He Gave Them a Meal (Part One)

(This series was initially posted on Tortilla Press. As that website will be offline for a bit, I moved the series here.)

He Gave Them a Cross (Part Two) He Gave Them the Spirit (Part Three)

When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. And he said to them, ‘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.’ Luke 22:14-16

As Jesus’ final hours approached, “When he wanted to fully explain to his disciples what his forthcoming death was all about, he didn’t give them a theory. He gave them a meal,” so explains N. T. Wright in his work, Simply Jesus.

And although this meal, Wright continues, was undoubtedly a Passover meal – it was a Passover meal with a non-Kosher twist. The people of Israel celebrated the Passover to commemorate the Exodus event when God miraculously delivered the Israelites from centuries of bondage in Egypt. To partake of the Passover was to recall and celebrate the events of the past. Yet this evening, this last supper, Jesus turned his followers’ attention from the past to the future and retells the story to point toward a deliverance much closer at hand.

Amidst the evening’s festivities, Jesus took the bread, gave thanks, broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you.”

Then in the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.”

To receive the bread and the cup Jesus offers is to embrace and celebrate the new life Jesus gives. Likewise, it is important to share the meal together as the community of faith, for it is a practice that reminds us of Christ’s victory, as well as our share in it. Therefore any behavior or attitude that devalues another and subsequently disrupts the unity Christ died for is to partake in the Lord’s Supper in an unworthy manner.

Paul accused the Corinthians of partaking in the Lord’s Supper in an unworthy manner when they neglected to discern the body of Christ. But how, specifically, did the Corinthians neglect to discern the body of Christ? By selfishly disregarding and mistreating the poor among them. Shamefully enough, the Corinthians committed these sins while participating in the Lord’s Supper. As a self-imposed judgment, their mistreatment of the poor caused weakness and sickness among them, and even death.

The breaking of bread and the drinking of the cup remains for us one of the most sacred and important symbols we have to express Christ’s sacrificial love and eternal victory. Therefore, let’s remember, when we come to the Lord’s table together it should be a holy communion. A place where we discern the body of Christ by taking care of one another as we remember together how Christ sacrificially took care of us.

Luke 22.7-23; 1 Corinthians 11.17-32

N. T. Wright, Simply Jesus, HarperCollins: 2011, Kindle Edition.

It's a shame

In John 8, there's a face-off between the religious men and Jesus. Read my newest post on Tortilla Press and consider the damage of using shaming tactics like the religious men in the story verses the redemptive process modeled by Jesus.

He Gave Them the Spirit (Part Three)

He Gave Them a Meal (Part One) He Gave Them a Cross (Part Two)

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Acts 1.8

“This passage,” expalins Ajith Fernando, “shows us how important the Holy Spirit is to our understanding of mission and how important mission is to our understanding of the Holy Spirit.”


As I mentioned in previous posts, Jesus gave his disciples a meal to explain his impending death. He gave them a cross to express the exacting cost of living for the kingdom. Now Jesus promises to give his disciples the Spirit to empower them for his mission.

So we see, God’s mission and God’s Spirit are irrevocably intertwined. And as Ajith Fernando reminds us above, we cannot truly understand the mission of God if we do not appreciate the importance of the Holy Spirit in that mission. And we cannot truly appreciate the Holy Spirit if we neglect the mission he empowers us to be a part of. A read through the book of Acts confirms that the purpose of being filled with the Holy Spirit is to empower his disciples to preach the word of God everywhere and in all circumstances.

As the Spirit of Pentecost empowers God’s prophetic community for mission, so the Spirit of missions is relational. God entrusts his message with his people. God empowers his people with his Spirit. Therefore, missions must be incarnational; it must be relational.

As a missionary, may I be so bold to proclaim that there is no substitute for sending real people into all the world to bring God’s message by his Spirit, because the message we need to share is this: God is reconciling the world to himself through Christ. Therefore like Christ, our ministry and our methods must be incarnational; they must be relational. Nothing less will do. As his disciples we have the responsibility to be incarnate with his message and empowered by his Spirit to go into all the world.

Although it is tempting to believe that Jesus’ commission to all nations is a new development in the missio Dei, it is not. The mission of God has always included the nations beyond the called and faithful remnant. It has always included reaching out with compassion and hope to the poor, the captive, and the oppressed. What is new is the promise of power to all believers (regardless of social status, nationality, age, or gender) to expedite the mission.

This power though, is not the consequence of an inanimate energy source, but rather the manifestation of the Spirit of Christ. No less than the abiding presence and power of the Holy Spirit is adequate to accomplish this exceptional mission to all nations.

To accept the gift of the Spirit as they did at Pentecost and throughout Acts necessitates an intentional missions objective, for the purpose of Pentecost is to clothe believers with power to be witnesses to all the nations. For a believer to claim to be filled with the Spirit and yet have no inclination for the mission of Jesus simply makes no sense.

Today, if we want to be a part of God’s missional, prophetic community – to be empowered by his Spirit to send and to go and to make disciples – then once again let us ask God to fill us with his Spirit. But to ask for the baptism of the Holy Spirit intrinsically implies that the recipient of the gift will accept the mission, the method, and the power to go to the ends of the earth!

Ajith Fernando, Acts, The NIV Application Commentary, Zondervan: 2009, Kindle Edition

He Gave Them a Cross (Part Two)

He Gave Them a Meal (Part One) He Gave Them the Spirit (Part Three)

Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” Matthew 16.21-22

Why such a fierce response to Jesus’ claim? Sentimentality: Peter could not bear the thought of losing a friend? Messianic expectation: Jesus the true Messiah could not, should not possibly die? Or, as N. T. Wright notes in his book Simply Jesus, because the disciples then (as so many of us today) wanted a kingdom without a cross?

Just moments before in Matthew’s Gospel, Peter confesses Jesus as Messiah. Delighted, Jesus affirms his divinely inspired insight. Yet just as quickly, Jesus rebukes Peter for rejecting the predetermined way of the cross as the means for establishing the kingdom. The ‘son of man’ would not march on Jerusalem to retake it by force as her rightful king. On the contrary, much to the disciples’ surprise (and dismay), the way of the kingdom would be through the cross. And if that was not enough to take in, Jesus sets the way of the cross before his disciples.

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.

There’s no two ways about it, the cross represented death. Jesus’ ultimatum to his disciples to take up their cross remains for us today an invitation (to put it kindly) to deny selfish means and gains for the sake of the kingdom.

“Somehow,” Wright notes, “Jesus’ death was seen by Jesus himself … as the ultimate means by which God’s kingdom was established. The crucifixion was the shocking answer to the prayer that God’s kingdom would come on earth as in heaven.”

When as his disciples we take up our cross, lay aside our own agendas and follow him we declare daily that God’s kingdom has come, is coming, will come on earth as it is in heaven. The accusation over Jesus’ head, “King of the Jews,” transformed Jesus’ cross into a throne. The disciples did not foresee a suffering Messiah, but that is what they got. And as our King took up his cross so he expects his disciples to do the same. The way of the cross demands everything. And the disciples soon learned that taking up their cross and following him would indeed cost them everything.

Yet here is the clincher – the cross, although a powerful symbol of death also becomes the means to life.

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. 

Indeed, to embrace the cross is to accept not only the way of death but also the hope of resurrection. The cross, forever a reminder of how Jesus died also becomes a startling testimony that death could not hold him.

Jesus gave his disciples a meal to explain his impending death. He gave them a cross to express the exacting cost of living for the kingdom. But in just a few weeks time, he will give them the Spirit … stayed tuned.

Matthew 16.13-26. See also Mark 8.27-38; Luke 9.18-26

N. T. Wright, Simply Jesus, Harper Collins: 2011, Kindle Edition

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