SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening to an audio resource from Stanwich Church, located in Greenwich in Stanford, Connecticut.
SPEAKER_01: The vision of Stanwich Church is to know Christ and make him known.
SPEAKER_00: This can be found on page 1048 of your Pew Bible.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord's preparation and celebration of the Passover meal with his disciples is a picture of the spiritual significance of breaking bread in Christian community to that day.
SPEAKER_00: A reading from Luke chapter 22, beginning with the 14th verse.
SPEAKER_00: And when the hour came, he reclined at table, and the apostles with him.
SPEAKER_00: And he said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.
SPEAKER_00: For I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he said, Take this and divide it among yourselves.
SPEAKER_00: For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.
SPEAKER_00: And he took bread.
SPEAKER_00: And when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you.
SPEAKER_00: Do this in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_00: And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, This cup is poured out for you.
SPEAKER_00: This cup is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.
SPEAKER_00: May God add his blessing to the reading of his holy word.
SPEAKER_02: I understand why people line up for Black Friday at Best Buy, and why some of them cry when they get inside and discover the door busters are gone.
SPEAKER_02: I understand why millions line up for Taylor Swift concerts, and why they scream and sometimes cry when the lights go down and the show begins.
SPEAKER_02: What I'm less sure I understand is why many millions more line up again and again for a small piece of bread and a sip of juice.
SPEAKER_02: And why sometimes they cry.
SPEAKER_02: It's a bit bizarre if you think about it, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02: Why do they do that?
SPEAKER_02: Why do you do that?
SPEAKER_02: Why do you sometimes cry?
SPEAKER_02: I know because I've served you the elements and have seen you do it through my tear-stained eyes.
SPEAKER_02: We're in a series called Welcome to the Table.
SPEAKER_02: And this morning we're looking at the Lord's Supper, as told to us in the Gospel of Luke, to see if we can maybe understand this puzzling phenomenon a little more.
SPEAKER_02: And to add to the puzzlement, when I listened to the reading of the passage, I thought I heard two cups mentioned.
SPEAKER_02: Could it be that we have been doing communion wrong all this time?
SPEAKER_02: It's right there in verses 17 and 20.
SPEAKER_02: Luke mentions two cups, while Matthew and Mark each mention one, and John?
SPEAKER_02: Not at all.
SPEAKER_02: Things like this sometimes make people question the reliability of the scriptures.
SPEAKER_02: But Houston, we don't actually have a problem.
SPEAKER_02: And a story might help.
SPEAKER_02: This summer our family had the privilege of spending a week in the Mediterranean.
SPEAKER_02: And at the end of the trip, we ask everyone what their favorite part of had been.
SPEAKER_02: For my father-in-law, it was the gelato, which he managed to have five times.
SPEAKER_02: And for one of the kids, it was the hike up a dolomite mountain that required ropes.
SPEAKER_02: For my nephew, it was the water sports.
SPEAKER_02: And for me, it was definitely not the water sports.
SPEAKER_02: You see, we went tubing, and when the boat pulled our inflatable over the first wave, the two of us flew up into the air and bashed heads against each other.
SPEAKER_02: Except he's a 19-year-old rugby player.
SPEAKER_02: No, we were all describing the same trip.
SPEAKER_02: Was one of us wrong?
SPEAKER_02: Also, no.
SPEAKER_02: What we have is a group of different people who experienced the same trip, but who were struck by different things, and so we emphasize different moments.
SPEAKER_02: And the child who reports liking one hike in particular is trying to say something slightly different than the one who says they liked all the hikes.
SPEAKER_02: And so it is with the Gospels and their accounts of the Lord's Supper.
SPEAKER_02: They report different things, but none of them are wrong or unreliable.
SPEAKER_02: The Gospel writers arrange, emphasize, and tell their stories differently in order to provide their own particular perspective on what happened that night, giving us a richer and more complete understanding of its meaning.
SPEAKER_02: The desire to harmonize the accounts is very understandable, but it can ultimately be unhelpful.
SPEAKER_02: It takes something that's four-dimensional and flattens it into 2D.
SPEAKER_02: A better strategy then in reading the gospel is to ask, well, what is unique here?
SPEAKER_02: What is different?
SPEAKER_02: Why does this story tell, why does this writer tell the story this way?
SPEAKER_02: And those differences actually give us clues about what the author wants us to see.
SPEAKER_02: And with that in mind, let's get into our passage, Luke chapter 22, starting from verse 14.
SPEAKER_02: And when the hour came, he reclined at the table and the apostles with him.
SPEAKER_02: Right from the opening of the scene, Luke does something different from Matthew and Mark.
SPEAKER_02: You have to listen carefully to it in order to catch it.
SPEAKER_02: Matthew says, Jesus was reclining at the table with a 12.
SPEAKER_02: Mark says, Jesus arrived with a twelve.
SPEAKER_02: Luke says, Jesus reclined at table, and the apostles with him.
SPEAKER_02: Did you catch that?
SPEAKER_02: Jesus with a twelve, Jesus with the twelve, Jesus and the apostles with him.
SPEAKER_02: Matthew and Mark were just trying to push all the people on stage so that they could get on with a play.
SPEAKER_02: Luke, however, subtly changes the syntax.
SPEAKER_02: He slows things down, separating the main character and hosts of the evening from the guests that he has invited, and emphasizes the fact that they are with him.
SPEAKER_02: If you don't know anything about the apostles, it's an odd bunch of people that Jesus had gathered around him.
SPEAKER_02: There's one who's working for Rome and one who's working for the overthrow of Rome.
SPEAKER_02: There's one who's still under his mother's care and one who's caring for his mother-in-law.
SPEAKER_02: There's white collar and blue collar.
SPEAKER_02: And yes, even though they don't know it yet, a betrayer and a denier.
SPEAKER_02: No wonder they're always bashing heads against each other.
SPEAKER_02: Now you're all dressed up nice and clean, so I don't know what's odd or off about you, or who or what it is that brings out the things in you that are ugly.
SPEAKER_02: All I know is that if we are honest with ourselves, we all are in some way.
SPEAKER_02: And what Luke wants us to know is that everyone, even you and even me, is invited.
SPEAKER_02: Everyone has a place at Jesus' table.
SPEAKER_02: And it's not just that Jesus allows them to be there.
SPEAKER_02: In Matthew and Mark, the first scene has a sorrowful Jesus intimating that one of them will betray him.
SPEAKER_02: But Luke does something different.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 15.
SPEAKER_02: And he said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.
SPEAKER_02: Or literally, with desire, I have desired.
SPEAKER_02: In Semitic language and Semitic languages, when you want to emphasize something, you repeated the same word twice in succession.
SPEAKER_02: And that is what Jesus does here.
SPEAKER_02: He isn't here feeling sad for himself.
SPEAKER_02: He is here because he wants to be here.
SPEAKER_02: And he doesn't make a place at the table for you because he had no choice, you know, your crazy old Uncle Frank.
SPEAKER_02: He's making a place for you because he really, really, really wants to be with you.
SPEAKER_02: May I ask what it is that you desire with desiring?
SPEAKER_02: I know what it was for my seven-year-old self.
SPEAKER_02: In my grandmother's house, I watched my brother open the birthday present that she had given him.
SPEAKER_02: They were matchbox cars, and there was nothing in the world I wanted more.
SPEAKER_02: And so I let it be known to her that I wanted my birthday present now, even though my birthday was still six months away.
SPEAKER_02: And there didn't seem to be recognition in you about matchbox cars.
SPEAKER_02: So if it doesn't resonate with you because you're a different age group, the equivalent for you might be the cabbage patch doll or tickle me elmo or a video game console, or that club membership, or that promotion at work, or a restored relationship, or the health of a loved one who is sick, or the presence of one who's passed away.
SPEAKER_02: That deep desire you feel, know this that with an even greater desire, Jesus wants to be present with you to do something for you.
SPEAKER_02: The verse tells us that the meal they're having is a Passover meal, which is very helpful because we have a pretty good sense of what Passover meals were like in the time of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: The original Passover was eaten standing up because the Israelites were slaves who were leaving Egypt in haste.
SPEAKER_02: But by the time of Jesus they ate it reclining, because that's what Greco-Roman people did when they were partying.
SPEAKER_02: We also know, and if you've already turned off your hearing aid, now is the time to turn it back on, that the Passover meals of that time involved four cups.
SPEAKER_02: Or more accurately, that wine was poured into your cup four times at the beginning of the meal, during the meal, after the meal, and at the conclusion of the evening.
SPEAKER_02: At the beginning of the evening, before you drank the first pour, the host would pronounce a blessing, which goes, Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who creates the fruit of the vine.
SPEAKER_02: Do you see what might have led Jesus to say later that evening that I am the vine?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's not all, it's not made up.
SPEAKER_02: This first cup and blessing is what you have in verse 17.
SPEAKER_02: And the second cup that Luke mentions in verse 20, he describes in that verse as the cup after they had eaten.
SPEAKER_02: So it's actually the third cup of the Passover meal.
SPEAKER_02: Well, here's something else that's good to know.
SPEAKER_02: The reason the Jewish people had four cups is that for them it represented the four ways that God had promised to save them as recorded in Exodus chapter six.
SPEAKER_02: In Exodus chapter six, it says, I am the Lord your God, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, I will deliver you from slavery to them, I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, I will take you to be my people.
SPEAKER_02: I want to focus on the third cup, the third promise.
SPEAKER_02: I will redeem you with an outstretched arm.
SPEAKER_02: If you go to Egypt and visit the museums and the archaeological sites, you'll find many depictions of Pharaoh in what's known as the mace pose.
SPEAKER_02: In one hand, Pharaoh holds a mace, a club-like weapon, and with the other hand he grabs his defeated enemy by the hair.
SPEAKER_02: Chase actually volunteered for a demo of this picture, which I'm very grateful for because Chuck and Jelani are no help at all.
SPEAKER_02: I think he ran away already.
SPEAKER_02: It is a picture of Pharaoh's power.
SPEAKER_02: And the Israelites living under Egyptian oppression would have been very familiar with that image.
SPEAKER_02: And so later on, after they left Egypt, God would remind them over and over again, using the same words.
SPEAKER_02: You will see it littered all over Deuteronomy.
SPEAKER_02: He says, You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.
SPEAKER_02: See what he was doing there?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: This is a picture that would have been on the disciples' minds as they came to the third Passover cup.
SPEAKER_02: And then Jesus says, This is my body which is given for you.
SPEAKER_02: This cup that is poured out for you is a new covenant in my blood.
SPEAKER_02: The Passover meal is highly scripted, and we know that these words are not part of the script.
SPEAKER_02: They would have been startling to the disciples.
SPEAKER_02: And with rebellions against Rome happening all the time, and with the image of Pharaoh in their minds, perhaps they thought, is Jesus saying that he's ready to fight?
SPEAKER_02: Is he saying he's ready to shed blood with us?
SPEAKER_02: Are we making a blood covenant, a little band of brothers prepared to die together if necessary?
SPEAKER_02: Well, okay, let's go get our swords.
SPEAKER_02: They don't know it yet.
SPEAKER_02: But God is doing something completely different.
SPEAKER_02: Because very, very soon, Jesus will transform what it means for God to save with outstretched arms.
SPEAKER_02: My grandmother was very kind.
SPEAKER_02: The next time we visited her house, she had a present ready for me, even though my birthday was still months away.
SPEAKER_02: And I was very excited because the box was bigger than the one my brother had gotten.
SPEAKER_02: I opened it and inside there were two dozen.
SPEAKER_02: Two dozen pairs of underwear.
SPEAKER_02: I know there are bigger disappointments in life.
SPEAKER_02: I've known some myself.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe life hasn't turned out the way you imagined.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you've made a mess of things with family, with friends, with God.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you work hard for something and it still hasn't come to pass.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you're so deep in disappointment you don't know how to come up for air.
SPEAKER_02: Friend, take all your disappointed desires to the cross and to his presence.
SPEAKER_02: Put your broken pieces next to his broken body.
SPEAKER_02: Pour out your complaints next to his poured out blood.
SPEAKER_02: Stay there and see what he does.
SPEAKER_02: The disciples didn't know it yet.
SPEAKER_02: But God was transforming everything.
SPEAKER_02: You don't know it yet.
SPEAKER_02: And I don't know it yet.
SPEAKER_02: We don't know it yet.
SPEAKER_02: How God will transform everything as you come into his welcoming, outstretched arms.
SPEAKER_02: And maybe that is in part why millions line up and come week after week.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe that is why sometimes we cry.
SPEAKER_02: Do this in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_02: That's what Jesus says in verse 19.
SPEAKER_02: And as I read that verse, I'm struck by another difference.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus said, Do this, and it appears by this, we understand a ritual involving said small piece of bread and sip of juice.
SPEAKER_02: But the first Christ followers interpreted it to mean the entire meal.
SPEAKER_02: And so they had regular gatherings called love feasts.
SPEAKER_02: Which to me raises the question: could it be that we have gotten it wrong?
SPEAKER_02: Could it be that by reducing communion to symbolic elements, we're missing something?
SPEAKER_02: And what if the truer communion isn't what we do here, but what we do in Emmaus Hall?
SPEAKER_02: And you know, you have no excuse not to go.
SPEAKER_02: I'm an introvert as Chuckis, and my wife used to have to drag me in there.
SPEAKER_02: Now she has to drag me out.
SPEAKER_02: And what if the truer communion is not the coffee date standing up in Emmaus Hall, but in sitting down around a table with a life group?
SPEAKER_02: You know, when we went through our pastoral transition, we conducted a survey.
SPEAKER_02: And what it showed is that those of us who attend only on Sunday mornings, uh, we were reasonably satisfied with Stanwich, about 65-70% satisfied.
SPEAKER_02: But for those who attended Sunday mornings and one other thing during the week, and basically the one other thing you can attend is a life group, the satisfaction rate jumped to 95%.
SPEAKER_02: Why not go and make your life better?
SPEAKER_02: And what if it's an eating together?
SPEAKER_02: A farmer, a banker, a nurse, and a singer walk into a diner.
SPEAKER_02: That sounds like the beginning of a joke.
SPEAKER_02: But that's actually a description of some of the people in my life group.
SPEAKER_02: What do they have in common?
SPEAKER_02: I mean, even the farmers in our group, one is a vegetable farmer and the other is a horse farmer.
SPEAKER_02: And what is it that makes us wake up earlier than we want to every Thursday morning?
SPEAKER_02: It's the presence of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And what if?
SPEAKER_02: What if when Jesus said to do this, he meant not only participate in this meal, but also become the hosts of these gatherings as Jesus was the host of that gathering?
SPEAKER_02: What if it's in hosting people who might be ungrateful or don't like the food that that's the means that God has given us by which we learn how to love our neighbors?
SPEAKER_02: Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should not do what we're about to do in the next part of our service.
SPEAKER_02: There are actually accounts going back as far as the second century of the church practicing communion in this way.
SPEAKER_02: But they did not stop there.
SPEAKER_02: And don't get me wrong, eating together in and of itself is not.
SPEAKER_02: Magic.
SPEAKER_02: The Bible tells us that the church in Corinth they gathered together around a meal, but the banker ate with a banker at the banker's table, and they were hammered by the time the hungry farmer walked in.
SPEAKER_02: The Apostle Paul warned them and warns us not to eat and drink without discerning the body.
SPEAKER_02: And what is the body?
SPEAKER_02: Or rather, who is the body of Christ?
SPEAKER_02: It's people sitting around you.
SPEAKER_02: If we have judged someone here, which is to say, have thought of them in any way less than what God thinks of them, we have not discerned the body.
SPEAKER_02: It's not primarily about our individual lists of sins that we are to discern, but more how we as a body haven't been united as the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_02: You know, Jesus' last prayer to the Father before that dinner ended, that they may be one, even as we are one.
SPEAKER_02: He actually praised that twice in that same chapter.
SPEAKER_02: But in other places, they did remember Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Their table was not one that divided, but a table that was united, and because they were united, they became a table that multiplied, influencing and changing the world.
SPEAKER_02: Let me read for you Acts chapter two and try to listen what happens.
SPEAKER_02: And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
SPEAKER_02: And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.
SPEAKER_02: And all who believed were together and had all things in common, and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need.
SPEAKER_02: And day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people.
SPEAKER_02: And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it isn't really so bizarre to come again and again, week after week, to the welcoming, outstretched arms of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: We don't know yet what he will do with our disappointments and our brokenness.
SPEAKER_02: We don't know yet how he will make us whole.
SPEAKER_02: And we don't know yet how he will make the world new.
SPEAKER_02: But we can have his transforming presence.
SPEAKER_02: And that is enough.
SPEAKER_02: That is enough.
SPEAKER_01: To learn more about the mission and vision of Stanwich Church and how you can get involved, please visit Stanwichchurch.org.