This week we were reminded how painful the past can be and how unforgiving the future can seem. The mother of the teenager who killed four people at a Michigan high school in 2021, took the stand in her manslaughter trial and testified it was her husband’s responsibility to store their son Ethan’s gun safely. Her husband is scheduled to go on trial in March for the same charges of parental culpability in this mass-shooting at Oxford High School. Did these parents willfully ignore their son’s plea for psychiatric help, yet buy him a gun as a present? These trials reopen painful wounds of the parents of the victims—parents faced with questions of redemption and forgiveness—while other parents play the blame game.
We need a counter-reminder that we are better than neglectful parents, that we are not prisoners of the past and debtors of an unforgiving future. We have a Father who gives us this reminder every week—the Lord’s Super—that we are better.
In Matthew 26:26-28 and in the other synoptic Gospels, Christ instituted a sacrament for such a time like this. When we take the Lord’s Supper, Jesus’s command: “do this… in remembrance of me." In that command, we are called to do two things: First, we are called to “to do, and second “to remember.” First, we are called to reflect on what Christ did on the cross. Second, we are called “to do”— to connect with what Christ is doing in our lives now and in the future.
`First, we are to reflect and connect on what “the breaking of the bread” represents: deliverance from the bondage of sin. It’s about freedom. Listen to Christ as He gave new meaning to the Passover meal before his disciples in the upper room in Matthew 26:26:
26 While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after giving thanks he broke it, gave it to his disciples, and said, “Take, eat, this is my body.” Matthew 26:26:
Bread was part of the Feast of Unleavened Bread that was part of the beginning of the Jewish Passover, this coming out party of Israel out of Egypt. On the night Jesus was celebrating the Passover meal, Christ gave a new redemptive meaning to this act of worship. His broken body represents the broken bondage of sin in our lives according to Romans 6:6:
6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—Roman 6:6
When we take communion, we are reminded, by our Father, that we are not prisoners to our past. Our bondage of sin is broken. That’s good parenting.
Secondly, we are called to reflect and connect to what the wine represents: our deliverance from the penalty of sin by the sacrifice of Christ. Christ gave a new meaning to the Passover meal when he blessed the cup in Matthew 26:27,28:
27 Then he took the cup, gave thanks, and offered it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you. 28 This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Matthew 26:27-28
The wine of the Passover Feast was a reminder to the Jews that they were delivered by the blood sacrifice of the lamb whose blood marked the door post of their Egyptian homes, averting the judgment of the death angel that passed over them.
On the night Christ instituted the Lord’s Supper, blood represented by wine, took on a greater redemptive meaning for all men. The blood ratifies an unbreakable covenant that the blood of Christ, like the perfect lamb of the Passover, delivers us from the penalty of sin. In essence, our sin fine is paid. We are forgiven and debt-free according to Hebrews 9:22a
…and without shedding of blood is no remission of sin. Hebrews 9:22
In a word, out of the riches of God’s grace, the penalty of our sin is paid.
We are not debtors to an unforgiving future. We are debt-free. Let me go. Our Father paid our debt. That is compassionate parenting.
This week we were reminded how painful the past can be and how unforgiving the future can seem. But this little piece of cracker and grape juice is good news for difficult weeks of news.
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