September 5, 2025

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“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.” (1 Corinthians 11.23-26)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD TO US:

I believe one of the most important elements of strengthening community is “remembering.” Taking time to remember our journey and sharing it together with others draws us together. Even the most painful experiences can become a source of joy as they are shared with others. It allows us to gain perspectives we might otherwise never have even considered. The greatest perspective might be “you are not alone.” And “aloneness” may be the greatest fear and the greatest danger to our own sense of well-being and survival in this world. As mighty ones of God, we gain that perspective from God’s Word. It is not some random collection of words, sayings, teachings, historical references, songs, wisdom literature and letters. It is a systematic remembrance of what was, what is and what will be. As a community takes time to remember (as many will and already are because of 9/11), it practices and rehearses the transformation of the past into the present pursuing a more certain future. It doesn’t always mean the right decisions are made or even the best ones, but it is clearly pressing us forward. What are we pressing forward toward? Perhaps the easiest answer is not to get swallowed up by the past. We tend to stylize, maybe even romanticize, the past even as we remember the pains. How often have we said, “I wish for the good old days”? When we look at the struggles and challenges we face today, they are in great part due to things not confessed and addressed from those “good old days.” Ignoring those lessons often results in rewalking those paths again and again only to become rutted. Before we know it, the rut becomes as a canyon whose walls rise over us. David might call that “the valley of the shadows of death.” The rut is so deep and the walls so high that the light of day seems unreachable. We must be honest in our remembering in order to find the joy of our salvation. That requires that we must not go this way alone.

For that purpose, we must remember that we are never alone. No matter of isolation can, as Paul wrote in Romans 8.31f, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God.” We already mentioned David’s declaration in Psalm 139, “No matter where I go, You are already there.” A movie I remember from my younger days titled “War Games,” with Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy, had as one of its main characters a super computer called “WOPR.” It stood for “War Operation Planned Response.” Its purpose was to compute and project the best response to a nuclear attack. This would be the information used by the military leadership in answering an attack. It investigated a myriad of ways and scenarios to come up with the best one. In essence, it travelled into the future down many paths to see the end before the journey really started. I have a sense that is a way we can see the love of God going before us. He has travelled the billions of paths and options for each of our decisions. He singular purpose, however, never changes. That purpose is to get us from point A to point B regardless of the X,Y,Z decisions and turns we make along the way. No matter where we may go, say and do, God has not already been there and charted a way through it, out of it and beyond it but He goes with us along the way. He causes us to remember. This is one of the values of prayer. It is a time of remembering, rehearsing our commitment to faith, confessing our unfaithfulness and recommitting to “the way, the truth and the life.” Of course, we know that to be Jesus Christ (John 14.6). Jesus said, “I AM [is] the way, the truth and the life and no one can come to the Father except by Me.” Jesus walked out the course of our journey Himself. He took upon Himself the sins of the world (the community of people in all time) and bore them to the certain course we all must take (Golgotha and self-sacrifice) so that those who do will dwell with God, our Heavenly Father, forever without end and without the burden of the past. In Christ, our present and our future are tied together. In Him, we experience that “already but not yet” and find ourselves not only out of the rut but on top of the rim looking forward and down without fear.

When Jesus gathered with His “community of faith,” the disciples and followers who were serving at table that evening (including Judas of Kerioth for a time), He led them through a celebration of remembrance. It was a remembrance of the past effort to bring God’s people out of their bondage and out of a valley of the shadow of death. As they recalled an event that didn’t happen to them but for them, it allowed for them to see their own bondages and the promise of freedom which God put into effect through the Law, acts of worship and a continuing call of faith to trust in Him at all times. We all have that story even now. In that Seder meal, one of those remembering celebrations, Jesus transformed the application from the past to the fulfillment of its future hope. Jesus was, is and will always be that future hope of fulfillment. Jews may say “One day in Jerusalem,” but mighty ones of God know which Jerusalem it will be that Jesus will come back to and call us to dwell with Him forever. It is not an earthly Jerusalem but one which He is crafting even now in Heaven to bring down on earth. In our communion services, what I am calling our didache of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, we must take time to remember the journey Jesus took. He took that journey so we will not have to. Not that we will not make the journey, but we will not do it alone nor will we do it without confidence knowing its most certain end. That end is not death and the end of remembering. That certain end is Heaven and the beginning of remembering God’s fulfillment of His promise to be our God if we will be His people. We dare not forget. We must always remember. We must also be truthful in our remembering so that we will never forget “save for the grace of God there go I.”

And so, we must “remember” both literally and figuratively, when we gather as a community of faith with “bread and cup,” the journey of our freedom through our various valleys of the shadows of death to dwell with Christ our Savior forever and ever. Mighty ones, let us be intentional in these remembrances in both word and act so that the message is clear of the importance of that moment in time which is for all time, “On the night when He was to be betrayed He took bread and cup and said ‘Do this in remembrance of Me.‘” It is the culmination of OUR past, present and future together.

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness but as righteous works of faith, hope and love in Jesus’ name. AMEN.