Setting the Table for Communion

Please take time to read our Scripture focus for this series, Luke 24:13-34.

“As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him. He asked them, ‘What are you discussing together as you walk along?’ They stood still, their faces downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, ‘Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened there in these day?’ ‘What things?’ he asked. ‘About Jesus of Nazareth,’ they replied.” (Luke 24:15-19).

A well-spent hour.

When was last time you spent one? How did it walk? How did it talk? What were the particulars and who was involved?

Everyday we are given twenty-four hours to spend. At least one of them should spend extraordinary—in the sowing of something worthy. In the seeding of humanity’s soil toward a good and sacred end.

Everyday, twenty-four hours. Every week, 168 opportunities to plant for God’s greater gain. And so I ask you again, when was the last time you invested wisely?

Not long ago, I lived a well-spent hour. It was with one of you, on the phone during a long drive home from a doctor’s visit. I’d been meaning to call for some time but hesitated for various reasons. Good reasons, but not great ones. So instead of companioning alongside my music for the seventy miles ahead, I decided to make the call. I’m so glad that I did. The hour flew by with the flurry of our many words.

Words about life. Words about dreams. Words about pain. Words about hope, and most importantly…

Words about Jesus and prayers spoken accordingly. A worthy boast shared between two hearts who are intricately connected by the cord of Calvary’s reach. It wasn’t just a great hour, my friends. It was a lavish investment of sacred proportion. A life-shaping, extraordinary segment of chronicled time. Not because it held a great epiphany for either one of us, but simply because our Jesus was lifted up in our few moments of conversation. And therein lies a seeded truth for all of time…past, present, and future.

Every occasion that boasts the name of Jesus is an occasion marked forever as sacred. When God is the topic of conversation…when his name takes the stage of our hearts…his presence is sure to follow—to arrive and to mediate his majesty within our midst.

He did meet with us in that hour, even as he did with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus almost 2000 years ago as they walked their questions and talked their faith. Jesus could have bypassed this moment…could have taken another road in that particular hour. After all, it was a big day for him. A resurrection day. A day of making good on a promise that was sown before the very foundation of the world. But rather than taking to the immediate applause of the stage, Jesus took to the road. Why?

Because where two or three are gathered in his name…his promise is to be among us (Matthew 16:20).

Indeed, they were gathered in his name. Not fully understanding all that had happened. Not fully connecting the dots between the stirrings and the wonderings and the speculation of things to come. Still and yet, they talked. They didn’t dismiss their heart’s pause. They put voice to their thoughts, and in doing so, they entreated the heart of their Savior.

This is a teaching that certainly warrants our attention this day as we continue to set our tables for communion with the Father.

If deep communion with Jesus is to be tasted, then boasting in his name is a certain invitation that will always draw his sacred participation.

When was the last time that you invested accordingly?

We are a people of many words, unafraid to put voice to our lofty ideals and our superior thinking and our emotions that almost always rally to the stage, regardless of their intent. We litter our conversations with talk about…

Marriage.
Children.
The lack of either.
Television shows.
Trends.
People…both of the normal and perceived strange variety.
Headlines.
Diets.
Exercise.
Habits.
Politics.
Music.
Food.
World views.
Religions.
Concerns.
Frustrations.
Joys.
Hurts.
_____________________,

All potentially worthy topics for discussion. Potentially. But if we were to carefully examine our words with the scrutiny of an unseen focus—a sacred gaze into the eternal value of our language—how much of it would seed lasting and toward God’s good and perfect end?

I’m not after a legalistic approach to “doing life” with Jesus. I’m not after a cloistered existence that lives in isolation, apart from others so as to keep a constant focus on God. A monastic lifestyle is not my preference. But what I am after, is more meaningful participation in the life that I’ve been given.

More purposeful attention toward the “stuff” that matters. More conversations that seed toward the future. More communion with the Father that breathes eternal and toward my good and perfect end.

Well spent hours. Well spent weeks. Well spent years. A well spent life. I can live it alone with Jesus, but it won’t spend as well as when I live it alongside of you…

Doing life together with Jesus. Boasting in his name and sharing in his communion as we walk our Emmaus road to the table of grace.

Thank you, each one, for taking the time to walk this journey with me. Some of us have been “doing life” together for the last 100 posts. Today marks the occasion, and the seeds of friendship that have been sown along the way have been etched with the favor of heaven’s breath and with the communion of a Father who sees us as we walk and who worships with us as we talk–

about Him. About our soon and coming forever, when the seeds of our now will bloom lasting and beautiful and for our good and perfected end. It is my privilege to share life with you, and to pray on your behalf…

Grant us, Father, the gift of your presence as we walk this journey. As we talk of your fame and as we boast in your gracious grace that has been lavished upon us because of your limitless love. Make us ever mindful of your walk among us, and let our words be seasoned with conversations that level from such an understanding. Let them speak with eternal focus and let them breathe with the everlasting strength and power of your witness. It is my joy to “do life” with the saints here in blogland. Use my words for your glory and for their gain, for as long as I am allowed this forum. You are the only boast worthy of my words. Humbly and with reverence, I submit my pen for the journey. Amen.

Copyright © September 2008 – Elaine Olsen. All rights reserved.

~elaine

As a way of celebrating this 100th post, I will be giving away Chris Tomlin’s new CD (oh my… have you heard it?) entitled “Hello Love.” Just leave a comment, and I will select a winner prior to my next post. If you want to hear one of the songs, “I Will Rise,” click on the screen below. I love doing life with you! Shalom.

Today I begin a series of posts based on Luke 24:13-34, the “Road to Emmaus”. The goal of these writings is to ponder Christ’s presence in the midst of a difficult pilgrimage and the eventual table of communion that was shared between Jesus and two of his followers. Perhaps somewhere in our pondering, we will glean some understanding as to how we, too, can taste communion with our Savior in similar measure. As I will with each post, I ask you take some time and read this portion of Scripture aloud, if you can. Feel free to leave comments along the way. May God bless the reading of his Word as only he can.

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“Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem.” (Luke 24:13).

I’m a bath girl. Always have been. I love the warmth of the water and the promise of soothing seclusion contained within its wet. Today is no different. In fact, perhaps more than any other day in my recent history, I need a bath—a gentle cleansing for the ache I carry within my soul. And while a bath may only salve at the temporal level, it is place of contemplation—of going deeper with God in order to receive an eternal communion that always salves lasting.

An Emmaus walk. Emmaus. A destination meaning “hot baths.”[i]

We’re headed there today and in the days to come. It is journey worth making because of what awaits us on the other side of our stepped obedience—a communion that pulses with the heat of a burning heart and with the stretching of the mind that receives the truth of Scripture’s reveal.

Jesus invites us to the table of his lavish grace each and every day. Our tendency is to pass; not because our desire isn’t present, but simply because our wills remain fixed on the immediate. The quick and easy. The five minute packaging of glory crammed into three because three is all we can afford.

Much to do. Deadlines to meet. Frazzled and furiously confined to a schedule that allows for little reflection beyond our choice of beverage at the local drive thru. We bustle about, burdened with our big agendas, and baths, quite frankly, don’t fit into our busy. Showers, perhaps, but the deep cleansing of a heated wet will have to wait for another day. For an unhurried season that allows for such a luxury.

Problem is…that day never seems to arrive. And therein lies our first point of reflection as we begin to set our tables for a sacred communion with Christ.

If deep communion with Jesus is to be tasted, then a deliberate walk to the table must be made.

We know very little about these two who were walking to Emmaus that day. We know that they were seekers of the Messiah and that one was named Cleopas. We know that they were privy to the teachings of Jesus, to the facts surrounding his death and to the discrepancies surrounding his resurrection. Perhaps they were only visitors to Jerusalem for the Passover Feast. Perhaps Emmaus was their home. But for all of the known things and the speculations therein, we do know this one thing to be true.

They were walking forward. Not backwards. Not cloistered in an upper room or locked in fear behind a closed door. No amount of weeping and sadness of heart would keep them stymied and stuck in Jerusalem. Their feet pointed toward Emmaus. They pilgrimed a deliberate journey with an unnamed purpose in mind. They couldn’t have known Who awaited them as they walked or the table that had been set on their behalf. They simply did the one thing that they knew to do.

They walked.

And so must we if we are to join our Father at his table of amazing grace and sacred communion.

Today walks differently for all of us. Some of us fully grasp the obedience of a forward walk and are enjoying the bounty of heaven’s bread and wine. Some us remain stuck behind closed doors, longing for a tabled communion but lacking the cooperation of our feet. Some of us are on the road…halfway between our fear and God’s full. Sadly, some of us still linger at the tomb…hoping for a resurrection but still waiting for truth to appear.

Truth has appeared and did appear to his followers that day, but not before they moved beyond the grave. Perhaps this is why Jesus chose to reveal himself to them before revealing himself to those locked behind a closed door. Jesus is faithful to reveal himself, especially to those who are deliberately seeking his presence.

Faith walks forward, my friends. Even a little faith. Even if questions remain and hearts tear with confusion. Faith moves toward the table of grace.

I want a burning heart and a deeper understanding of all things eternal. I need it today and in the days that calendar beyond this one. I want to sit at the table with Jesus and to partake of his bread. I want to bathe in the heated, cleansing waters of Calvary’s stream because the waters of this world cleanse at the surface, and I am in need of a deep cleaning. I think that your desire levels the same.

Sacred communion with Christ will never happen by accident. It happens through deliberate intention and through a faith that isn’t afraid to walk the unknowns of an Emmaus road because faith believes that a table awaits—a table set by God on our behalf. For our good gain. For his good purposes, and for heaven’s great and final glory.

Faith walks, and I am so thankful to be walking it with my Father and with you this day. Thus I pray…

Keep us to the road, Lord. To your Emmaus road that leads us to springs eternal and to baths that cleanse with the hot and purifying waters of your love. Let us not shrink back in our fear or in our busy, but rather give us the strength and the good sense to walk forward to the table set on our behalf. Let our hearts burn with the blessing from our sacred obedience and open up our minds to understand the truth of who you are. Humbly and with confidence, we fix our eyes toward Emmaus. Toward You. Toward home. Amen.

[i] Holman Bible Dictionary, “Emmaus” (Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 1991), 417.

~elaine

Category Archives: Setting the Table for Communion

Setting the Table for Communion (part two): A Worthy Boast

Setting the Table for Communion (part one): A Worthy Walk