Remembering Communion

Passover.  The time-honored celebratory meal of the Jewish people, remembering God's delivering them out of Egypt.  It's in this context that Jesus gathers up his disciples and begins to speak a new word over to them.

I often wonder what the disciples were thinking during the first communion - if they truly understood what Jesus was sharing with them.  In celebrating passover, their thoughts may have been on the events of Exodus - lambs slain for the protection of the Israelites, the various plagues, and God's deliverance through Moses of His people.  But now, Jesus was the lamb.  His blood would be shed, his body broken for them.  He was the great deliverer. It's here Jesus infuses the great reminder.  

I find this overlay is such wisdom.  There was no facebook, twitter, or nightly news to impart the gospel message; remembering Jesus and what He did was of great importance to sharing this good news with the world.   Instead, Jesus took a meal that would be celebrated every year, he gathered a people who would hold each other accountable, and he interlaced his good news into the event with the simple command - do this, remembering me.  It seems to have been an effective method as we continue to remember Him to this day as we partake in communion.

The thing I appreciate most about this commandment is how it has time and time again interrupted the hub bub of my own life, and made me stop and do just as it intended - remember.