52 Weeks at the Table – Week 33

When a baby is born, you want everything to be perfect. Especially, when the perfect Baby is born; the One whom prophets and angels have foretold; the One who will take away sins. But what the prophets foretold was not the idyllic, perfect story we tell at Christmastide – and Matthew’s second chapter checks off each prophecy as evil threatens this perfect One:

• Herod polls the religious leaders, who correctly recall that the Christ was to be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2)
• Joseph, warned of Herod, takes Mary and the child to safety in Egypt (Hosea 11:1)
• Frustrated at not finding his prey, Herod orders the slaughter of the innocents of Bethlehem (Jeremiah 31:15)
• After Herod’s death, they return to live in Nazareth

Here Matthew says prophets – plural – call Him a Nazarene, and while there may be a similarity in that word to the Hebrew word (netser / neser) for “shoot” or “branch” (Isaiah 11:1 – as well as it becoming a synonym for a person ill-regarded – Isaiah 53:3; John 1:46) – what we know is this: the baby showers given by admiring shepherds and wealthy wise men were followed by a flight from terrorism, and a return in anonymity to a place where no one would look for an anointed King of Righteousness. Because Satan’s forces would stop at nothing – including mass infanticide – to try to defeat One who would take away sins.

A Prayer Over the Bread

Holy and Righteous God, help us to see beyond our desire for a nice and sweet and harmless, perfect Savior to the heinous arrogance of the sin that seeks to beguile and persuade and corrupt us. Remind us in this bread of the body given by a mighty and sinless, powerful Savior – Your own perfection incarnate from cradle to cross – to rescue us from its grasp. Amen.

A Prayer Over the Cup

Father of the Loving, Living Son: We recognize that it was heaven’s dearest blood that Herod sought and that his successor succeeded in spilling. It was Jesus’ blood poured out and given, recognized in this cup, which takes away sins … which protects us from the evil one … which gives us a name and a place and a family. Your family. Amen.

52 Weeks at the Table – Week 32

Luke’s opening chapter leaves no doubt that the Child foretold in centuries past will be born an extraordinary child. Angels appear. A forerunner is prophesied. A Messiah is promised. The fetal forerunner John leaps in his mother Elizabeth’s womb. Mary sings. Zechariah sings. And in chapter two, all of heaven sings while dazed shepherds keep watch over the innocent, newborn Lamb of God. He is laid in a manger — a place where animals eat. The One who will feed thousands lies in a food trough.

But the prophecies are not all kind and fair. When the parents bring their eight-day-old Son to the temple for circumcision, the elderly prophet Simeon seems to sing his praise and prayer for God’s salvation – and for release from this life. He holds the Child and blesses Him and confirms His destiny: to cause the rising and falling of many in Israel … to be a sign spoken against … to reveal the thoughts and hearts of many. And he tells Mary that a sword will pierce her own soul, too. It is a dark revelation, relieved only a moment later when the prophetess Anna begins telling everyone around that this Child would bring the redemption of Jerusalem.

A Prayer Over the Bread

God and Father, You behold past, present and future. You weave them to Your purpose. You create life, give life, restore life. Your promises never fail. So we sing to You our praise of thanksgiving for the redemption of our lives, our bodies … through the Body of Your Son. We cherish Him in this bread, which nourishes body and soul. Amen.

A Prayer Over the Cup

Merciful and Just One; Loving and Righteous God: thank You for giving Your Son, the Only of Your creation to remain innocent as a newborn throughout the span of life. Through His blood, we fallen may rise again. Through His blood, the thoughts of our hearts are revealed. Through His blood, a sword pierces our own souls, too. Through His blood, we find redemption from sin. Through His name, we thank you for this cup: Amen.

52 Weeks at the Table – Week 31 (Alternate)

Twice in scripture – Ezekiel 3 and Revelation 10 – a spokesperson of God is told to eat a scroll containing a prophecy to be proclaimed, God’s Word for His people. God wanted His Word to be taken internally … digested and comprehended and made a part of His spokesperson.

The apostle John tells us in the opening chapter of his gospel that the Word of God for His people is Jesus. Jesus came to this world, not by whirlwind or meteor, but as a baby laid to rest in a manger. We get our English word “manger” from the French verb manger, “to eat.” Jesus’ mother cradled Him in a food trough. He came to be consumed – consumed by His passion for His Father’s house; for the people He came to populate it with … you and me. John recounts this zeal for God’s house early in his gospel,¹ where Jesus drives the selfishness and convenience and animal nature from the temple; where He predicts that God’s temple will be destroyed, and He will raise it up in three days.

Jesus’ birth, His life, His teaching, His miracles of helping, His death, and His resurrection – these are the gospel; what all scripture points toward. This is Jesus, the Word of God, not in a nutshell … but in a morsel of bread and a sip of the blood of the grape. Let’s proclaim it together.

A Prayer Over the Bread

Our God, who put Your word in the mouths of Ezekiel and John on Patmos, You speak to us now through Your very own Son, and that Word made flesh – whose body is seen in this bread – enters our mouths to give us strength to testify to that Word with our mouths. This is His body, broken for us. It is as sweet as honey with the promise of redemption and resurrection. It is also bitter with the suffering and death He endured that we might live. Help us always to remember this, whether hungry for the Word, or filled with its grace – through Jesus: Amen.

A Prayer Over the Cup

Creator and Giver of life, we see in this cup the blood of Your Son, and we remember that it flowed from His body at His crucifixion. Yet we also remember that His life-blood flowed within His veins and arteries as He lived, and lived again, for us. We remember what He taught, how He showed Your love, how He brought life back to those who had died. We, too, were once dead in our sins … and this blood brought us back to a life worth living; a life that need not end. For all this we give our humble thanks: Amen.

52 Weeks at the Table – Week 31

Because of their idolatry and disobedience, God allowed His people to be conquered, and the best of them deported to a kingdom called Babylon. There they were captive for seventy years. During that time, a king named Belshazzar ordered a banquet at which sacred bread-plates and wine-goblets plundered from the temple in Jerusalem were used to fest and toast his idol-gods. The prophet Daniel interpreted God’s handwriting on the plaster wall of the banquet hall – and that night, Belshazzar and his kingdom fell.

During the captivity, Esther was a beautiful captive chosen in a contest to become the consort of another king, named Xerxes. When a plot of genocide against the captured Jews by an official named Haman became known to her through her overhearing uncle Mordecai, she accused Haman at a private banquet she gave only for him and her husband, King Xerxes. Haman was immediately hanged on the gallows he had built to execute Mordecai.

Jesus also chose the occasion of a banquet – the Passover feast – to quietly reveal the plot against Himself by Judas. He named no names; simply prophesied that one of the twelve who shared in dipping the bread and drinking the wine would betray Him to His enemies. The betrayer, like the other eleven, asked “Surely not I?” And Jesus answered, “Yes, it is you.” Then He served the bread and shared the cup.

A Prayer Over the Bread

God, our Father through the grace of Christ, it would seem that there have long been plots and conspiracies against those who love You – but Your reserve in not foiling the one against Your Son – in letting Him be the One cursed by hanging on a tree – perplexes and humbles us. As we remember this, His body given for us, while we eat this bread, we confess our awe and gratitude for the love you have shown us in Jesus, the Christ. Amen.

A Prayer Over the Cup

Holy and Righteous One, You know what is to come before it even enters our minds. You know what is in the hearts of those who love You and those who betray You. You know what is in our hearts right now. If You find anything there that does not recognize the blood of Your Son as we share this cup, root it out and crucify it and replace it with the life that His sacrifice brings. Amen.

52 Weeks at the Table – Week 30

Moments before His arrest, Jesus quoted a snippet of Isaiah to the remaining eleven, and told them that it was a prophecy about to be fulfilled in Him (Luke 22:35-38): “It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.”

If those disciples remembered their scripture as well, they would have recalled that Isaiah (53:8-12) also foretold the arrest, the judgments at trial, the suffering, the taking of His life, and – above all – the reason for it: He was to be “a guilt offering” … to “justify many” and “bear their iniquities.” And the prophecy also hinted at His victory, both with the question “Who can speak of his descendants?” as well as the triumphant answer: “He will see the light of life and be satisfied” … “I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong.”

A Prayer Over the Bread

All praise and honor are due You, Father God, for You have revealed Yourself – Your justice, Your mercy – to us through Your Son. You have willed that He should serve to intercede on our behalf. And, sharing Your very nature, He has poured out His life unto death for our sins. Through this bread we see the body of Jesus, pierced for our transgressions; crushed for our iniquities. Forgive us, O God, through the power of this, Your promise. Amen.

A Prayer Over the Cup

We can only continue our praise and thanksgiving, Almighty God, for the giving of Your Son, Jesus, the Christ. As He poured out His life unto death, may we see His life poured out in this cup. May we dedicate ourselves to the imitation of His selflessness in pouring out our lives in gratitude and living sacrifice that honors You through Him. May we find strength in His strength, and be counted among His portion. Amen.

52 Weeks at the Table – Week 29

The prophecy Isaiah has been given to share seems incredible, even to him: “Who has believed our message?” He expresses it in past tense, so certain is it that it may as well have already happened. God sends a Servant – not handsome, not esteemed – and suffers not only as we suffer, but actually bears our suffering and our guilt. And we misunderstand. We see Him struck down by God. But the truth is, He is stricken and smitten by us; by our sins. All of us have wandered away from God like bleating sheep … but this Lamb of God is led to slaughter silent.

“The men who were guarding Jesus began mocking and beating him. They blindfolded him and demanded, ‘Prophesy! Who hit you?’ And they said many other insulting things to him.” ~ Luke 22:63-64 … “Then the high priest stood up and said to Jesus, ‘Are you not going to answer? What is this testimony that these men are bringing against you?’ But Jesus remained silent. The high priest said to him, ‘I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.’ ~ Matthew 26:62-63 … “The Jews insisted, ‘We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.’ When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, and he went back inside the palace. ‘Where do you come from?’ he asked Jesus, but Jesus gave him no answer.” John 19:7-9

A Prayer Over the Bread

Holy God, one of your wisest once said that there is a time to be silent and a time to speak. You speak even in Your silence, and before You now we listen. We hear the sheep-brained bleat of our own lives echoed in the mockery of the soldiers and the high priest and hear our fear in the words of Pilate. Remind us in this bread that Your Son’s body was given for us; that we are now that body in Him. Amen.

A Prayer Over the Cup

Father God, only One could claim to be the Son of God; the Suffering Servant foretold by Isaiah, and that is Jesus. He was silent in response to cruelty and cowardice, yet could not remain silent about that truth. He gave His consent through silence to the brutality that results from sin. He gave His blood to remove our transgressions, and we remember Him in penitence through this cup. Forgive us, we pray; embolden us that we too might never be silent about the truth of Your Son – however difficult to believe that it might seem to others. Amen.

52 Weeks at the Table – Week 28

It reads almost like a footnote to the main narrative – the two verses of 2 Kings 13:20-21 – “Elisha died and was buried. Now Moabite raiders used to enter the country every spring. Once while some Israelites were burying a man, suddenly they saw a band of raiders; so they threw the man’s body into Elisha’s tomb. When the body touched Elisha’s bones, the man came to life and stood up on his feet.” The man’s name isn’t given. His fate isn’t disclosed. Something so astounding – life arising from death, without a breathing, speaking prophet as the channel of it – should seemingly deserve more information! But, like the army raised from dry bones before amazed Ezekiel (chapter 37), no more is said of the matter.

In fact, the short passage reads almost like the two verses of Matthew 27:52-53 – not disclosed in any of the other three gospel accounts: “The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus’ resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.” No names. No details. And yet, those few words communicate the power of resurrection unleashed on the earth at the very moment Jesus died. Who these “holy people” were seems to be of little or no consequence compared to the fact that they lived again, and that the power of resurrection was associated with Him even after His death.

Two spare verses say it all.

A Prayer Over the Bread

Creator and Sustainer, we are completely humbled by Your power to create life from the dead; to raise children unto Abraham from rocks and earth; to bring dead works to life through faith in Christ; to bring life back to those who have passed beyond it in the body of Christ. For this bread, which both recalls it and builds it up, giving life to the dying, we give You our awed thanksgiving through Jesus: Amen.

A Prayer Over the Cup

For the lifeblood that flows through our veins and arteries, O God, we give You thanks. It should have been required of us to atone for our self-filled sins, but You provided Your very own dearest blood; that of Your Son Jesus. It took the place of ours as His life took the blame for ours. We remember it throughout this life in the sharing of this cup, on which we ask your blessing through Christ: Amen.

52 Weeks at the Table – Week 27

After the death of Elisha, another succession of wicked kings ruled Jerusalem – with the exception of Josiah, the reformer-king who sought to destroy the altars and worship-objects of the detestable false gods and rebuilt the temple and re-instituted Passover. It was not enough to turn the hearts of Judah back to God or to turn His wrath away from their sin – so God turned His back on them, as it had been with Israel to the north. Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, and when he had starved its populace into submission, he razed its holy and royal buildings to the ground. Those who escaped deportation to Babylon, fled to Egypt. The second of the acrostic Lamentations mourns:

My eyes fail from weeping, I am in torment within, my heart is poured out on the ground because my people are destroyed, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city. They say to their mothers, “Where is bread and wine?” as they faint like wounded men in the streets of the city, as their lives ebb away in their mothers’ arms. (2:11-12)

It was a meal featuring bread and wine which preceded the capture of Jesus and His final exile to a cross on a hill outside of Jerusalem. The apostle whom he loved records that there He entrusted the care of his mother to John just before a spongeful of wine vinegar was lifted to His dehydrated lips. Then He surrendered His Spirit and bore the weight of sin not-His-own to the death He did not deserve. (John 19)

A Prayer Over the Bread

Holy, Righteous, One God … what You have done for us in giving Your Son exceeds the boundaries of love and grace that man can perceive. It is inexplicable, inexpressible and incomprehensible. We cannot grasp nor measure its dimensions. We can only bow, with this bread – His body – dissolving in our mouths as His sacrifice dissolves our sins, and remember Him in gratitude a for which we have no sufficient words. Amen.

A Prayer Over the Cup

Sovereign Lord God, if we can only begin to understand the grief and pain of Jesus’ mother at the cross, then we can surely do no more to comprehend Your own as His Father. We remember the trembling of the earth; the rending of the temple’s veil; the moment of Your wrath expressed to and yet withheld from us by the grace of His blood. Bless this cup – His blood – and we who share it to always remember Him, and remember why. Amen.

52 Weeks at the Table – Week 26 (Alternate)

When a drought caused Elijah’s brook to dry up and he had to move on from where ravens fed him, the Lord sent him to the house of a widow in Zarephath and her son. God provided for them through containers of flour and oil that were always, miraculously, full. When the boy died, Elijah’s prayer restored his life (1 Kings 17). Similarly, following Elisha’s instructions, a prophet’s widow and two sons found relief from debt through a vessel of oil that did not cease pouring until there were no more vessels to pour into. And Elisha was hosted in Shunem by a woman whose husband was old – yet Elisha’s prophecy of a baby in her arms came true. And when the boy later died, Elisha did as his master had done with the widow’s son – and the child revived. Not much later, he fed a hundred with a mere twenty loaves of barley bread (2 Kings 4).

Jesus, known as a prophet during His incarnation, also fed bread to five thousand (Matthew 14) and four thousand (15) and, shortly after healing the illness of a centurion’s servant, raised a widow’s son to life (Luke 7) as well as His dear friend Lazarus (John 11). In the end, His compassion led to His demise, for there John records: “Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. ‘What are we accomplishing?’ they asked. ‘Here is this man performing many miraculous signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.’ ” Then, Matthew adds: “So from that day on they plotted to take his life.”

A Prayer Over the Bread

Undiminishable Father God, we praise You because Your mercy toward us has no end, pouring forth like the oil and flour that made bread for Elijah, the widow and her son. In our spiritual poverty, You have provided Your Son through Your limitless compassion, to let Him be consumed like bread. Through Him, You give us the strength of His righteousness and we are filled. Bless now this bread we pray in the name of Jesus: Amen.

A Prayer Over the Cup

Holy, Unchanging One, there is perhaps no miracle more powerful than the way the blood of Your Son changes us; transforms us into Your likeness with ever-increasing glory (2 Corinthians 3:18). Through Him, we cross over from death to life (John 5:24). For this incomparable miracle – the ongoing resurrection of our lives from dead pursuits to eternal glory; for this incomparable blood and the cup it fills, we thank in Jesus’ name: Amen.

52 Weeks at the Table – Week 26

When King Solomon passed away, Judah had been separated from the rest of Israel by their sin. It is a sorry succession of kings which follows the reign of Solomon – who himself had fallen prey to the temptations of wealth and wives, and had fallen into idolatry. Among these kings the Lord sent prophets and men of God (some good; some poor in character) to set them aright or just tell them of the doom they have earned. Elijah outshone them all, even though he, too, had moments of fear and doubt. At the close of his ministry, when the Lord was calling him home, he three times told his protege Elisha that he should stay while his master went on. Three times, the answer of the apprentice was “As surely as the LORD lives and as you live, I will not leave you.” When just before it came time to part – one on foot; one by fiery chariot in a whirlwind – the younger asked the elder to petition God for a double portion of His Spirit, and his request was granted. He took up the mantle of his master, and the ministry continued in power. (2 Kings 2)

At the end of Jesus’ recorded visits to his closest followers, He went to them in His resurrected body and met them fishing. Having already promised them His Spirit (John 16), His question of the one who had denied Him three times was also asked thrice: “Simon Peter, do you love me more than these [fish]?” Peter’s answer each time was essentially the same: “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” And Jesus told him to quit fishing and begin shepherding. It was not an assignment filled with promise, except for the promise of suffering as his Savior had suffered: “… when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” (John 21:15-23) Yet in just a few days, upon Peter and the other ten descended the Holy Spirit like a mantle of comfort and responsibility, and they took it up and continued Jesus’ ministry in renewed power. (Acts 2)

A Prayer Over the Bread

Heavenly Father of Elijah and Elisha, we pause at this table of our Master to give You thanksgiving and honor and praise for what You have promised and what You have given through Your Son. This bread, His body, reminds us of His devotion to us, and compels our devotion in return. We, like His closest ones, would rather that He had stayed – but know that it was for our good that He went away, leaving us His Spirit; empowering us to perpetuate His ministry; inspiring us to give glory to Your name. So in Jesus’ name we ask your blessing: Amen.

A Prayer Over the Cup

God of Israel and Judah; of Jesus and Peter, we ask your blessing on this cup, the blood of Your Christ. Through it we are given redemption and unity; because of it poured out we receive Your Spirit. Give us the power to eschew the idols in our lives: the gratification of self through power and wealth and pleasure. Give us the power of Your Spirit to enthrone You, the living God, and serve Him only. Like Peter, we would always confess our love for our Master. Like Elisha, we would insist on staying with Him, to whatever end. For He met the end that should have been ours, that we might see no end to life. So in Jesus’ name we make this request: Amen.