Lamb of God  (artist unknown, public domain, Wikimedia Commons)

Approx. read time: 2:15 min.

From my bus window I take in a sweeping view of the verdant Willamette Valley—wheat fields, vineyards, the sheep—as I travel to be with family. I have nearly two hours to do nothing but be present to this freedom of unstructured time.

So I find myself recalling the words of Jesus on the night of his arrest, while he is at table in Passover celebration with his closest companions.

“Take, eat,” he says in a low and urgent whisper. “This is my body, given for you.”

And taking the cup, he says: “Take, drink: This is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant, shed for you.”

I hear the urgency in his voice. He knows his card’s been pulled. He knows the snare is closing in tight. And what does he do?

He doesn’t summon an army. He doesn’t ask his band to hide him in a hay cart and get him out of town.

He defies the self-anointed power of Caesar, and hands over the totality of his being, his presence, in the earthy, subversive forms of bread, and wine. So common you’d never think that Empire was being circumvented by the emerging Commonwealth of GOD.

Jesus speaks words that Caesar can never say, and acts in utterly nonviolent ways that Caesar could never imagine.

Jesus doesn’t absorb himself in righteous battle against the powers that be. He simply says:

Take, eat; take, drink. Let me be embedded in your flesh. Let me be the blood that flows in your veins. I am with you. I am in you. I will be gone, yet I will remain, hidden, in your every thought, word, action. You won’t see me. But hear what I am saying: I am with you.

Caesar can’t say any of that. Caesar has to bark orders so that things will happen, violent enough to make his point: I am Lord. I am Son of God—titles he’s bestowed upon himself. Power resides in me, he insists. But self-anointed potentates have no power, not really.

Why? Because they cannot do the truly beautiful and lasting things that reveal GOD-with-us.

What are your thoughts in this season of deep remembering? I’d love to hear from you.