanded us to, to remember what he did and the new covenant he ushered in. Yet there is still admittedly something else I always want to ask:

What about the rest? Does everyone forget what else He said?

No, they probably don’t, but its something that is rarely mentioned, which is why I love it and why I always tend to smile when I add this in my head after the communion liturgy is over:

“I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s Kingdom” (Matt 26:29, NIV)

Why do I love this so much? Because its a promise. That one day, we will get to sit down and have a glass of wine with the One who has called us by name, the One who has walked with us every step of our lives. We will get to process with him one day. Laugh. Cry. And all will be well… for good.

It reminds me of a passage we read in my Old Testament class last semester, where Moses is up on Mt Sinai with the Lord, after the people told God that he could be their God and they would be his people. Exodus 24:9 tells us that Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Ahibu and the 70 elders climbed the mountain and had a feast with God. They ate and drank with him, having a covenant meal.

That just blows my mind.

Now, you can think this sounds nuts, that it didn’t happen, or you can wonder if it really did. But what I love about this is that it reflects SO WELL the hospitality of the ancient near eastern world. Covenants involved meals. Celebrating what was going on. And in this case? God there, celebrating with the people he was calling his own.

We do this too, don’t we? We have meals to celebrate birthdays and graduations, engagements and weddings. We have family meals to get to know our kids friends, backyard barbeques to get to know our neighbors, holiday meals where we invite in folks who have nowhere to go. Meals are bonding…. and there are sometimes I will just sit back, look around, and realize that there is something beautiful and holy about what is going on. I hope you have experienced this at some point too, because I think it represents the best of how our God longs to relate to us.

So yeah, Jesus statement at his last seder to me is something I can’t keep out of my celebration of communion. It makes me think back to the first covenant meal in Exodus, where God called out to a people as his own, one day to be a nation known as Israel….

…. because its a picture of God, here again in the town of Jerusalem, having another covenant meal with his people, this time inagurating a new covenant that depended only on HIS ability to meet it.

Do you get the richness of this???

One day, my friends…. we will join him … and I have a feeling there will be a lot more at the banquet table than we realize. So I challenge you – make room for that in your life today. Open your table to the hurting, the lonely, the outcast, the ones that need to know the richness of His love. Goodness knows Jesus certainly did 🙂