Holy Week for most churches starts with Palm Sunday and ends with Easter Sunday. And wow, does a lot happen in 7 days! We watch people placing their cloaks down for Jesus yelling “Hosanna!” to Jesus’ last supper, to being crucified, and then to the Resurrection.
Today is Holy Thursday, or what many churches call “Maundy Thursday.” Maundy is a word that means washing of the feet, which is what Jesus chose to do at the Last Supper. He also broke bread, shared wine, and asked the disciples to “do this in remembrance of me.”
Many of us still partake in some type of communion today, whether once a week or during special occasions. We do this to remember Jesus as He asked us to do.
When Paul speaks to the Corinthians about communion, he adds to the “in remembrance of me” that Jesus asked us all to do. At this time, the church of Corinth was quarreling about everything, including how to do communion! Paul tried to center people back to the main point of communion. At the end of explaining the Last Supper to the church, he adds this: whenever you take part in Communion, you “proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”
I don’t know about you, but when I go to remember Jesus, I tend to focus on what He has done for me and the best parts about Jesus. I’m not really the first to go straight to thinking about Jesus’ death, especially every time I take communion. On the surface, that sounds depressing to me.
But Jesus’ death is what changed everything. In that death, Jesus became the sacrificial lamb. No longer did people have to present an animal sacrifice to God in replace of their sins, Jesus did that for us. He knew exactly what was about to happen the day before, and He purposefully and carefully chose every single action He took on Maundy Thursday.
He took the role of a servant and washed feet. Then, He gave his disciples, and thus all of us, a way to remember Him. And Paul desperately wanted the church of Corinth, and anyone else that was to read the letter, so that every time we remember Him, we can rest in the fact that not only did Jesus die for us, but He is coming back.
So every time you take part in communion, remember you are taking part in hope. Just like Jesus knew that His ending was not an ending at all, we too know that we are on the path of eternal life with Jesus, and there is nothing better than that.
