Remember Him

EAT WHAT IS GOOD

Isaiah 55:1-3 (ESV)

“Come, everyone who thirsts,

    come to the waters;

and he who has no money,

    come, buy and eat!

Come, buy wine and milk

    without money and without price.

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,

    and your labor for that which does not satisfy?

Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,

    and delight yourselves in rich food.

Incline your ear, and come to me;

    hear, that your soul may live;

and I will make with you an everlasting covenant,

    my steadfast, sure love for David.

Can you envision the person being described in this passage? It’s someone malnourished and exhausted, spending money and laboring for things that don’t give life. Does the person sound familiar? It does to me. I see myself. I so often - more than I can even comfortably admit - spend so much of my energy and mind’s attention feasting on things that don’t satisfy. 

So what solution does God offer to his people? Where do we find sure and certain means of his grace? We desperately need a regular reminder of this everlasting covenant to shape us into more Christ-like people over time. 

When we look in both the Old and New Testaments of scripture, we see God using regular feasts to establish and sustain his covenant with them.

REMEMBERING IN THE OLD COVENANT

After God saves the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt, he brings them into the Promised Land and commands them to keep a number of feasts and assemblies. He does this so that they will regularly remember the Exodus event by celebrating God’s saving actions, particularly in the Passover Feast. These worshipful events will shape them into a restored nation. 

God instructs them, “Then you shall keep the feast...and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God…you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt; and you shall be careful to observe these statutes” (Deut. 16:10-12). God’s not enforcing dead ritualism; rather, because he’s created them as creatures of habit, he is telling and retelling the great story of his faithfulness through frequent feasting and celebration. 

REMEMBERING IN THE NEW COVENANT

Just as the Old Testament feasts reoriented the Hebrews around the Exodus event, so the Lord’s Supper reorients Christians around the Christ event: his death and resurrection. Jesus himself institutes this new feast by offering his own body and blood, commanding us to “do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). 

The word “remembrance” comes from the greek word “anamnesis”, which is not best understood as cognitive remembrance or mental ascent, but is more like a forceful reenactment, drama, or a re-membering of the past event. We recall the Lord’s Supper into the present by acting it out in worshipful community. Jesus’ disciples understood this already since, as Jews, they engaged in the Passover Feast the same way. Jesus, during Passover, institutes a new feast for the early church to embrace. It’s not long before we see the disciples practicing it as a weekly corporate habit, if not more often (Acts 2:42, 20:7)

Soon after the birth of the early church, the apostle Paul also receives these same “remembrance” instructions and passes them on to the growing group of Christian followers:

1 Corinthians 11:23-26 (ESV)

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

And here we are today! Whenever we receive communion at our churches, we are proclaiming, actuating, and dramatizing his covenant and good news until he comes again. Though we might drink from broken cisterns and spend money on that which doesn’t satisfy during the week, we are graciously extended the invitation again and again to remember and feast with him on the Lord’s day.

HE IS THE HOST AND WE ARE HIS GUESTS

This invitation to the Table begins with God. As the apostle John writes, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10). Communion is the divine meal that the Lord Jesus himself has prepared for us. He is the host and we are his guests. This means we don’t have to come with any merit of our own, but instead, we can just receive the Father’s goodwill toward us in Jesus’ blood and body by the power of the Holy Spirit! As one of the priests at my church has often said, “We aren’t invited to take communion but to receive it.”

So, this Sunday, I will have the opportunity to approach the communion altar, kneel down at the railing, and hold out my hands, one in the other, facing upward in a “ready-to-receive” posture. I will do this in remembrance of him, not as an act of piety originating within myself toward God, but as a response to his invitation toward me. Praise God! We are drawn to the table where he will give us the drink and feast of himself.