Pastor Albert Tate led us into week two of our series, What if it’s True? today. First, he read from 1 Corinthians 11:17-26. Then he shared a devastating story from a Walmart on Long Island during Black Friday. The crowd had waited outside all day and night for the doors to open, and when an employee opened the doors, they rushed the store and the employee was trampled. As the other employees tried to resuscitate him and realized he had passed, they announced over the loudspeaker, “Someone has died!” The response of the shoppers was, “But I waited all night for my TV, I am not leaving without it.” 

Pastor Albert said, in this passage of Scripture, Paul is saying, “someone has died! Why are you still doing life as you always have?”

The crisis in Corinth was that the people were coming around the Lord’s table to fulfill their own needs. Those that didn’t work all day would eat and drink in such excess and therefore take everything for themselves and leave nothing for those who came in later. Paul is saying your gatherings are doing more harm than good. I’d rather you not meet at all. You have forgotten that the Lord’s table is an announcement: Someone has died! That means we should be living transformed lives. 

The people of God had become distracted and forgotten the purpose of the table. It was on the night of Jesus’s betrayal that he established the goal of the table. 

We then watched this video of Pastor Dave Dummit explaining the Upper Room where the table, as we know it, was established. Pastor Dave shared that with the feet washing in that scene, Jesus was demonstrating that a new kingdom was at hand, one in which the King came to serve, not be served, one in which the King deeply loves His people. 

In this upper room, they were having the Sedar meal, the same meal the Jewish people had been having for hundreds of years in remembrance of God delivering them from Egypt. They would have been reciting the same Scriptures and responses as it was always done the same way. This time though, Jesus broke from the script and He took the bread and showed how it represented him. He took the cup, the cup of redemption, and He said this is the cup of the new covenant. My blood poured out for you. Whenever you drink this, remember me. The disciples could not have known what that meant for the future, but it was a huge deal. This was the moment in which He began his march to the cross. 

Pastor Albert then said, “Remember me. Two powerful words. Soon Judas would betray him. Peter would deny him. But neither one would distract him.” 

Jesus is saying remember me repeatedly because we have a tendency to forget what the table is all about. Jesus didn’t allow the things of man or the world to distract him from the purposes of God’s Kingdom and He’s calling us to do the same thing–don’t miss the main thing. 

Pastor Albert said, “to the one who is distracted from betrayal or something else, I want to call you back to remember the main thing. The life of Jesus.”

We see this theme, remember me, throughout the journey to the cross. The thief on the cross says, remember me. Jesus is telling us to “remember me.” Pastor Albert continued, Jesus says re-member. Put my members back together again. Put me back together again. As we come to the communion table, he is putting us back together again. He putting it all together again.

It is a time to not be distracted by all the things of the world, but to remember that God longs to put things all back together. When you remember me, I will remember you. Jesus says, at the table, I will remember you. 

Pastor Albert then asked, “what qualifies you to sit at this table?” The answer is Jesus. 

He concluded, Jesus was betrayed but not distracted. Remember Jesus. Someone has died. But because of Jesus’s death, we now live in a new way.