Editor’s Note: this week, a very different set of Connect Devotionals because this week is unlike all others. Each writer this week will invite you to explore a different passage:  the “cleansing of the Temple” (Monday), the argument about paying taxes to Caesar (Tuesday), the “great commandment” (Wednesday), the Last Supper and Gethsemane (Thursday), and the culmination of this week on Good Friday.  We hope that what we write will invite you to a deeper engagement with these Scriptures, as well as with the entire narrative of this week that began on a joy-filled Sunday and ended on a terrible Friday we now call “Good.” We hope you’ll read what we write.  Even more, we hope you will dive into what Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote!

Mark 14:12-26

My best friend and I met when we both lived in Minot, North Dakota. Both of our families eventually moved from North Dakota, and a couple of years later we all ended up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. (Is there a merit badge available for having lived in both Dakotas?) Fast forward a few years when I had to share the news of our family’s plans to move from Sioux Falls to North Carolina. I invited my friend out to lunch, and this wasn’t unusual. We frequently met up for meals out, but I didn’t want to ruin one of our usual spots with my sad news. I picked a restaurant where we had never been together…plus I really wanted a burger, so that may have influenced my decision a little! 

There were a lot of emotions shared over that table. It’s been several years since we shed tears over those burgers, but we both remember it vividly. Meals are personal things, and sharing them serves to bind us together doesn’t it?

It was no mistake that one of the last interactions Jesus had with most of his disciples was over a meal. They had shared so many meals together already, and Jesus knew what lay ahead: betrayal by one of his friends, which would then lead to the Cross. Despite that, the gathering of the disciples and Jesus to share the Passover meal was something special. During the Last Supper with His apostles, Jesus took the bread and the cup–two symbols associated with Passover–and gave them fresh meaning as a way to remember His sacrifice, which saves us from spiritual death and delivers us from spiritual bondage.

The experience was and is deeply communal. The Table is not "my personal time with God," though it is deeply personal. Receiving the bread and cup not only binds me to Jesus; it binds me to everyone else who partakes, across cultures, time, and history (and stretching even into the future), and particularly to those who are partaking right alongside me. 

Think about meals in your life that stand out. Why are they significant? Who was present, and what were the emotions shared? I don’t often think of the way the Bread and the Cup bind me to other believers, but of course they do! Keep that in mind the next time you participate in Communion.