Mark 14:22-26
Find a way to separate yourself from whatever’s going on around you so you can fully enter into today’s passage. if you haven’t read the introduction to Mark’s Gospel, read it here.
Read Mark 14:22-26 using your imagination to see, smell and taste the experience.
In just a few hours, Jesus will be arrested and crucified, but now he is fully present with his closest followers. In this final meal together, Jesus serves up a tangible sign that he will always be with those who follow him. Whenever they eat bread and drink wine, his disciples will remember this moment and realize that though he is physically gone he has not left them alone.
The promise is for them and for all who will come after them. For centuries to come followers of Jesus will remember his constant presence through bread and wine at the communion table.
Read Mark 14:22-26 again stopping to let the words of Jesus sink in.
Around 4000 years before this night, God made a covenant with Abraham. In the Ancient Near East, a covenant was a promise two parties made to each other with their very lives as the guarantee. But when God made covenant with Abraham, one of the two parties fell into a deep sleep (Genesis 15:12). Only God moved down the bloody path that symbolized the consequence of broken covenant, and only God-in-the-flesh would bear the guilt and penalty for a covenant that would be repeatedly broken by every person throughout time.
In the “Last Supper” Jesus chooses common things – bread and wine – to symbolize his body and his blood. Jesus is both sustenance for the soul and the ultimate sacrifice. In a few hours, his blood will be poured out on a Roman cross as he takes upon himself the guilt of every person who ever lived and who ever will live.
What do you understand Jesus to mean when he says, “This is my blood, which confirms the covenant between God and his people. It is poured out as a sacrifice for many.”
What do you think or feel about the idea of feeding on Jesus?
What might happen if you were to use the common act of eating and drinking to remember the grace-filled sacrifice of Jesus and his constant presence with you through his Holy Spirit?
Take a moment to consider this and to talk with Jesus about anything you are thinking or feeling.
What specific action could you take to begin a practice of remembering when you eat and drink? Write down anything that comes to mind and make a plan for following through.
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