Old Testament events admonish us with their implications. The account about Jonah the prophet is a case in point. When he preached to the people in Nineveh, they believed him and acted on his warning by fasting, putting on sackcloth, and sitting in ashes. Their stricken conscience responded to Jonah’s forthright proclamation, “In forty days Nineveh will be destroyed” (Jonah 3:4). This lone foreign figure didn’t perform any miracles in their streets to confirm his claim.
Read Essay →These emblems not only remind us; they teach us. Hebrews 12:2 recommends “looking to Jesus the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarded the shame, and sat down on the right hand of God’s throne.” The glory beyond the agony became an aid to enduring it.
Christ has engendered trust in him (author) and carried trust to its highest demonstration in the way he died (perfecter). The loaf and cup connect us with that kind of person, and then with his way of getting through limitations and stress and rejection and pain. Such things are not our final condition; they are along the way to the final condition. The future empowers us in the present; the eternal strengthens us through the temporary.
Read Essay →In this observance we highlight the most important event that ever took place. The death of the Lamb of God provides a solution for the problem of sin on this side of the grave. Besides, it establishes the terms of judgment on the other side of the grave. It’s the focal point of history and the basis for eternal destinies. From this speck of space and this tick in time, we bring ourselves into God’s eternal, universal purpose.
Read Essay →The cross symbolizes Christ, the Christian faith, and salvation from sin. It was the focal point of our Lord’s several acts of compassion leading up to his death.
He healed the ear of Malchus, one of those who had come to arrest him (John 18:10). He told the soldiers to let his disciples go and just arrest him (John 18:8). He told the begging insurrectionist on the cross beside him that he would be with him in Paradise that same day (Luke 23:43). He tried to warn his executioners what they were fulfilling when he quoted Psalm 22:1, “God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). He prayed for his jealous accusers, “Forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing” (Luke 23:34?).
Read Essay →Nothing important is ever easy. It may be easy to understand, but doing it is another matter. The loaf and cup here in front of us remind us about the powerful temptation in the Garden, the temptation for Jesus to do other than what he knew was the Father’s will. They remind us that nothing is ever changed by staying in the Garden, never changed by knowing what to do. It takes coming out of the Garden, so to speak, to do what it takes.
Read Essay →Jesus died on Friday, but we commemorate it on Sunday. That custom arose because his resurrection on the first day of the week made clear what his death on the cross meant three days earlier.
Two other men died that same day the same way, but Jesus was not a criminal executed for his own crimes, but a sacrifice offered for our sins. God made that clear by bringing him out of the tomb. This bread and grape juice stand for his body and blood, given and shed. As we say so often from the apostle Paul, Jesus was delivered up on Friday for our trespasses and raised on Sunday for our justification (Romans 4:25).
Read Essay →With many things, if we do not do them completely, we may as well not do them at all. Preparing the ground, planting the seed, watering the plants does not amount to anything if we don’t harvest the crop. Laying a foundation and setting up walls and rafters does not amount to anything if we don’t roof the building. We must finish what we start to get any benefit out of it.
Read Essay →“Shedding blood” means dying an unnatural death, in this case a death for sins. Jesus maintained his mission till his dying breath. That was not just for a cause but to a person, the Father. Giving one’s life is the most anyone can do for any reason. Christ’s ultimate self-giving was also his last, coming as it did after a full life of righteous endeavor for God.
We identify with that righteousness when we join this observance. We commit to his values and purposes because he is Lord after becoming the Savior. God counts us as righteous like him on the condition of that commitment.
Read Essay →Ultimate issues call for ultimate measures, The ultimate issue everywhere has always been broken friendships, human and divine. That friendship consists of behaviors toward each other, not just closeness to, descent from, and likeness to.
If those behaviors and their attitudes and motives are self-centered, the associations are strained and broken. We call them “sins.”
So what happens now? This “breaking bread” calls for our undivided attention to what has happened: God has sent his Son to establish the only case of perfect righteousness in the human realm. That “Christ event” culminated in his being killed on a cross by those who refused to accept him as coming in the Messianic role.
Read Essay →Paul’s comments about communion include discernment. That means, first of all, that it not get lost inside a meal—as a course in the love feast he cautions his readers about in 1 Corinthians 11:17-22. It means not letting this observance be a pointless ritual. More personally it calls for discerning the body of Christ in it (11:29) and discerning ourselves as we participate (11:31).
Coming to the table reserves a place in our gathering for introspection. That is a natural thing to do because these emblems memorialize Christ’s giving his life for our sins. So we do well to evaluate our appreciation for what he did by evaluating our motives, attitudes, and behaviors in response to it. Discerning puts meaning into the emblems.
Read Essay →Human resistance does not thwart divine intention. The cross represents human resistance; the empty tomb represents divine triumph. The communion we observe on Sunday testifies to the divine triumph over human resistance last Friday; otherwise, there would be no reason to observe it. In this case, that earlier rebellion even helped accomplish the divine intent.
In effect, the Jewish people and the religious leaders in Jesus’ day had tried to redefine the Messiah’s role away from personal righteousness toward political independence. They failed; God resurrected the One they crucified. Death on a cross and three days in the ground were as futile as Jonah’s attempt to run away from God’s commission to preach in Nineveh.
Read Essay →“Actions speak louder than words.” Jesus meant something like that when he said, “Nobody has greater love than to lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). He said that the night before he did that. His follow-up in the morning spoke more than all his sermons combined.
That same crucifixion eve, he instituted this simple custom to keep in remembrance of him and his life’s main principle. It won’t take us long this morning to repeat the custom, but it will take us all day and the rest of our days to live it out. It does not take much effort to act out this gesture, but it may take everything we’ve got to do it. He went first; it’s our turn to show how much we care.
Read Essay →“[Christ] is our peace, who united [Jews and Gentiles] and tore down the wall [between the court of Gentiles and the Jewish quarters in the temple at Jerusalem]. He abolished in his flesh [the source of] enmity between them, that is, the Law made up of commandments as ordinances. He did it to create in himself from the two a new united humankind, so making peace. He did it to reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, having slain the enmity that way.”
Read Essay →We are taking part in a worldwide observance that has been going on for 2,000 years. Not only that, but Messiah’s death applies to the Mosaic era as well. The Hebrew writer says, “a death having taken place for transgressions under the first covenant” (Hebrews 9:15). But that is still not the whole story. “The gospel was preached even to the dead that were disobedient in the days of Noah” (1 Peter 3:19). Everyone’s destiny will be figured in relation to the event that we are remembering here at this table.
Read Essay →A word particularly to you fathers today: Be struck by what you’re about to do.
I have two sons, David and Steve. We have worked together, played together, performed music together, talked a lot about lots of things, eaten countless meals across the table from each other for years. I can’t imagine being responsible for having David or Steve die a terrible death. I cannot imagine what it would take to bring myself to ask them to do that.
Read Essay →“From a crib to a cross” indicates innocence on both ends of life, from start to finish. We needed that kind of life as a model and a basis for our own innocence.
The Christmas story is stripped of life’s distractions. The Magi came to the palace in the capital, but Jesus had entered the world eight miles south of there in a barn. Instead of finding him with the king, the Wise Men found him in a house with a carpenter and his young wife. They did not approach a powerful ruler; they knelt to a baby. Position, power, prominence, and wealth have little to do with this story—except to provide contrast. Even the gold, frankincense, and myrrh served to finance the little family’s flight to a foreign country just to save the baby from being killed from jealousy.
Read Essay →Antidote to Fear
Taking this bread and fruit of the vine is like taking an antidote. The elements themselves are not the antidote; it’s what they represent that’s the antidote to condemnation. “Being justified by his blood, we’ll be saved from wrath” (Romans 5:8). John speaks similarly in a context about judgment, punishment, and the fear of it, “Perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18), that is, full-grown love for God takes away foreboding about the eternal future.
Read Essay →Which was the better football team in a game that went 21 to 20? Which team was better in a game that went 76 to 2? The second game offers a clearer case.
Seeing things in the extreme makes them clearer and more certain. That God cares about us may not seem clear in a situation where people dislike us, where natural disasters overwhelm us, where health issues weigh us down, where the future looks bleak.
Read Essay →Isaiah looked forward to see what we are looking back to remember: the suffering of Another because of what we have done. Were it not for our failures, there would have been no need for him to be saddened, misunderstood, despised, rejected, and abused to death.
Isaiah meant more than that our actions cause other people grief and pain. He meant more than that we’re the ones who deserve what they suffer. He meant more than that we cannot disentangle ourselves from the consequences of our own deeds against other people. He meant more than that we’re all included in this indictment (53:6).
Read Essay →“I didn’t come to do my own will; I came to do my Father’s will.” The Father and the Son have a oneness in the sense of unity; they were at one—united in purpose to do what happened through Jesus’ ministry, including Gethsemane through Golgotha: “Not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42; Mark 14:36; Matthew 26:39, 42).
Taking these representations of his body and blood says to the Father that we too qualify our will by his. As Christ accepted his cross to show his obedience to the Father and his love for us, so we observe these emblems of the cross to express our love to the Father and Son for agreeing together to do this for us.
Read Essay →Life mixes sadness and joy. The one tempers the other, so happiness is not constant and sadness is not permanent. We may do well then to speak of joy since happiness depends on what “happens.” But joy overrides what’s happening and follows the hard knocks that come. Furthermore, anticipating joy strengthens present endurance, “For the joy that was set before him, Jesus endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2).
Observing the bread and wine illustrates the point and affirms our convictions about it. On this day of resurrection, we observe the emblems of the crucifixion—joy after sadness. We say several things at once, including our confidence that there will certainly be “joy in the morning” for us if he could anticipate it in his waning hours. So we take these emblems in light of the rest of the story: “strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.”
Read Essay →“To the One that can present you faultless with great joy before the only God our Savior, be glory . . . forevermore.” On that Great Day we don’t have to feel like he is looking at us with our accumulated past sins and mistakes in mind. He will be looking at us as we are then, which grows out of the message in these emblems.
Here is something of how it works. When I was about twelve, I missed the curve in our driveway and drove our 1946 Ford Fergusen tractor over an iron post near the lane. The post bent over and then popped up again behind the radiator before I could get the tractor stopped. Instead of leaving bad enough alone, I backed the tractor up and ran that post through the radiator.
Read Essay →Coming here means giving credit where credit is due. Several TV commercials lately are making their appeals to “receive what you deserve.” Such wording does have a certain drawing power, but there is a more important idea that calls us not to take credit for what we have done and then appeal for what we deserve from doing it. As Jesus put it, we have only done our duty no matter how well we have done it (Luke 17:10).
Read Essay →The Lord’s Supper pictures Jesus reversing the downward spiral of deteriorating relationships. On the cross he lived out in the extreme his own commandment to “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39).
People usually respond in kind—good for good, bad for bad. The pattern leads to deepening discord. Stopping evil comes from not responding at all, by letting it die from lack of attention. Reversing the pattern comes from responding to evil with good.
Read Essay →Each year offers a new beginning. On a smaller scale, each week at this table, these emblems remind us that the blood that saved us continues to cleanse us from sins (1 John 1:7). Those sins crop up as periodic failures to be what he has called us to be, shortcomings from what we have aspired to become.
That “cleansing” is not one and done, nor is it something that needs to be redone again and again. Rather, we experience ongoing relationship with the One who continues to forgive us as we continue to commit ourselves to him and his purposes in daily living.
Read Essay →Easter
We are meeting at the table, not to remember a dead founder but to acknowledge a living Lord. Were it not for what astounded us at dawn, we would have no reason to be here much less to take up these markers of a death last Friday.
“Dead Messiah” would be a contradiction of terms because “Messiah abides forever” (John 12:34). It is not an abiding like our Lord’s contemporaries expected. He would not live and rule forever on earth; he would abide forever by first dying and resurrecting to rule forever at God’s right hand with the promise of sending his Spirit to abide with us till he returns.
Read Essay →These communion elements take us back to the hardest situation our Lord faced. Jesus could have prayed to the Father to send as many as 72,000 angels to protect him from this ordeal (Matthew 26:53). Instead, the Father sent him one angel to empower him with influence to deal with it (Luke 22:43).
God may not protect us either from the ordeals we face; but remembering our “older brother” here and the presence of the Spirit that’s always with us, is sufficient to empower us for times like that. The loaf and cup together draw us to that ideal because we are not above our Lord in such matters.
Read Essay →Christ’s cross serves as the ultimate symbol of temptation; his empty tomb nearby is a monument to conquered temptation.
Scripture says he was tempted in all the ways we are—and more, we might add—yet without failing (Hebrews 4:15). At the start of his ministry, he was tempted while hungry, thirsty, and weak. In the end of his ministry, he was tempted with excruciating pain. All the while meantime, he faced rejection, mockery, and betrayal.
Read Essay →“He is our Peace” (Ephesians 2:14). Paul writes that comment in reference to overcoming the Jew-Gentile enmity. He is referring to the wall in the Jews’ temple complex that divided the Court of the Gentiles from the rest of the worship center. So to speak, Christ tore down that separator and that separation.
The need for peace applies to a wide range of divisions ancient and modern. Christ no longer moves among us bodily, but he has left the church to be the “body of Christ” in the world (Ephesians 4:12, etc.). It’s our role to avoid bringing new divisions into our communities, and to do what we can to overcome the ones at work and play that are already here.
Read Essay →Almost as an aside, Paul tells the Thessalonians “not to get weary with well doing” (2 Thessalonians 3:13). His comment strikes at an important point in our endeavors: not to quit before we’re done. Sometimes without our knowing it, success lies just ahead if we keep at it a little longer.
Jesus spent more than three years traveling, teaching, healing, resisting temptation, and being rejected. The night and morning before his last afternoon, he was up all night being arrested, deserted, ridiculed, put through five trials, flogged, and crushed under a cross he was too weakened to carry to the site of his crucifixion.
Read Essay →One act, so many things to learn from it.
We’ve known people that would not take an entry-level job and earn their way up to higher rank and better pay. They wanted to start high for top dollar. Why was that?
Whatever the reason, we recognize it as weakness. Jesus demonstrated what it means to have inner strength that is not tied to position and circumstance. He gave up being equal with God, became a man, and carried his humility to the point of “enduring the cross.” He prioritized accomplishing a purpose over occupying a position.
Read Essay →The conclusion of one thing can become the beginning of something further. Looking back at what has happened lays the groundwork for what should come. Christ’s death to sin was not the end of the matter; it led to the end of the matter: his living to God.
Our baptism into his death is not the end of the matter either; it leads to living to God. The Lord’s Supper looks two ways at once—back to what happened and forward to what is to happen when “sin is washed away.”
Read Essay →Even when we are trying to “do the right thing,” ignorance gets us into mistakes and sins that range from minor to major. The Proverbial writer noted long ago, “There’s a way that seems right, but it leads to death” (Proverbs 14:12).
Jesus’ amazing words on the cross were, “Forgive them, Father; they don’t know what they’re doing” (Luke 23:34). In the early days of the church, Peter told the Jewish crowd, “You killed the Prince of life. . . . I know you did it in ignorance as did your rulers” (Acts 3:14, 17). Much later Paul, the “chief of sinners,” told Timothy, “I received forgiveness because I did it ignorantly in disbelief” (1 Timothy 1:13).
Read Essay →In the process of receiving the Ten Commandments, Moses asked to see God’s glory. God responded, “You cannot see my face because people cannot see me and live” (Exodus 32:20). We might take the comment in two ways. Does it mean we cannot see God while we are alive, or does it warn that seeing God would kill us? Some of the ancients seem to have had this belief (Genesis 32:30; Judges 6:22-23; 13:21-22). The less extreme meaning equals Paul’s comment that in the next stage of existence we will see God “face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12), or as John puts it, “We will be like him and see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).
Read Essay →There is more than one way to mess up when we are dealing with people. We can be unaware that what we have done is harmful or offensive. We can fail to do what we know we should but forget to take care of it or not consider it important enough to worry about. In selfish moments, we know better but don’t care enough to restrain our impulses. We call them sins of ignorance, sins of omission, sins of commission. They are alike in their negative effects and our need to do what we can to reverse their effects.
Read Essay →The greatest gift is the gift of yourself. The most extreme example of it we are remembering here at this table: it is unforgettable.
We use the cross of Jesus as an ornament on our jewelry. The image has become an architectural feature on our buildings. It took Jesus’ self-giving to transform the ugliness of the cross into something beautiful. It took what he did to transform the dreaded cross into a welcome means of reconciliation by love for alienated people.
Read Essay →The Passover lamb foreshadowed the real thing: “The Lamb of God that takes away the sin that is in the world” (John 1:29). By analogy, that Passover lamb offered on an altar was to be without blemish (Exodus 12:5) like what it foreshadowed sacrificed on a cross.
These emblems represent Christ’s final demonstration of unblemished righteousness that laid the foundation for our righteousness. His life’s consummation on the cross epitomized his whole life of righteousness. We are remembering here his willing death by crucifixion as The Great Demonstration. Love could not have a greater expression. Our whole life, too, needs to carry forward what this loaf and cup represent.
Read Essay →Coming to the table connects us with the one event that reaches out in all directions in time and territory—present, past, and future; here, there, and everywhere. Christ’s culminating act of his ministry laid the basis for all salvation—under the Mosaic covenant (Hebrews 9:15), during the patriarchal age (1 Peter 4:6; 3:18-21), and henceforth to the Lord’s return (Matthew 28:18-20). He made possible the restored friendship with God and all people irrespective of race or status (Galatians 3:28).
Read Essay →Colossians 3:1 speaks of Christ seated on the right hand of God’s throne. Jesus himself pictured the path to life for us on earth as narrow, passing through the “strait” gate, a path that few seem to find. In his own case, the narrow path was also an uphill climb that led through calvary, the empty tomb through the ascension above the clouds to the right hand of the Father.
Read Essay →“Today” is a word from Jesus on the cross. He said it to one of the two insurrectionists the soldiers had crucified with him. The one he was talking to had evidently taken part in yet another attempt to overthrow Roman rule in Israel. He likely had the typical Jewish expectancy that Messiah would liberate his nation.
Earlier he joined the other criminal in taunting Jesus to bring the three of them down from their crosses. Now he has had a change of heart as death drew nearer and darkness at midday settled in. He acknowledged that Jesus had not done anything wrong, and that they deserved to die for their actions: admission and repentance.
Read Essay →This observance reminds us of what can happen when we do not conform to the world’s expectations. Death is the most extreme consequence that might happen, so we can use this occasion together to resolve not to waffle should something demanding present itself to us. Christ calls us to transform our values and purposes, attitudes and motives, from what characterizes a world governed by materialistic, humanistic thinking.
For the most part, we face lesser consequences, things like exclusion from the group or social rejection or losing our jobs, foreclosing on our houses. These more everyday consequences can take their toll on us to cave in to neighbors and friends and even family, and to compromise convictions to gain their acceptance in place of persecution for not conforming. We have to transform in order not to conform.
Read Essay →At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus made a choice that led to what we are remembering today. Satan offered him leadership over all the kingdoms of the world if he would yield to Satan’s direction over his life and work. Jesus chose not to accept that offer.
Giving him worldwide dominion would have given him the very thing Jewish people were so desperately expecting their Messiah to have. If he had agreed to that role, contemporary Israelis would have accepted him. He would not have faced the cross, either because they would not have rejected him or because he would have used his power to repel any opposition foreign or domestic.
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