09.06.2020 - Love in the Family of God (Part 2)

Scripture

Luke 22:7–30 NLT

Now the Festival of Unleavened Bread arrived, when the Passover lamb is sacrificed. Jesus sent Peter and John ahead and said, “Go and prepare the Passover meal, so we can eat it together.” “Where do you want us to prepare it?” they asked him. He replied, “As soon as you enter Jerusalem, a man carrying a pitcher of water will meet you. Follow him. At the house he enters, say to the owner, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is the guest room where I can eat the Passover meal with my disciples?’ He will take you upstairs to a large room that is already set up. That is where you should prepare our meal.” They went off to the city and found everything just as Jesus had said, and they prepared the Passover meal there. When the time came, Jesus and the apostles sat down together at the table. Jesus said, “I have been very eager to eat this Passover meal with you before my suffering begins. For I tell you now that I won’t eat this meal again until its meaning is fulfilled in the Kingdom of God.” Then he took a cup of wine and gave thanks to God for it. Then he said, “Take this and share it among yourselves. For I will not drink wine again until the Kingdom of God has come.” He took some bread and gave thanks to God for it. Then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” After supper he took another cup of wine and said, “This cup is the new covenant between God and his people—an agreement confirmed with my blood, which is poured out as a sacrifice for you. “But here at this table, sitting among us as a friend, is the man who will betray me. For it has been determined that the Son of Man must die. But what sorrow awaits the one who betrays him.” The disciples began to ask each other which of them would ever do such a thing. Then they began to argue among themselves about who would be the greatest among them. Jesus told them, “In this world the kings and great men lord it over their people, yet they are called ‘friends of the people.’ But among you it will be different. Those who are the greatest among you should take the lowest rank, and the leader should be like a servant. Who is more important, the one who sits at the table or the one who serves? The one who sits at the table, of course. But not here! For I am among you as one who serves. “You have stayed with me in my time of trial. And just as my Father has granted me a Kingdom, I now grant you the right to eat and drink at my table in my Kingdom. And you will sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

Summary

Holy Communion reminds us who we are as the family of God.

Preparing the meal

It's a ceremonial meal, where the food is symbolic

Not like Thanksgiving, where the goal is to eat as much as you can

More like a first-date anniversary dinner

It doesn't matter if the food is good or not.

You do it to remember the story of who you are.

The parents of the original passover would remember that as the meal they had before they were finally set free from being slaves in Egypt.

The children of that time might remember it as the meal before they became homeless nomads for 40 years.

Even if they had a negative spin on that story though, when they finally got to celebrate it in their new homes in the Promised Land, it would have become even more meaningful.

The Routine

The disciples were going through the motions of preparing this meal that had been handed down through the generations for a thousand years.

It was very much like an Easter celebration to them

It meant something different to Jesus though.

I wonder what they thought when they heard him say that this was the last time he would eat a passover meal, "until it's meaning had been fulfilled".

I don't know if he meant until after he had died on the cross for them.

Or if it involved starting the church

Or perhaps if Jesus is waiting until all the lost children come home to the heavenly banquet.

Maybe that heavenly banquet will be less about the food and more about the anniversary of us coming to know Jesus.

Do you celebrate anniversaries with Jesus?

Emmaus walk - made as an anniversary with Jesus. Sometimes leaders forget it is not about them and their anniversaries with Jesus.

Those anniversary celebrations, as the Emmaus Walk experience usually shows, are better when they are celebrated with others as well as just between you and Jesus.

So maybe Jesus was teaching them how to celebrate an anniversary of sorts, but something that needed to be remembered more than once a year.

Perhaps in the sense of families with loved ones serving overseas.

How would those disciples remember Jesus, their beloved, who had gone on ahead of them into the Kingdom He was preparing for them?

Part 2 - The Supper

Hold up your communion packet.

What you hold in your hand is what has been passed down to us, as our (more than once a year) anniversary with Jesus.

It's not magic

It doesn't heal you and it won't protect you from bad things happening in your life.

It reminds us of the story of us and Jesus together

and it reminds us of who we are.

And that is better than magic

It would be a very different story if Jesus only died for me.

Luke 22:17–23 NLT

Then he took a cup of wine and gave thanks to God for it. Then he said, “Take this and share it among yourselves. For I will not drink wine again until the Kingdom of God has come.” He took some bread and gave thanks to God for it. Then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” After supper he took another cup of wine and said, “This cup is the new covenant between God and his people—an agreement confirmed with my blood, which is poured out as a sacrifice for you. “But here at this table, sitting among us as a friend, is the man who will betray me. For it has been determined that the Son of Man must die. But what sorrow awaits the one who betrays him.” The disciples began to ask each other which of them would ever do such a thing.

Sharing a cup has taken on new meaning in 2020

Practically, it means trusting one another enough to share germs.

Symbolically, it is a joining together of lives - becoming one family together.

12 very different people being asked to love God and each other - to become one family together.

That's the story of what church is.

Part 3: Disciple's Response

The disciples had another perspective

They wanted to know who as going to be the top leaders among them.

They missed the point, they did not catch the vision that Jesus had shown them.

They even forgot about the implications of one of them betraying them all.

It became about how I can use this family, instead of how I can be a part of this family.

When Jesus left and went to the cross, there was nothing to keep them together anymore.

The ressurection reminded them.

We know that from a few stories later when Jesus meets the people on the road to emmaus and they recognize his story, which had become their story, in that symbolic meal again.

CTA

Being the family of God means passing the torch on down through the generations.

Sometimes life throws us curveballs and that torch goes out.

If that was the way the church worked, it would not have lasted it's first years of persecution and exile.

The torch would have gone out 2,000 years ago.

But Jesus is not dead, He is alive and He is here with us.

Today we get to relight the torch of our church with the original flame.

Communion