Christian Living

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Clay Cup
©

by

Stephen A. Peterson


Each morning before I go to work or relax on a weekend, I drink herbal tea from an Indiana University coffee mug my father gave me to celebrate the 1987 National Championship of the Indiana University Men’s Basketball Team. It is an ordinary cup that anyone may purchase. This simple clay mug was produced en masse by a company sanctioned by the University. This now seventeen year old cup has a chip on its handle and scratches on its bottom but I will never give it up.

Today, I have much nicer cups in our China cabinet. Yet this seventeen year old Indiana University mug is the one I reach for. I drink my tea and occasionally other beverages and recall some of the best years of my life that are associated with that cup—the house where I raised my family, the many birthday celebrations of my family, my father’s life that ended in May, 1999, my extended families both in the United States and in the Republic of the Philippines. It is a living memorial of the living marital covenant I still keep with my wife of now more than thirty years.

By the same token, Jesus the Christ, Savior offered His twelve Apostles at their final Passover meal with Him present His life from what many might call a cheap, inexpensive clay cup given for them to drink His Blood. The potter of all that is gave on that first Holy Thursday the greatest gift the world has ever known—Himself. The cup and even the Passover meal itself was a simple meal of flight from enslavement to freedom dating back roughly 1800 years before to the Apostles until Jesus informed them that one of them would betray Him before the night was over.

Confusion followed with everyone pledging their loyalty except Judas who quickly slipped away into the darkness of the day to trade His Lord off for money. In the sudden silence of the room, Jesus filled His clay cup with wine, blessed it then gave the cup to His frightened Apostles, as they looked into His solemn face and listened to His chilling words, “This is My Blood! Drink!” followed by words that He was leaving them. They must have thought, “Why? What is going on? Don’t you like us anymore? Did we do something wrong?”

24 hours later, after He had breathed His last, was buried and they hidden away in the upper room did they remember His words: “This cup is the new covenant in My Blood which is poured out for you so that sins may be forgiven.”

Without a doubt, they understood all that took place the day before but questioned the necessity of it all.

That ordinary clay cup held an extraordinary promised made clear by His death. The wine consecrated that day was His Blood and the means by which God guaranteed their salvation and that of the entire world for all time for those who believe. From that day to the present through the Apostles we remember that clay cup—His Blood—God’s reconciliation with humankind—the healing—God’s unconditional love for the meek, the weak, the outcast, the poor, the rich, children, women and men are there!! For those who believe the promise that He will be in Heaven when the believer passes over from their earthly life to their eternal life of complete joy and confusion and fear for the unbeliever.

For you, Christian, as you approach Christ's table to receive the communion cup remember that ordinary cup Christ lifted up on your behalf. And in the spirit of unconditional love, hope, joy drink the Blood of Christ and know Christ’s healing powers and forgiveness of sins. That what you are doing is a serious matter, a statement of God’s unconditional love—a living covenant that we keep with Him each time we approach His table.

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