dinner anyone?

What would you eat if you knew it was going to be your last meal?

Death row inmates are allowed to choose the meal of their dreams the night before they will have someone strap them to a chair or gurney and have another someone flip the switch to roll approximately 2000 volts of electricity through a body deemed guilty. Or to have a lethal substance pushed into your veins that has the same effect as the 2000 volts without the horrific sight of someone shaking/burning from the inside out (just to place in perspective; 220 volts operates the household dryer)…

How do you even choose the meal? What if the meal is already set for you?

Jesus had a last meal, and with no less the outcome that criminals in our day have applied to them. There is one tremendous difference. Jesus CONQUERED DEATH!  Bivo this is Thursday, uh Maundy Thursday.  You can’t celebrate yet…the heck I/we can’t and I’m going to. Gang the tomb is empty! Trust me I understand the importance of the remembrance. I mean Jesus said those very words; he dips the bread (his body) into the cup (his blood) and as often as we do this, do so in remembrance of HIM….

What’s our remembrance?

This meal had been scripted and followed out since God told Moses how and when to put this meal together. (Check out Exodus 12)…The first Passover all the way back to the left side of The Book in Exodus. We see where Moses received instructions in how to bring the spotless, lamb to slaughter, to make sure the blood of the animal would be smeared on the doorposts. Thus showing a world that you were doing so in remembrance of God.

Can you fathom being in the crowd when Moses returns and he starts laying down the instructions of how to go about “making sure” you remember God. Moses is telling the gang, “Look, this month will be the first month of our year. “We are to pick a one-year-old male lamb or goat without blemish. Then everyone will come together (community) to slaughter (sacrifice) the animals. Take some of the blood from and smear along the doorposts of your home, showing the world that you beLIeVE…”

Ok ok ok…. STOP….

Do you think anyone, as Moses was providing the details, started to mentally check out? Ah you know somewhat like we do, when chatting with someone and they are giving us blow by blow on some how to’s in our life…. some how to’s that really may be beneficial but because this is new, it’s the first we mentally say “whatever”…or ok you were tagging along until the blood thing, I mean really Moses!? God told you to tell us to smear blood on the doorposts to show that we beLIeVE…believe what and who and why?

Does a world look at us today in our remembrance of Christ any differently? Do they wonder what all the fuss is about? Do we? Do I?

Today is Maundy Thursday…for most…. it’s a normal everyday Thursday.  For Jesus he was sitting down to a meal with his community of people to beLIeVE out what God told Moses. For almost 1400 years people who would follow the instructions would go about the sacrifice of a lamb and smear blood on doorposts, and in their doing so where doing so in remembrance of HIM…. a looking forward to a time when there would be no more need for a yearly sacrifice. I just wonder how many families/individuals over the course of the 1400 years said ah “whatever”…and yet here is THE LAMB sitting down to carry out what no one else could. He is here to eat the last meal, a meal where the disciples would hear HIM state:  3So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.  (John 13:34 NLT)

Jesus would then set his shoulders toward the cross to be sacrificed. To take on what to us would seem like 2000 volts ripping through our bodies, and HE does so in Remembrance of YOU.

It’s a new smearing of blood on the doorposts of our homes. It’s the last sacrifice that will be needed. It is how the world will know that we beLIeVE and we do so in remembrance of HIM…

love em up!