Welcome! He is Risen! (He
is risen indeed!) Today we celebrate the resurrection of Christ. There is no
greater miracle, no more important event (perhaps other than Creation) in the
entire Bible. The resurrection of Christ is the foundation of our faith.
Because Jesus rose from the dead, we know that we can trust everything He ever
said, that through believing and trusting personally in Him, we can be forgiven
of our sins and have eternal life.
I have recently been
looking into wills and trusts for our family. We have a will, but we have not
updated it in many years, and there have been many changes to our family and
our possessions since then; as a result, we are long overdue in going back and,
really, starting over, asking the big questions about what we want to happen
when one or both of us is gone. As I have thought about
this personally, I have been surprised by the intensity of the emotions I feel
specifically in wanting things to be arranged as much as possible for Mimi if I
should precede her in passing on to the “better country” as C.S. Lewis puts it.
I can imagine the stresses of having to deal with all the accounts, government
agencies, decisions, and so on, on top of the stresses of the loss itself, and
I greatly desire to ease things, to set things into place in advance, as much
as I can while I still can. The thought of not being there for Mimi to help her
brings on unique emotions, emotions I find hard to even name.
This has made me think
of Jesus. He loved His disciples and friends (and by extension, us) infinitely
more than I could ever love my wife or children. But He too thought about
leaving them behind. Everything comes to a head at the last supper. I want to
go through some of the account of it starting at John 13:1.
It
was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for Him
to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved His own who were in the
world, He loved them to the end. – John 13:1
Unlike us who never
know when we might die, Jesus knew exactly when His time would come, and it was
coming the following day. I don’t know what you would be like if you knew you
would die tomorrow, but apart from the Holy Spirit of God working in me, I am
pretty sure that my focus would be on myself. I would feel fear and nervousness
over what was about to happen, regrets over things I had not done as well as
things I had done but should not have done, and in short, I would be a wreck,
self-centered, useful to no one. In such contrast is Jesus. “He loved them to
the end.” What was He thinking about? Them. How to help prepare them for His
death. How to provide for them. And simply how to help them “get it,” that He
was the Son of God, the Messiah, future King of kings and Lord of lords, and
yet, that He loved them so much that He was going to the cross for no other
reason than to save them (and us). “He loved them to the end.” I don’t know if
there is a more poignant sentence in all of Scripture.
And so what did He do?
Well, John tells us:
Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under His
power, and that He had come from God and was returning to God; so He got up
from the meal, took off His outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around His
waist. After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash His
disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around Him. – John
13:3-5
Let’s skip ahead a little to verse
12:
When He
had finished washing their feet, He put on His clothes and returned to His
place. “Do you understand what
I have done for you?” He asked
them. “You
call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also
should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an
example that you should do as I have done for you. Very
truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger
greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know
these things, you will be blessed if you do them. – John 13:12-17
So
what was this last minute preparation about? Humility. Servitude. Out of His
love of them “to the end,” He wanted them to really get this. And He wants us
to get this as well, to really get it.
I
am committed to making a list of instructions of what to do if I pass away
before Mimi, things that will ensure that the financial arrangements I am
making have their full realization. Imagine someone purchasing a life insurance
policy but the spouse doesn’t know how to collect – this is what I want to
avoid. Jesus was doing something similar. Lesson 1 on His list was the lesson
of being a servant, no matter your worldly position in life.
Later
in John Jesus gives Lesson 2:
“My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You
will look for Me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am
going, you cannot come. A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have
loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you
are My disciples, if you love one another.” – John 13:33-35
Jesus
emphasizes that these are final lessons, essential lessons. Lesson 2 is to love
one another. Love is a command, something to do. It cannot be solely a feeling,
because we cannot really control our feelings, not very well. It is the Greek
word agape, and to know what it means
we need only look at the next phrase: As I have loved you, so you must love one
another. Wow. In the way that love has been lived out in Jesus’ life, we too
are to live it out. Sacrificial love. Love that puts the other infinitely above
the self. The disciples had not yet experienced or understood that Jesus’ love
included dying for them, but I think they saw enough of Jesus’ love for them
traveling with Him that they understood the incredible standard that Jesus had
set for them.
Including
the parts of this passage we have skipped over along with the other gospel
accounts, it is incredible to think about this love Jesus had for them, because
the disciples were not easy to love. You have them, during this same meal,
arguing over who is the greatest. You have Peter boasting about how He would do
anything for Jesus, when Jesus knew that He would deny Him three times. And you
have Judas, on his way at that very moment to betray Jesus. Yet Jesus loved
them still. He loved them to the very end.
Jesus
then gives them Lesson 3:
Do not let your hearts
be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in Me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that
were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for
you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back
and take you to be with Me that you also may be where I am. – John 14:1-3
Lesson
3 was to not be troubled or fearful, but to believe and trust in Jesus, even
when He was gone. And in this lesson was a powerful promise: “I will come
back!” This was fulfilled in the resurrection. His promise was kept! Praise
God!
But
we also know that when Jesus returned, He did not stay with the disciples
forever, but only for a number of days. After this He ascended into the clouds,
into heaven. And since that day we wait for Him to return. His promise “I will
come back” applies as much to us and that future day when Jesus returns as it
did to the disciples. And just as He kept His promise then, He will certainly
keep His promise again.
Lesson
4:
“If you love Me, keep My
commands… Whoever has My commands and keeps them is the one who loves Me…
Anyone who loves Me will obey My teaching.” – John 14:15,21,23
Lesson
4 was to do what He taught them, to really do it, to put it into practice, to
make it their lives. Again, I think of providing for my family a list of
instructions for what to do if I pass away. The point of this list is not to
discuss it or write songs about it or make nice needlework art from it – not
that these things are bad, they’re not – it’s just that the point is to do it. My instructions will include how
to actually collect on life insurance I have put into place. I want Mimi to
actually do this so that she gets the
benefit of the life insurance! In a similar way Jesus wants us to obey His
teachings so that we get the benefits of it! His commands are not burdensome,
but are given in love for our good.
Lesson
5:
And I will ask the
Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you
forever— the
Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept Him, because it neither sees Him nor
knows Him. But you know Him, for He lives with you and will be in you. I
will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. – John 14:16-18
Jumping to verse 26,
… the Advocate, the
Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you all things
and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give
you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be
troubled and do not be afraid. – John 14:26-27
What is Lesson 5? Jesus does not leave us as
orphans; He sends another, the Holy Spirit. Just as good parents include
the name of alternate guardians in their will, so does Jesus name His guardian:
‘Holy’. He helps us in countless ways, including helping us to keep His
commands, Lesson 4.
John
chapter 14 ends with “Come now, let us leave.” And so Jesus continues to teach
the disciples as they go or prepare to go, incredibly encouraging and powerful
truths. I only have time to touch on them with the briefest of notes here,
because there is something else I wish to go into. But in John 15 and 16 Jesus
gives them the analogy of the vine and the branches and tells them, “Remain in
Me.” We cannot live out a life of obedience to Christ without continual
dependence on God. Jesus also warns them that persecution will be part of the
Christian life, part of following and remaining in Christ. He also tells them
to testify about Jesus, to tell others about Christ. And He tells them that
‘Holy’ will have much more to tell them, more than they could bear at this
point.
He
then again explained to them that “In a little while you will
see Me no more, and then after a little while you will see Me.” And He explains
this further:
“Very truly I tell you,
you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your
grief will turn to joy. A
woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her
baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born
into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief,
but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your
joy.” – John 16:20-22
Jesus
concludes with a glorious prayer in John 17, praying first for His disciples,
and then for all of us, that we would “know” – and we do! Just as He lives, we
are a living answer to His prayer.
I
do want to focus on one other important thing that happened at that last supper
– this is found in Luke 22:
After taking the cup, He gave thanks and said, “Take this
and divide it among you. For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit
of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” And He took bread, gave thanks and
broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body given for you; do this
in remembrance of Me.” In the same way, after the supper He
took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is
poured out for you.” – Luke 22:17-20
Matthew
puts it this way:
While
they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it
and gave it to His disciples, saying, “Take
and eat; this is My body.” Then
He took a cup, and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink
from it, all of you. This is My blood of the
covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on
until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.” – Matt.
26:26-29
Jesus
had hinted earlier at this, in His teachings to the crowds at Capernaum:
Jesus
said to them, “Very
truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His
blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I
will raise them up at the last day. For My flesh is real
food and My blood is real drink. Whoever eats My flesh
and drinks My blood remains in Me, and I in them. Just
as the living Father sent Me and I live because of the Father, so the one who
feeds on Me will live because of Me. – John 6:53-57
Today we call this Communion, or Breaking
Bread, or the Lord’s Supper, or the Eucharist. (That latter term comes from the
Greek word eucharisteo which means to
give thanks; it is the word used for this in the Matthew and Luke accounts.) The
disciples participated in this first Lord’s Supper, and later continued to do
so with regularity. Acts 2:42 says,
They
devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking
of bread and to prayer. – Acts 2:42
And so this is one of the two ordinances of the church instituted by
Christ Himself; the other is baptism, which we taught on last week. Both of
these are commands Jesus said to do; in Matthew 28 Jesus says to baptize
people, and we have just seen that Jesus said on the Last Supper to take the bread
and the cup “in remembrance of Me.” Now you may wonder whether foot washing
should be a third such ordinance. I don’t think so, because, first, you don’t
see examples of the early church in Acts doing this, whereas you do have
examples of baptism and communion, and second, the wording is subtly different:
I have set you an
example that you should do as I have done for you. The
word “as” is there in the Greek; the message to the disciples was to be a
humble servant just as Jesus had just
demonstrated. In contrast, Jesus said directly to baptize people and to drink
the wine and eat the bread. Not that there is anything wrong with a
foot-washing service; it can be a powerful tool to teach exactly the lesson
Jesus intended to teach.
Now the Roman Catholic Church teaches that the
bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ and do so when and
only when Roman Catholic priest consecrates it; they use the term transubstantiation to describe this.
Catholics have also taught that communion is in fact a propitiatory sacrifice.
I find no support for especially the latter two ideas in Scripture; most
concerning is the idea that it is itself a sacrifice in any sense. Christ died
once for all. “It is finished,” He said on the cross. And the New Testament
teaches that all believers are priests (I Peter 2:9) so it seems quite mistaken
to imply that only ordained priests have some kind of special power that others
do not have.
As for the idea that the bread and wine
literally and “wholly” (in total) become Christ’s body and blood, protestants
generally also reject this. Martin Luther himself rejected this, but he did
believe that the phrase “This is My Body” had to be not just symbolic, but
something more. His conclusion, according to Grudem’s Systematic Theology, “was not that the bread actually becomes the physical body of Christ, but
that the physical body of Christ is present
‘in, with, and under’ the bread of the Lord’s Supper.” Lutherans take this
position. (Not surprising, right?) Analogies sometimes given include that of
magnetism to a magnet, a soul to a body, or water to a sponge – water is
present “in, with, and under” it, but is
not the sponge. Most other Protestant groups do not believe this, but instead
see communion, like baptism, in what might be called symbolic and spiritual terms. I do think the gulf
between the Roman Catholic position and the Lutheran position is vastly wider
than that between Lutherans and other Protestants. With regards to the Lutheran
view, this is another example of an issue we should be careful not to “blow
up”; in contrast to the Roman Catholic view, there are no significant doctrinal
errors that lead to or lead from the alternate position.
What
is meant by “symbolic and spiritual”? Calvin put it this way:
“By
the showing of the symbol the thing itself is also shown… And the godly ought
by all means to keep this rule: whenever they see symbols appointed by the
Lord, to think and be persuaded that the truth of the thing signified is surely
present there. For why would the Lord put in your hand the symbol of His body,
except to assure you of a true participation in it?” (Institutes, 4.17.10)
The
“spiritual” part of this is similar to how Jesus says “where two or more are
gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matt. 18:20)
As
to what the practice symbolizes, what it means, we find much insight in the
John 6 passage read earlier. Just as a man cannot live physically without being
nourished by food, so a man cannot live spiritually without being nourished by
Christ, by coming to Him in personal relationship. He who eats His “flesh” and
drinks His “blood” has eternal life. This is not talking about communion, about
the breaking of bread, but about what this symbolizes, real communion, co-mingling, coming
together-ness, with Christ. It means to trust in Him for your salvation. It
means to pray regularly to Him. It means to spend time in His Word. It means to
seek what He desires and then, prayerfully, dependent on the Holy Spirit,
seeking to carry these things out.
We
find additional insight in Paul’s teachings on communion in I Cor. 11:
For I
received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the
night He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”
In the same way, after supper He took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, whenever you
drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For whenever you eat
this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes. –
I Cor. 11:23-26
To
proclaim the Lord’s death is to remember the cross, to remember that He died
for our sins, because He loved us and wanted to reconcile us to God. To take
and eat, to drink, is to acknowledge that we needed Christ to die for us. It is
to say, “Yes, I personally, through faith, receive the benefits of Your
sacrifice.”
As
for who should take communion, Paul
is clear that it is for believers, and it is for those who are willing to
practice self-examination.
So then,
whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will
be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone ought to examine themselves
before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. For
those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink
judgment on themselves. – I Cor. 10:27-29
This doesn’t mean you have to “get your act
together” before you can partake in communion; quite the contrary, it means
that you acknowledge to Him that you haven’t
got your act together, that you need help, that most of all you need Him, that
you agree that apart from Him you can do nothing. This is why Christ died, for sinners just like
you! And me! In taking communion, in reflecting on the awfulness and horror of
the cross, not just that it was so terrible, but that He was so completely undeserving,
is to better understand just how terrible were the effects of our sin, that we
were truly and totally hopelessly separated from God, destined for judgment,
that it should have been us up there. But because He loved us to the end, for
the joy set before Him, He endured the cross.
And
as proof that the sacrifice on our behalf was accepted, just as in Old
Testament times the proof that a sacrifice at the most holy place was that the
high priest came out alive, so too did Christ come out alive, risen from the
dead. And thus, on this day, we can weep, but we can also celebrate, because we
know that our sins are forgiven, and He is with us and will be with us forever.
And
so, we now wish to participate together in the Lord’s Supper. In a moment we
will pass the bread and the cup to you. If you are willing to examine yourself
and judge yourself honestly, as the Lord judges you, and if you are a believer,
that is, you believe in Him, that Jesus did die on the cross and rise from the
grave and you personally trust Him with your salvation, then break off a piece
of the bread and take a cup; if you don’t feel ready, for whatever reason, it’s
fine to pass it on. There is no condemnation here, only love. And then, I will
ask John to open us in prayer, and they I encourage you to also offer prayers
in turn out loud to God, as He leads you. Then I will pray, and then we will
take the bread and the cup together.
Lord,
we do now what You taught your disciples to do, and what they taught their
disciples, and so on, down to us. On the night You were betrayed, you took
bread, gave thanks, and broke it, saying “This is My body, which is for you; do
this in remembrance of Me.” We now take the bread, so thankful that you gave
Yourself up on the cross, experiencing not only unimaginable pain but
separation from God the Father as He poured out His punishment on You for what
we deserve.
And
on that night You also took the cup, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This
is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness
of sins.” We now take the cup and drink, so thankful that not only did you die
for us, but that you rose from the dead, because by this we know that Your
sacrifice was accepted and that we are forgiven from all our sins. Because of
You we are now reconciled with God. Because of You, we have eternal life.
Because of You, we will spend eternity in Your loving presence. We thank You
for loving us “to the end.” In Jesus Name, Amen!
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