Feasting, Friends, and Forgiveness
Easter is such a wonderful day. It is the last holiday we will spend together as a squad, marking the beginning and ending of many things. I will miss the intimacy born out of 44 people who rejoice over the same loving God. We, as a squad, may not be untied like this again until with Him. How sweet is He. He has been teaching me those simple truths of love recently and has transformed me so much in the year between last Easter, and this one. Slowly, I’ve come to realize the intricately simple steps required of knowing Him and those around me.
Community is such a wonderful gift of God. He set up the world in such a way that you, me, and your best friend can have deep and lasting connection. All the resolutions and conflicts of life can be shared between our hearts and minds. I imagine it almost like an old Polaroid picture. The photo was taken, the people treasured have already posed, and you have all emotion accounted for through physical evidence. All it takes is a swift and steadfast whipping of your hand to bring all these unsaid realities to life. All that lies behind the eyes and turning of the mind are ever-present in the steps and glances we fashion toward our greatest friends and foes. He has graced us with connection.
Connection for Jesus during His time of ministry was the twelve men he poured His life into. The men who stood beside Him at the feeding of the five-thousand, the casting out of demons, the storms of the seas, and so much more. They saw Jesus before His accession and three more times after His ascension. The letters that we have of these men are eye-witness accounts of who Jesus is and what connection they had to Him. Specifically, I have been spending time in John and 1st and 2nd Peter. One of my favorite scenes is in chapter 13 of John. The hour has come to step away from His disciples and face what laid before Him.
“During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper.” John 13:2
During supper – This is Jesus’s last feat with His disciples. After this, He will wrap a towel around His waist and begin to wash their feet. I know I have learned something about Jesus’s love by Him choosing to eat with them before His final words and departure. While he fulfilled the work of the Father, His greatest desire, He loved His disciples. He loved them to the point of an intimate and symbolic dinner, in which, would be the last of many. *Maybe add symbolism of feasting and my heart for it.
Jesus – Jesus’s desire was to love and serve His disciples at supper, in spite of their betrayal. He perceived Judas’s heart and role in turning Him over to be crucified, a man who spent three years with Him. Yet, His hour, the hour to be cast out, beaten, whipped, spit on, stripped, and crucified, had come. It was the hour to go back to Him who had sent Him. Jesus, seeing that He had command of angelic power and belonged not to earth but with the Father, stepped into the hour.
Rose from supper – To me, this is Jesus “setting His face like flint towards to Jerusalem.” Despite His betrayel and deity, Jesus stood up at the table with the men whom he loved for three years. He would speak His last words and take His last breaths in the next few days and could see it all. I love that the finishing perspective of the verse is Jesus standing. He sat, He ate, and He rose.
I love it. Sporting a home with forty other people definitely brings its challenges but it has shaped me. When music blares at 11 p.m. and you resort to ear plugs (which work really well), I am reminded of Jesus’s example here. I am reminded that He didn’t see Peter and the disciples as the men who would betray His name and go back to their old way of life. I know He saw them cleansed and washed, like He did for them the night they feasted. He saw Himself on the cross when He thought of them. So when the dishes are dirty, the tables stained with paint, and our room smells off, Jesus taught (and teaches me) that feasting, friends, and forgiveness are from Him and for Him.
