Suppertime

One of the things I have missed most during the pandemic and the quarantine period is dining with friends. I absolutely love to cook, and Jim and I enjoy having folks in our home for food and fellowship. There is nothing that compares to being seated around the table breaking bread with friends, laughing and sharing, and making memories. My attachment to this is probably related to my own experience growing up because, as a family, we always ate dinner together every day! Meals were held and schedules juggled, but the main goal was to fellowship together as a family. No T.V, radio, no answering the phone to talk to friends, just people, and food. I continued this pattern in raising my own family, and some of our best memories are dinner table discussions and antics. When our kids left for college, I coped pretty well until dinnertime, and I cried for about two weeks at the dinner table. This was the time I missed Ric and Erin the most. Empty seats at the table often leave us bereft and manifest a hole in our heart that aches, especially at holiday time and special occasions. Just ask the grieving. Often those who have lost a loved one avoid mealtime, fall into poor eating habits and even compromise their health because of the sorrow that is induced by eating alone.

As I meditate on the events of the Passion period of Jesus, I realize that Christ taught the disciples and subsequently us as believers so many lessons at what we know as the Last Supper. Even now, as I read the scriptures telling of this event, the words stir me as they convey this occasion’s weightiness. As a follower, I benefit from looking back at the time and know so much more would have been said and perhaps done if the disciples had really understood this would be their last meal with Jesus. But Jesus, aware of their lack of understanding, made the opportunity to celebrate and set the tone for all the times in the future when these disciples would dine without their beloved Teacher and friend.

We begin in Luke 22, where the scriptures reveal that Judas has already made a deal with the priests and Temple guards and is looking for an opportune moment to betray Christ. Meanwhile, Jesus instructs Peter and John to secure a place for the group to celebrate the Passover meal together. If you have read my previous blog about the donkey procurement for Jesus’s triumphal ride into Jerusalem, you understand that once again, there are always other believers in the network of Jesus awaiting to serve in anyway they can. The instructions given to the two disciples make me think of spy movies like Mission Impossible. “Enter the city, and when you meet the man carrying a pitcher of water. Follow him and speak to the owner of the house he enters. Ask him where the room is that the Teacher can eat the Passover meal with his disciples. He will then take you upstairs to a large room that is already set up” (Luke 22:10-12).

Once again, I am inspired by the unnamed home owner’s readiness who offered what he had for use by the Master. The homeowner had made the upper room available, and he wasn’t even on the invitation list for the Last Supper Jesus will ever eat on earth!

When Jesus had the 12 gathered, He shared how eager He had been to eat this meal with them. He reminds them again. His suffering is soon to begin. Jesus shares that the next time a meal like this comes around, the circumstances will be much different, for Passover’s meaning will be fully revealed and fulfilled. Remember that Passover was instituted during the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. The Israelites were instructed to place the blood of an unblemished lamb over their doorway to protect them and their household from the angel of death that would pass over them as it struck every firstborn in every family throughout the land. The Israelites would have no concept that they were honoring the Messiah’s ultimate sacrifice that would come later.

On the other hand, the disciples had no concept that the unblemished Lamb of God was breaking bread and sharing wine with them to commemorate that the power of death and the grave would be broken for eternity. I like to think about the Israelites who experienced the First Supper and the disciples being privileged to experience the Last Supper with the Lamb, Himself. Passover was more than a meal. Within its ritual, the message of the very heart of the gospel is conveyed.

As Jesus broke the bread, He shared, this was His body, broken for them, and that the wine was His Blood which is poured out as a sacrifice for all. It was the confirmation of the new covenant between God and His people. Christ then tells them they should celebrate often, and every time they did this, they should do it and remember why Christ did what He did on the cross.

When Jesus claimed He was the Bread of Life, He was referring to more than daily sustenance. Though the people demanded Jesus to produce a miracle that would compete with what they viewed as “Moses’s” provision of manna, Jesus reminded them It was God, not Moses, who sent the bread. Jesus proclaimed that He had come to provide eternal nutrition for our souls starved for a restored relationship with God. His purpose was more than just some temporary manna that would only satisfy the body and mind for a season.

As we enter the Lenten season, many of us will perhaps take communion more often than usual, or perhaps with a different landscape of worship as we focus on the passion that Christ had for us to participate and commemorate His sacrifice. It is not a time for me to review the weight of the Law and how short I fall of it but to passionately embrace the life-giving grace Jesus offers unconditionally. This is a great time for me to be reminded that Jesus was eager to share this meal with the disciples, and He is eager for me to commune with Him and other believers to celebrate that death can no longer hold us captive and that the judgment of sin has passed over us. My seat at the table of Christ has been secured by His righteousness alone. As I take the bread and drink the wine, it is both a reminder of what Christ has done for me and a promise for the time when I will dine with Him personally at the Feast of the Lamb. It will be the dinner party of the ages! It will not have the heaviness of the Last Supper, but the air will be filled with the glory of Resurrection power! We will no longer be haunted by empty chairs but will gather around the table, bumping elbows with friends and loved ones. We will enjoy endless fellowship with Christ and each other, and God the Father’s love will shine on all of us.

Lord, as I take bread and wine in remembrance of you, and all you have done for me, help me know it is only by grace that I am worthy to consume it. Remind me that the Law gives constraints, but your grace gives me conversion. Stir me to passionately celebrate the freedom that the sacrifice of your body has secured for me. Let me stand in the doorway of life and claim the safety I rest under because you shed your blood for me. Help me to not be so consumed by the cares and worries of this world that I am late to supper where you are always eagerly waiting. Amen