Daily Devotion – March 30, 2021 – Dr. Pat Taylor Ellison
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
11:23 For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread,
11:24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
11:25 In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
11:26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
I am drawn in this famous passage in 1 Corinthians to the very beginning – that Paul received from the Lord what he handed on to his followers/listeners, the story of the Lord’s Supper. We take the Lord’s Supper for granted, of course, but to the early Christians it was a new thing, especially if they were Gentiles and did not know the Passover traditions of eating unleavened bread (quick bread because they were to eat in haste) and the symbolic actions the Hebrews did to protect themselves from the angel of death (killing a lamb for the meal and putting its blood on their doorposts so the angel would pass over their house).
Paul received the Lord’s Supper story from the Lord, he says, and also likely from the believers who welcomed him while he was blind. Paul had probably made fun of or even despised these practices of the Christians, whom he had persecuted, but later on held those practices dear. Jesus’s actions just before his arrest were the last bit of “normal life†for the disciples before Jesus’s death and resurrection. They become hugely important as a way of gathering believers in all places and at all times since then. Paul wants his hearers to know what this Lord’s Supper is for. It is for gathering the faithful, and it is “to proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes†back for his flock. The blood of the lamb that had saved the Hebrews from the angel of death in Egypt had been replaced by the blood of the lamb, Christ Jesus, that saves us from eternal death and opens the pathway to eternal life.
And we are the beneficiaries of Paul’s making sure everyone knew this important moment for the first disciples. We are the beneficiaries of this more than 2000 year-old practice. It connects us into the Lord’s death, connects us into his new covenant with humanity, and connects us with one another. Paul’s message is as much for us in this age as it was for his hearers centuries ago: we are included by Christ; so we include one another.
Gracious God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for giving us your Son, Jesus, faithful early disciples and apostles like Paul, and your Holy Word, so that even now our faith can be ignited and grown. Amen.
