52 Weeks at the Table – Week 52

One of the prophecies treasured by God’s people the most is Isaiah’s promise of a great banquet in God’s kingdom, over which the Lord Himself presides: the best of everything, for all nations. And in a moment, He removes the shroud of death and wipes away the tears of mourning. Referring to that promise, Jesus emphasizes that “many will come from the east and the west” to join that banquet with Abraham and Isaac. It is clearly a promise of the kingdom of heaven that is to come, a feast in heaven with the resurrected patriarchs.

The prophecy’s fulfillment comes at the descent of a New Jerusalem, uniting a new heaven and a new earth, according to the revelation given to John of Patmos (Revelation 21:1-4). Two verses later, the banquet’s beverage is dispensed: “To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life (Revelation 21:6).” And the spring is the source of the river of life, flowing from God’s throne, feeding the tree of life that bears fruit all the time, and whose leaves heal the nations (Revelation 22:1-5).

It is a feast presaged by this simple bread and cup. For it is this communion that Jesus celebrated the first time when He said, “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.” (Matthew 26:29; Mark 14:25)

A Prayer Over the Bread

God of the past, present and future: we praise Your name in anticipation of that great banquet of life spread for the healing of the nations in your kingdom yet to come. We do so with this bread, the body of Your Son, which makes that feast possible. Bless it and us, always, to be Your staff of life in this world, the leaven of Your gospel, the body that is Your church, the hope with which we have been nourished and must nourish others who starve for life, real life, eternal life. Through Jesus we pray this: Amen.

 

A Prayer Over the Cup

This fruit of the vine, our God, is the blood of Your Son — and for it we give you unending praise. We look forward to sharing it with Him in Your kingdom today, and in Your kingdom yet to come. He is the Vine; we are the branches. Bear much fruit through us, we pray; bring life to the lifeless through this blood coursing in us — to Your glory through Jesus, the Christ: Amen.

 

52 Weeks at the Table – Week 51

Remember. Remember. Proclaim. Examine. Discern.

These are key words in the instruction Paul shares with a church in Corinth that has lost its focus on what — on Whom — it celebrates in the bread and the wine. The church gathered to celebrate, but because they were divided and did not discern the very nature of Christ in the meal they shared, they were “doing more harm than good,” in Paul’s words.

They did not wait for everyone to arrive before sharing the meal. Some were left hungry, and others got drunk. Their focus was on themselves, their pleasure, their satisfaction: not those who, along with themselves, comprise the body of Christ.

Discernment was not just a matter of seeing Christ’s blood in the cup or His body in the bread … but seeing those gathered in His name as His body, given for all. This truth is proclaimed in the sharing, not in hoarding for oneself. So we should examine self to make sure that self is in line behind Christ and others; we should discern not only His broken body, but His united, gathered body — His church.

A Prayer Over the Bread

One God and Father of us all, who is over all and through all and in us all (Ephesians 4:6), we give you praise and thanksgiving for this bread, which symbolizes the unity of the body of Christ, even though it was broken for us. Bless it and nourish us through the unity of Your Spirit and the common bond of faith we find when we dine at this Lord’s table, we pray in the name of Jesus: Amen.

 

A Prayer Over the Cup

Our Lord and God, we see unity of purpose and passion and perfection in this cup, the blood of Your Son. We see Him and we remember who He was. We remember who He is. We proclaim His unspeakably cruel death and his inconceivably glorious resurrection. We examine our own lives in the light of His, and find our blood unworthy of His, and desperately in need of it in order to live now and forever. Bless this cup of thanksgiving, we ask in Jesus’ name: Amen.

52 Weeks at the Table – Week 50

The Apostle Paul, arrested, imprisoned, and tried multiple times though blameless, appealed to Caesar so that he couldn’t be taken and murdered by anti-Christian Jews who had vowed to fast until they had done so. While aboard a ship headed for Rome at a season when most ships stayed in port, a storm blew upon them so great that even the pagan sailors fasted to implore their gods for deliverance. Paul, warned in a dream, reminded them that he had advised the shipmaster not to set sail, but that they should all eat and — as God had instructed him — they would all be saved if they remained aboard.

So he took bread and blessed it before all of them, and gave it to them to eat … just as his Lord had done at Passover. It was a miraculous opportunity to witness to Christ’s faithfulness before nonbelievers, and share bread with them — for sure enough, though the ship was wrecked, they stayed aboard until it ran aground and they swam or floated for shore. And all of them survived — 276 in all. Salvation through the water, celebrated by the bread, accepted by obedience.

A Prayer Over the Bread

God of deliverance from peril we can only imagine, we praise Your name for Your salvation, accomplished through the giving of Your Son, Jesus. We remember His body in this bread, and ask your blessing on it, just as Paul did so in faith that salvation was at hand. Thank you for snatching us from the sting of death through the One who died and took up His life again. Amen.

 

A Prayer Over the Cup

Our Father and Creator, we lift to You this cup for Your blessing, for it is life to us through the blood of Your Son. Storms may seem great to us, but He calmed them. Our blood may be threatened, but His flowed freely and purchased our salvation from certain death in this life and the age to come. We give you thanks for the power that is in the blood of Christ. Amen.

52 Weeks at the Table – Week 49

A visiting missionary on a farewell tour with only a week to spend at Troas had a lot to say on his final night with his church family there. So Paul kept talking until midnight, and one member of his audience not only fell asleep, but fell out of the third story window. But Paul’s talk – that almost certainly centered around the One who was resurrection and life – was not mere talk. And the young man Eutychus who had been picked up dead was stunningly rendered alive by Paul’s embrace.

Then, apparently exhibiting no great surprise, Paul climbed the steps again to break bread with that dear church family, spoke on until daylight, then left for his next destination. A body that should have been broken by a three-story fall was taken home whole and alive. The Lord’s power to give life and restore the broken to wholeness would be visible in that town for as long as Eutychus lived there … and that reality would surely have been on the minds of those who broke bread at Troas for just as long.

A Prayer Over the Bread

God and Father, we are a people as broken as this bread; restored to wholeness and given new life by Your Son, who gave His body and His life to bring us this gift. We remember this reality as we break this bread. Even when we fall, Your love bears us up; Your embrace makes us whole again. Nourish and strengthen us with the grace of this bread, for which we give You our humble thanks. Amen.

 

A Prayer Over the Cup

Dear God, thank you for this cup, for life itself, for forgiveness when we break faith with You, for Your Son, for His blood which restores us in grace. It is a blessing too magnificent for us to drink in, yet we do so with all due gratitude. When our travels and Your mission for us must separate us for however long, bring us back together at this table and this cup and the life which never ends. In Jesus’ name: Amen.

52 Weeks at the Table – Week 48

Out of recognition of sin, of guilt, and of penitence, a church was born of the born again by water and the blood (1 John 5:5-9; John 19:34). And immediately, these believers set about living the life that was given for them on the cross, the life that was taken up again – to be theirs forever. They took Jesus at His word to look after the poor and to share. They praised God and were a blessing to all around them. They gathered as a family to pray each day, and to break bread together.

This was the new body of Jesus in the world. It was healthy and strong and powerful, imbued with His Spirit, and willing to do His work. It was vital and it grew, every day, with the addition of those being saved. They were saved for this purpose: to live His life, tell His story and grow by doing so. To grow more and more like Him, they broke the bread as He had broken it … gave thanks for it, as He had given thanks … and shared it with those who hungered for it. At the table, all these centuries later, His body the church is called to do the same.

A Prayer Over the Bread

Father in heaven, we give You glory for the truth about You signified in this bread: Your presence among us in human form, the body of Your Son, given by You and taken by us. As His living body in this world, we thank you for strength it brings us to repeat that truth to all who will listen, and the opportunity to live His life and consume this bread. Amen.

 

A Prayer Over the Cup

It is by this blood that we are able to join Your family, our Father, and our sharing of it through this cup testifies to our faith in Your ability and willingness to give us life through the given life of Jesus, the Christ. May we always recognize Him in this cup, and in each other – and the need for Him in those who do not yet recognize Him. We pray this through Jesus: Amen.

52 Weeks at the Table – Week 47

Two men walking to a village called Emmaus were given a rare opportunity to see the resurrected Jesus, yet like Mary in the garden (John 20:11-18) did not immediately recognize Him. The text literally says that they were kept from recognizing Him. Perhaps because He had been so physically abused and tortured that even faith could not let them hope to see Him whole again. Yet as they discussed with Him His own story – His gospel! – their hearts burned within them.

It was at the table, after he had taken bread and given thanks for it, had broken it and had begun to share it with them that their eyes were opened … and they recognized Him for who He was. When we gather at the table, we have the same opportunity to recognize Jesus for who He is, in the broken bread and the cup of thanksgiving. Will we see Him broken for us; His blood given for us? Will we recognize Him – not just as powerful prophet – but as Messiah and Savior and risen Son of God? Will our hearts burn within us?

A Prayer Over the Bread

Our Lord and our God, we see before us the body of Your Son Jesus, broken in every way but in Spirit, just as this broken bread. It would seem impossible that something so broken could be whole again, yet the miracle of His resurrection proves that our broken lives, even when ended, can be made whole and perfect and purposeful and eternal as You wish them to be. We look forward to the time when our gratitude may truly last forever in Christ: Amen.

 

A Prayer Over the Cup

Thank you, our God, for this cup and the deep significance it has. In it we see the blood of our Lord. Help us also to recognize the life that it carried within Him, and still carries on within us: from each opportunity, to serve to our last moments in this life, to the next life and each opportunity to worship in glory forever. Amen.

52 Weeks at the Table – Week 46

It is a question from an angel that perplexes and haunts the women who visit the tomb on the Sunday morning after Jesus was crucified: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” The same question will haunt and perplex those who gather at the Lord’s table if they come seeking only a dead body. Resurrection has taken place! The body given by Jesus is now gloriously transformed, so much so that John’s gospel says that He stood there near the tomb and asked Mary Magdalene twice why she was crying – and she didn’t recognize Him (John 20:11-18).

At the table there is room for mourning over sin that causes death. But sorrow must make room for the joy that comes from life restored. It is an opportunity to celebrate the life that Jesus lived in a mortal body and now lives in the body of His church. Here we remember Him, in totality, not just as a dead body, but as alive and alive again. It is His resurrection that secures our own; the reason for the hope that lies within us. For the table proclaims that through Jesus, renewed life springs unbound from the prison of sin, death and decay; that His very presence in our lives nourishes and renews us from within – in mind and heart now; in body and eternally when He returns.

A Prayer Over the Bread

Powerful and loving God, whose mercy triumphs over sin and death, we ask Your blessing on this bread – the body of Your Son Jesus, who brings us life through His life. Thank you for making us a part of His body in this world, and may we always remember Him before others as living, vital, eternal, and the Christ – just as we do in this prayer. Amen.

 

A Prayer Over the Cup

From of old, righteous Father, we have been told that the life is in the blood (Leviticus 17:11) – and we recognize the life of Jesus poured out for us in this cup. Bless the cup, we ask, and our lives as we drink in His life and live it among others. Make us vessels of His life to those who have no knowledge of it, no faith in it, no hope through it. May this be so for as long as we live: that He lives in us. Amen.

52 Weeks at the Table – Week 45

Judged by two enemies – Pilate the Roman governor and Herod the king-in-title-only of the Jews – Jesus was sentenced to die on by crucifixion. Luke’s gospel tells us that the enemies became friends that day. After carrying that cross outside the city, Jesus was nailed to it: an upright post of wood bisecting a horizontal beam, fastened together at His heart.

At His right and left were two criminals on their crosses, and while one joined in the crowd’s jeers in asking His deliverance from the cross, the other confessed His belief in Jesus and asked deliverance into His kingdom. A Roman centurion saw Jesus surrender His Spirit and came to terms with what he had to conclude about the Man on that cross. Joseph of Arimathea begged the lifeless body to place in his own tomb, followed there by the women who had stood at a distance while Jesus died.

All of these diverse people were brought together in a unique fellowship at the table formed by the two crossbeams. There they made a choice about their relationship with with God and with others. There the Lamb was sacrificed. There atonement was made. And there, the Man-who-was-also-God brought God and man together as no one else before or since could ever do.

A Prayer Over the Bread

We gather at this table in the shadow of the cross, our God and Father, and give You glory for the great gift of being reconciled to You through the forgiveness of our sins. The body of Jesus, hanging between heaven and earth to reunite them, we recognize in this loaf. We see His head dipped to gaze upon guilt, and raised to view Your righteousness. We see His arms outstretched to embrace us even in our sin, and to bear its weight, and to implore Your grace. Bless this bread which brings us together, we pray: Amen.

 

A Prayer Over the Cup

Our God … our God. Why have You not forsaken us? We are the ones who have sinned, and it is our bones which should be counted; our knees melted under the strain to take each successive breath. But it is the blood of Your Son and not ours which is given that we may be forgiven; and it is His blood that we see in this cup. Bless this cup, we pray, to remind us of Him for as long as we breathe: Amen.

52 Weeks at the Table – Week 44

There is an unusual quote from Jesus that Luke alone shares in introducing his retelling of the Last Supper story: “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.” When something is said to be fulfilled in scripture, that means that it was regarded as prophetic. Jesus saw the Passover as prophetic of His sacrifice as the Lamb of God, to save the obedient from death.

His emphasis on the fulfillment of the Passover in this meal prompts Luke to include another detail not shared by the other gospel writers: Jesus took the cup twice: first to repeat that He would not drink of it again until God’s kingdom had come; after the meal, to declare it to be – not the old covenant – but the new covenant in His own blood. Jesus predicted His betrayal, pronounced a woe on the betrayer, and urged the remaining disciples to lead humbly. And when He singled out Peter as the object of His prayer, Luke shares yet another unique detail: The conversation led to Jesus urging them to buy things to carry money and clothing – and a sword. Perhaps one of the two swords present belonged to Peter. But the warning should have been clear: that like the Israelites after the Passover meal in Egypt, the disciples should be prepared to leave in haste.

A Prayer Over the Bread

God of deliverance from the pursuit of evil and the angel of death … we give You honor and glory and thanks. For Your Son, the Lamb of God, looked forward eagerly to supplying deliverance from His very body. We remember His willingness in this bread, not eaten in so much haste that its meaning escapes us. We too look forward to the wedding supper of the Lamb, and celebrate that anticipation as He shares this foretaste with us in this humble, earthly outpost of Your kingdom. We do so in His memory, His name, His purpose: Amen.

 

A Prayer Over the Cup

Holy One of Israel, of all peoples and all time … we honor Your wisdom with all that is within us. Through the giving of Your Son’s blood, You have sought to reconcile all of Your children to Yourself. We seek to escape evil and death, and it is the only Way we have. Bless this moment we remember it and remember Him in the sharing of this cup we pray: Amen.

52 Weeks at the Table – Week 43

John’s gospel takes whole chapters to describe what took place at Jesus’ last supper, from the washing of feet to entire conversations about the Holy Spirit and what else is to come for His disciples. One of the details John shares is a unique description of a single moment that takes place at the paschal meal, possibly at the end when the hidden matzoh is brought out to close the meal, and when Jesus hands it to someone close to Him, John says: “As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him.” (John 13:27)

At that point of betrayal, John reveals that there’s no magic in the matzoh. There’s no wizardry in the wine. There’s no “hocus pocus” in the Latin phrase hoc est corpus – “This is the body.” There’s no intrinsic protection from the Evil One in the emblems of this meal. Like Judas, who took the bread and went out the door a couple of verses later, we can take this bread and walk out the doors of our church and betray our Lord any number of ways. Or …

We can choose to be changed. We can become what we eat, just as the old saying goes: “You are what you eat.” As believers, we are Whom we consume. We can become the Body of Christ. We can be living witnesses outside the walls to His brutal crucifixion, His entombment until the third day, His glorious resurrection that guarantees our own – just as we are when we share this meal; when we dine on the divine.

A Prayer Over the Bread

To You, our God, be praise and glory forever – for You have given as no one else can give: Life to the lifeless through the lifeless body of Your Son, Jesus, restored to life on the third day after death. We accept that life as we accept this bread, its symbol. May His life give us life anew; life with purpose and courage to be like Him in every way You enable us. We beg this blessing in His name: Amen.

 

A Prayer Over the Cup

Change us, o God, through the blood of Christ: given on the cross from His head, hands, and feet so that our heads might always bow in reverence, our hands might always be eager to serve, and our feet may always be swift to carry His gospel. Bless this cup, the symbol of His blood, as its contents enter us and become our blood, and our hearts make it flow in worship to You and witness to others that it is His blood flowing in us. We crave this favor in Jesus’ name: Amen.