Devotional 4-19-14

 “Family Dinner”

Please read   Exodus 12:1-4; 11-14

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like a good meal. Sometimes we joke that one of the symbols of the United Methodist Church is a casserole dish, a nod to the importance of food in our various celebrations throughout the year. We enjoy big dinners at home and in church throughout the year, whether we are celebrating Valentines’ Day or the end of summer at a church picnic.  Do you have any special memories that you associate with food?

This Scripture lesson describes the very first Passover dinner. It was a meal that the Hebrew people were to eat on the last night of their captivity in Egypt. There were particular directions on how the food was to be prepared and how the people were to eat it. They were to be ready to go to the next laces God called then to go. They were going back home. It is the most important feast in the Jewish religion today still. It has been celebrated yearly for millennia.

As Christians, we celebrate the Passover meal every time we have Holy Communion. When Jesus ate the last Supper with his disciples, it was the Passover meal they ate.  So whenever we celebrate Holy Communion we are remembering how God delivered the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. We also remember how Jesus instructed his followers to continue this practice in memory of Him. It reminds us that even though relationships between Jews and Christians may have started rather shakily, we still have a great deal much in common.

I invite you to think of Holy Communion as a family meal. We gather together as people do at any dinner. Some of us are joyful. Some worry. Many are struggling over who knows what-name a problem of contemporary society and someone is dealing with it as we come to the Lord’s Table. But that’s exactly what it is: the Lord’s Table. We are invited to eat the sacred meal with Jesus and those very human disciples who were there that night. Like them, we argue over who is important. Like them, we often promise our unswerving faith in Him. Like them, we betray Him in countless ways every day.  Jesus said to remember Him as they ate that meal in the future. He wants us to remember Him as well.

In our human family, we all need spiritual nurturing. One of the things we can do as we are fed  on this Holy Thursday in the Sacrament of Holy Communion is to remember this is a meal more special than any other family gathering we’ve ever been to. We remember how God was with those early Hebrews as they prepared for freedom and what they didn’t really understand was going to be a long arduous journey to get there. Jesus knew on the night of the Last Supper what was happening, and that God would see him through the hardest journey anyone would ever have to make. On that night, the disciples may not have understood what was really happening to them and to their leader, but as time went on and they experienced forgiveness for their inaction and action that night, they remembered that Jesus’ grace was with them. After the day of Pentecost, when they began going on their separate ministry journeys, they remembered that he would be 

As I said earlier, we all bring something different to the table as we feast together and remember what God has done for His people in the past5. Whatever challenges we face, we too can remember that God has always been with us in the past, caring for us, feeding us and nurturing us in a variety of ways. God will be there in the future as well .

Rev. Dorcas Conrad