Remember
Author: Pastor Miguel Verazas
March 30, 2023
If there is something that I enjoy, it is food! Who doesn’t love a great meal?
I’m what you might call a “foodie.” I love trying new foods, especially when fused with different culinary cultures. Along with smelling and tasting the food, I enjoy the memories that food can bring. While I live away from the home I grew up in, every time I try some good Mexican food, I can’t help but remember my mom’s cooking back home. Food evokes feelings. A meal with friends can bring back memories.
During the Lord’s Supper, Jesus introduced a meal to His close friends that has continued to evoke memories in His followers for the past 2,000 years. Imagine with me this meal as Jesus and the disciples are eating together. Imagine Jesus standing up from His place, taking the bread and blessing it, then breaking it and handing it to His disciples. He says these unforgettable words, “‘Take, eat; this is my body.” He also takes the cup and says, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:26-28). With this meal, Jesus points His friends to the ultimate sacrifice of love—His death—which takes away all of the sins of the world.
This Sabbath, Pastor Mitch and I want to invite you to the table prepared to help us remember His great act of service, humility, and salvation. As we eat the bread and drink the cup, we remember Him, as He told us in Luke 22:19, “Do this in remembrance of me.” May the Lord’s Supper help us remember the gospel with our senses.
As we taste the bread, let us remember that as tangible as the bread is in our mouths, so is the indisputable fact that Jesus became flesh and sacrificed His body for you and me so that we may have eternal life.
And as we taste the fruit of the vine, let that sweetness of the grape juice remind us of the sweetness of our sins being forgiven because of Jesus’ blood poured out on the cross for you and for me.
This act of remembering is not just a simple mental exercise. It changes us and shapes us, moving us away from self-centeredness to a much greater narrative—a life filled with thanksgiving for what Christ has done for each one of us. Think about it: Jesus purchased us through His death on the cross. I love the word that is sometimes used for the Lord’s Supper, “Eucharist.” Eucharist comes from the Greek word, which means “thanksgiving.”
As we partake of this meal this Sabbath, may we do it with thankful hearts for what Christ did for us on the cross.
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