Remember

In 2012
we began
celebrating Passover
as a community.

In the beginning,
it was simply about
reconnecting with my own Jewish roots,
and also about
having another excuse
for a party.

I wasn’t expecting it
to be life transforming,
or emotional,
or the biggest event
of our ministry year.

Passover became all of those things,
and the Belonging House Seder
got bigger and bigger.

And I worked very hard for it to stay
like family,
and Jewish flavored.

We didn’t have an educational
Christianized Seder.
We had dinner,
with plates,
and napkins,
and we used the basic Passover
service,
called a Haggadah,
with a few tweaks.

One of the rules about Passover is to invite your
non-Jewish friends to participate,
so they can hear the story.
We were very good at keeping that rule.

There are a couple places in the Service
where I still become emotional,
shed tears,
and sometimes have to compose myself.

“Our Father Abraham
was a wandering Aramean
we lived in the land of Haran,
and we worshipped idols.”

“We were slaves in Egypt,
but with an outstretched arm
and a mighty hand,
Our God
brought us out,
and now we are free.”
and this,

“In every generation
we must tell the story,
and remember,
as if we too were slaves
in Egypt.”

In every generation,
we must act as if
we were the ones who have been freed.
That is what the Bible means,
when it says
“remember.”
Remembering
is becoming reconnected
to an event in the past,
and making it a part of who you are today.

In little chapels and churches
all over the United States,
there are communion tables.

And across the front is this inscription:
THIS DO IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME.

And once a month,
usually on the first Sunday of each month,
folks gather around these tables to
remember Jesus.

But mostly,
they examine themselves
and remember their sin.

And it becomes a ritual
in reinforcing a false identity.

When Jesus said
do this in memory of me,
he said it in the context of Passover
where he and his disciples,
were remembering that they too
were once slaves in Egypt,
but with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm
God set them free.

Context is everything,
and in every generation,
the Jews reconnect with their
redemption.

And Jesus said,
My own arm will bring the victory,
I have tread the winepress alone,
and my garments are red.

I have stayed in the belly of the fish
three days,
and I am triumphant.

You are no longer dead
in your trespasses and sins
but you have died with me
and you are now raised
and seated with me
in heavenly places
above all rule and authority.

Remembering is not
an intellectual
exercise.

Remembering is being
reconnected
to your true identity,
through a retelling of a story,
and an experience around the Table.

The mind and the body
are connected.

The thinking and the doing are one.

Jesus redefined
and intensified
an annual celebration.

And from the night in Emmaus
until now,
every Sunday is Passover.

Every Sunday is the day
Jesus walked out of the tomb.

Remember.
Reconnect.
Re-enact.
Re-experience.

You were with him by the cross,
and you have heard the good news from Mary.

Dying you destroyed our death,
Rising you restored our life,
Lord Jesus, come in glory.

It is really not about you
and your sin.

Passover and the Eucharist are about Him.

As Aristotle said,
You become what you repeatedly do.

And you become what you focus on.

And Jesus knew that you would need to refocus 
at least once a week,
and you would need a constant reminder,
and you would not become who you really are,
unless you remembered,
reconnected,
re-enacted,
re-experienced,
his saving work
repeatedly.

The Greek mindset puts a barrier between the mental
and the physical.

You can believe something
and it never has to have anything to do with your life.

This is why so many Christians
think that eating a cracker once a month
is enough,
because they can think about Jesus
anytime.

Jesus was Jewish
and he knew,
your mental capacity
is an intrinsic part of your physical life.

We are often more spiritual than Jesus.
Jesus said,
take this bread
and eat it,
it is my body
given for you
and when you eat it,
eat it and remember—
reconnect
re-experience
re-enact—
Me.

It is in the doing
not the thinking
that remembering happens.

Passover
is a constant reminder
to the Jewish people,
that they exist,
and have been changed,
because of the intervention of God,
from a wandering tribe,
to an enslaved people,
and then
to a free nation.

Eucharist
is a constant reminder
to the Redeemed Believer
that they have been changed,
because of the intervention of God,
from sinners,
to saints,
a royal priesthood,
a holy nation,
and a new Creation.
It is in the doing,
that remembering happens.

When we come to the end of the Gospels,
Jesus says something interesting.

“I eagerly long 
to celebrate 
this Passover
with you.”

For three years
he has been preaching the message of his Kingdom,
and performing signs 
to point the way to the Kingdom.

And in one night,
Jesus takes the national holiday of Israel,
and he redefines it.
His entire ministry
is going to culminate
in this one act.

He takes what was about them,
and makes it about Him.

He simplifes and amplifies
Passover.

In a normal Seder there are four cups of wine.
There is also a ceremony with three pieces of Matzah—
unleavened bread pierced with holes.

The seder begins with these three pieces of bread,
stacked in the middle of the table.
And the second one, 
the one in the middle,
is broken.
That broken one is hidden and found.  
After the meal, 
the broken one is eaten.

And Jesus
after the meal
takes that broken Matzah
and he says:

“This is my Body,
broken for you.
Eat this in remembrance of me.”
And he takes the bread,
gives thanks,
breaks it,
and gives it to the disciples.

And then he takes the third cup
from the service,
the cup of Redemption,
and he says,
“this cup is my Blood of the New Covenant.”

Did you get that?
God is doing a new thing.
And when God does a new thing
God makes a covenant.
This covenant is being made
not with the blood of a bull or a goat.
This covenant is being made with blood 
shed from Jesus.
And this cup
is the New Covenant.
And the sign of the new covenant
will be:
You will receive power when the Holy Spirit
comes upon you 
and you will be my witnesses.
Jesus is making a covenant with us,
and this bread
and this wine
are the covenant.
You can’t separate the covenant
from the Eucharist.
The early church knew this.
That is why Sunday mattered.
It was about renewing the covenant,
not once a year at the temple
but once a week in the Body.

Before Jesus went to the Cross
he made a covenant,
an agreement with you.
That agreement
was 
that God would dwell in you,
and you would receive a new heart
and a new Spirit.
You would be his people,
and he would be your God.
And this would be the sign,
He would open their graves.
He sealed it with his own body,
through death and resurrection,
and afterward
gave us the Holy Spirit.

The covenant was made the night he redefined Passover.
And the cross and resurrection
sealed it.

It wasn’t just a memorial of something in the past.
It was a remembering,
a reconnecting,
and a weekly renewing of that covenant.

I still find it amazing 
that the church existed without a Bible for quite a while.
The earliest New Testament books 
they estimate
came twenty years
after the church began.

And the Bible as a whole 
really didn’t take the shape we recognize 
for several centuries.
Yes, I said centuries.

But we know 
that the Eucharist
came first.
It was the breaking of the bread,
in Acts,
and in the Gospels,
and in Paul’s letters.
This was a new thing.
These folks understood that.

It was the last thing Jesus told us to do,
on the night before he died.

We have lost so much.
God made a new Covenant with Israel
and all Humanity,
and that Covenant
is the legal foundation for the Kingdom.
And the covenant was bread and wine.

And Jesus,
even in the New Covenant
said he was looking forward:
to drinking the last cup of Passover,
in the Kingdom,
when He comes again.
Once you wrap your head around this:
that it is all about
eating and drinking
in the Presence of God,
then you see it everywhere in the Bible.

It is why God ate with the elders of Israel
on the mountain,
and didn’t harm them.

It is why Melchizedek
offered bread and wine.

It is why Elijah could live for forty days
on one loaf of bread.

And David ate the bread of the Presence.

This Covenant
is about 
sitting down in the 
Presence of the Father,
and eating together
as a new creation.

Thanks for reading my message this week.  I have moved our Friday email off this platform.  This year we will begin publishing resources in print, as well as online. 
If these messages encourage you, please share them with others.  Thanks.