Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”
NL Daily Devotion for Thursday, April 17, 2025
by Rev. Dr. Miles Hopgood, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: In Jesus, God gives Godself for us, freeing us to give ourselves for one another.
On this night, you will preach on perhaps the most heard words of scripture, depending on how frequently your community celebrates Holy Communion. In this lies the struggle of the preacher. Words we hear with immense frequency flow easily in one ear and out the other. How will you get your people to stop and really listen to what Jesus is saying?
One place to start is with the name we give this meal: The Last Supper. Our culture places a great emphasis on ‘lasts.’ We remember vividly our last words or moments with someone we love. Worried about whether our loved one will come home, we think of our last moments and cry, “I can’t believe that was the last thing I said to him!” We plan the dispersal of our estates as a “last will and testament.”
That language is a direct reference to what happens at the Last Supper. It is, quite literally, Jesus’s last will and testament, a final moment with his disciples when he gives his final and complete testimony to what is the will of his heart. The translation here and in our liturgies of the Eucharist speaks of the cup as a “covenant”. But an equally valid—and, I would argue, more theologically sound—translation is “testament”. What Jesus does here at the table is a testifying to his disciples why he is about to go through all that is to come and what it means to them.
“But I am among you as one who serves.” Here is the heart of Jesus’s life with us, culminating in his death. He has come to be among us as one who serves. He does this by giving himself for us. The for us is the most important utterance in this, and if you get your people to hear just two words, let them be these. That God is God, by which I mean that God exists, is a very uninteresting thing in and of itself. But that God is God for us—this is everything. We have a God who acts for us, who dies for us, who rises for us.
A God who exists is slim pickings. Like a ham well past its expiration date, we wonder if it will do us good or harm. But a God who at the last is for us is a feast on which we will dine forever and for which we will never lose our taste. Welcome your people into the abundance of a God who in Jesus gives us this testimony with his very life.
