Revisiting the Lord's Supper Part 2

[HKHaugan]

Revisiting the Lord’s Supper 2 

We’ve looked at the three purposes of the Lord’s Supper, spiritual, personal and relational.  Now we want to go into the contexts in which Jesus operated, the physical (where He was), the historic (what He was fulfilling) and His lifestyle (how He fulfilled it). 

 First, we want to keep in mind the overall picture of His mission.  He came to bring God face to face with each human being by offering Himself as a relational tie to His Father through having a relationship with Him in the power of the Holy Spirit.  He came to restore the world to His Father, every piece of it, the visible and invisible.  Well, what’s the Lord’s Supper got to do with this?

 Everything!

 There are two basic things the Lord’s Supper does and that is to repeat how He accomplished His mission and secondly, to involve us in keeping His Mission going.  That is done by celebrating what He said at that Supper and then going out and living those words. That means we believers have a worship service of remembrance giving us a reminder of the lifestyle He sets for us. We gather as a family of believers to be reminded of His sacrifice, why He did it and to physically share bread and wine to embrace His presence in our hearts. 

 But the Lord’s Supper is not only worship, it’s a lifestyle.  When Scripture says He took bread, gave thanks, broke it and distributed it, that was not only a reminder of His sacrifice but also a reminder of our new lifestyle in Him, to be living sacrifices wherever we are.  We take our daily lives, give thanks for that gift, repenting in order to break the past attitudes and practices sin brought us into and share the risen Jesus in the broken world around us.   That’s the primary function of the Lord’s Supper, keeping us close to Him in mind, heart and spirit so we can worship and share Him while we’re on our way.

 Having said all that, we move into Jesus’ chosen contexts, physical, historic and lifestyle. 

 We’ll start with the physical.  This needs some real work because most of us have been influenced by the culture’s tendency to idolize thus dehumanize the historic Jesus.  Sinful people don’t like their idols, the ones they follow, to be like them.  They want cultural heroes not spiritual honesty. What is really important to understand is that Jesus, the spiritual Son of God, chose to be conceived by the Holy Spirit in Mary’s totally human body and live like a human being in every aspect of relational life.  He chose to be just as limited in movement and location as any of us while simultaneously being God’s Son.  His choices to live the way He lived were sinless.  He chose faith in His Father and His Father’s will to be His way on the way.  His choices were always faith choices.  His Resurrection proved His faith choices were perfect, thus enabling Him to be our Savior from sin and our Lord to guide us in a new life, eternal life. 

 Again, what makes Jesus’ choices so important is His faith and the Father in whom He placed it.  Everyone is born with faith to believe in something.  Worldly faith is believing in what can get us to survive and be in control in every next moment.  Faith in Jesus is what enables us to live and make choices in an eternal relational context.  That’s exactly what Jesus demonstrated.  His faith was to choose death on the Cross to fulfill His Father’s eternal will both for Him and us.  He calls us to be in a faith relationship with Him like He was with His Father, our Heavenly Father.  That’s how we fully experience life, locally, personally and relationally.  The process of choice itself is internal and unseen.  The mind is unseen, the heart is unseen and our spirit is unseen.  This is the internal humanity He embraced right where He lived in His body.  And that body He lived in was limited in movement, time and space just like ours.  We look to Him for all our faith choices which is all our choices.

 Therefore, location, physical location, defines our reality which is this: 100% of everything we do is processed where we live in our bodies, personally, spiritually and relationally.  100% of how we choose is based on what we as individuals can’t see.  So, who can we trust to make any choice at all in this unseen reality except the only One risen from the dead in spite of all the unseen evil forces in the world that killed Him, namely Jesus?  This is one of our key points when we share Jesus with anyone who doesn’t know Him.

 So, what Jesus did, He did locally.  His witness as Savior and Lord was local. He was not a political demonstrator leading rallies against Rome or local authorities.  He didn’t have an army, a gloriously leaping stallion, political or social status, military backing, wealth or any material support.  He lived with a local family, had a local job and had local friends.  He chose twelve men to live with locally in every day relationships.  He moved from place to place by walking. He never went farther in His mission than Galilee and Samaria.  He taught personally and relationally.  His miracles, His teachings and behavior were all in a local, personal and relational context.  He spent His time pouring Himself into twelve men.

 So, what’s His call to us?  Spend our energy on being disciples where we spend our time.  Now, keep this in mind.  We are called locally to be local, localize our love, our faith, localize our mission, and localize our ministry.  Localize our sharing while we are on our way each day with everyone we meet, believer and non-believer alike.  If you look at missionaries it is what they do in a local context that is their calling.  We send them to be locally involved.  When believers act locally the Lord does the rest on a global scale.  If you can be trusted in little things they prove to be the great things as far as the Lord is concerned.  Don’t worry about numbers and size of groups or whether or not you are being effective on a large scale.  Jesus didn’t.  His plan was a localized plan, person by person, place by place and heart by heart---to love and serve Him because that’s how the world is restored to Him.

 Next, we’ll look at the historic context Jesus intentionally mentioned as the basis for celebrating the Last Supper. 

 Who said the Lord’s Supper was just a wonderful way to remember Jesus? 

[Linda]

"So, what Jesus did, he did locally." Whitey, this is such an important message. As you know, I think, my Muslim friends have trouble dealing with the fact that Jesus was a Jew. I want to get a map that shows the limitations of the travels of our Lord, and consider the other limitations he chose for himself. I believe the contrast will be self evident, eventually. :)