I recently read John Mark Hicks "Come to the Table; Revisioning the Lord's Supper". Having grown up in the Catholic tradition, I have always found myself focused on Jesus crucifixion. John Mark has helped me to find Sunday, and for that I thank him. Many of the thoughts I express in this post are directly from his book, so if you have read it, they may look familiar to you....
I have a question for you. Do you live on Friday or on Sunday? That might seem like a weird question, I’ll come back to that in a minute.
Jesus is with us when we break bread together at His table. He isn’t present in the sense that He is literally the bread that we eat, but He is present as the host of the supper. The cup doesn’t contain His spilled blood, but it does represent the cost that was paid by God in order for us to be forgiven.
Jesus hosts the meal for us so that we’re able to participate in communion with God. His death allows us to live forever; He sacrificed Himself so that we could be saved. But why? Who are we that God would allow Himself to be humiliated, beaten, and crucified just so we could live?
God pursues us. He wants to fellowship with us. When we come to the table, we are eating at the table of the living God. He isn’t just the host of the table, He is an active participant. He gives us a glimpse of the future at this table today. We’re able to get a little taste, even though it may just be a dry cracker and a thimble of juice, we get a taste of the heavenly banquet Christ is preparing for us.
John Calvin put it this way; he said “The Spirit lifts us up into the presence of Christ to sit at His table. Through the Spirit, by eating and drinking, we sit at the Heavenly Banquet Table of God.”
Until recently, I lived on Friday. What I mean by that is when I thought of Jesus, I focused on His crucifixion, His suffering, His pain, His death. Don’t misunderstand me, it’s good to think about those things, we should remember the sacrifice He made for us.
But it isn’t Friday anymore. Now, I am learning to live on Sunday. What day do you live on? Do you live on Friday, with a dead Jesus hanging on the cross, His body broken, His blood flowing down? Or do you live on Sunday, with Jesus resurrected, seated at the right hand of the Father, preparing a heavenly banquet to share with us? This isn’t a time of sorrow and pain, it’s a time to rejoice and be glad because Jesus isn’t dead, today is Sunday and He is ALIVE!
