The Feast

Okay, so I am not as grumpy today --not that I didn't mean anything I said yesterday. Shape up, sinners! :-)

Contemplating the Lord's Supper today. It really is a beautiful thing that says and does so much to/for us. It is hard to capture it all. First and foremost, it is a proclamation of the Lord's death. This is why Christ instituted it. Could it be that Jesus knew the church would be tempted to empty the cross of its offense, to shove it off in a corner somewhere, and talk about things like happy, prosperous, successful lives? The Lord's Supper makes us keep two awful and wonderful facts in front of us. First: rather than let sin go unpunished, God offered his son --the offensiveness of my sin. And second, God offered his son --the costly love of God in Jesus.

Christians have differed about what the Lord's Supper means, though these distinctions strike me as less strident than in the past. Some, I think, make too much of the Supper as a physical participation in the sacrifice of Christ. Others, undoubtedly, make too little of it. Whatever we make of it, what happens, happens! The Lord's Supper points us back to the Passover, in its deliverance of God's people by the blood of the firstborn and the spotless lamb. It brings us into the Upper Room, reclining at table with Jesus. It takes us to Calvary, and makes us see our savior's face on the cross. And, it brings our hearts to heaven, where Jesus sits at the head of the table, as the bridegroom.

The Lord's Supper takes us back and forward, but it also testifies to the present reality of the unity in Christ of all believers --that we are family bound by common blood, a blood-tie that is closer than natural kinship.

But, it is also a meal. Christ himself feeds us. He brings satisfaction, joy, and nourishment to the hungry and thirsty soul as surely as bread and wine do to our physical bodies.

Let us rejoice!