The Way of The Cross: Wednesday: Community – Family Devotions for Holy Week, 2020
Though we are physically dispersed as we enter this most Holy Week, Saint Matthew’s parish can remain in connection with each other by engaging in daily prayer and contemplation
I want to offer us a series of daily meditations and hymns that support this blessed connection, and help us walk The Way of The Cross with Christ this week.
We will pray each day on one of three themes that will encompass our Maundy Thursday observance: Servanthood, Community, and Abandonment.
Today we will reflect on Community.
~ Peter+
The Rev. Dr. Peter B. Stube, Interim Rector
Ponder these questions at the end of each day’s reading and hymn.
In light of what I have just heard/read:
1. How can I love God today? (in a small way)
2. How can I love my neighbor today? (person you live with, person who thinks differently than you, etc.)
3. How can I love myself today?
Wednesday: Community
Jesus ate the Passover meal with his disciples. They remembered together God’s miraculous freeing of the people of Israel from the Pharaoh and Egypt, how he set them free from their bondage and led them through the Red Sea on dry land and then destroyed the army of Egypt in the Red Sea.
After supper Jesus set fresh baked bread and new wine before his disciples and blessed the bread and then the wine. He gave it to them introducing a New Covenant in His Body and Blood. As the people of Israel were baptized in the waters of the Red Sea to be the people of God, so they and we are baptized in the water of Baptism to be a new people of God drawn from all nations and people. We become Christ’s Body and Blood to the world, serving the perfect will of God together so that people may hear of God’s love for them. We will not condemn them because Jesus did not, but we will affirm that through Him they may be saved (safe).
Our work is the same as Jesus’. He entrusted it to us. This work can be difficult. And so Jesus created community of faith in which to study the things of God, and encourage and exhort each other to greater faith. Here we pray for each other, honor each other, love each other with Christ’s love. We allow God to take our gifts, skills and passions we have to offer.
Through the community of faith, the Holy Spirit teaches us how to bring salvation and understanding and redemptive creation to the places where God’s redemption is needed; politics, law, medicine, education, and the diverse peoples of the earth. All of this is called into being on Maundy Thursday as Jesus gives his body and blood so that we may become His Body and Blood to our neighbors, enemies, those of other faith traditions, and all the people of the earth whom God has made “of one blood’.
Though for this time of pandemic, we can not take communion together because we are dispersed, there will come a time when this winter of pandemic is over, and we shall again be sustained by the holy food and drink. And we shall gather again for Communion and community.
Listen to “I come with joy to meet my Lord” and hear one man’s reflection on the incredible body of Christ of which we are a part.
I Come with joy to meet my Lord
1. I come with joy to meet my Lord, Forgiven, loved and free,
In awe and wonder to recall His life laid down for me.
2. I come with Christians far and near to find, as all are fed, our true
community of love in Christ’s communion bread.
3. As Christ breaks bread for us to share Each proud division ends.
That love that made us makes us one, and strangers now are friends.
4. And thus, with joy we meet our Lord. His presence always near,
Is in such friendship better known: We see and praise Him here.
5. Together met, together bound, We’ll go our diff’rent ways,
And as His people in the world, We’ll live and speak His praise.