Dear Christian friends:

We have asked many hard, important questions during these past Wednesdays of Lent: Why Aren't We Better Disciples? Why Does Our Witness Fail? Why Do our Families Crumble? And others. If we would remember Jesus' work always we would not have all these problems and failures in following Jesus.

We easily and quickly forget Jesus' work. Why? Jesus knew this. That's why He established a way to help us remember. The Lord's Supper. Tonight we look back 2,000 years and honor Him for this.

We don't want to remember Jesus' work because it shames us. Some of Jesus' work does not shame us and we like to remember that part. How He kindly helped the needy and sick. We like a picture of Jesus holding a lamb in His arms and other nice pictures of Jesus we hang on our walls. But we don't like to see pictures of Jesus' head crowned with thorns or His suffering and dying on the cross. Why? Jesus' suffering and dying reminds us of our sins and rebellion against God, our faults and failures to be what He intended us to be. It is hard for us to accept that truth that God's Son died for me, a rebel against God.

God made man like Himself good and righteous, but he gave up God's way and went his own way of sin, selfishness and wickedness. The suffering and death of Jesus is God's way of bringing us back to Him: "While we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly." (Romans 5:6) So as we remember Jesus' work, we may say, "Yes, He died for some very bad people, but surely not for me. Even, if I sin a little I am not that bad."

Or worse, we may think of Jesus as an old and boring story that has no important meaning anymore, but we suffer it because that is our custom and pastor says we must preach it and hear it. We don't want to remember Jesus' work because it doesn't flatter us.

So tonight we intend to overcome this shrinking from the work of Jesus. We intend to confess honestly that we need His mercy, because we always want to live without Him. We shall not be afraid to confess that we are terrible sinners, always rebelling against His will and going our own selfish way. And we shall confess that only God Himself could save us from self-destruction. This He has done in Jesus Christ our Lord, in His pain and death.

Jesus says, "Take, eat, this is My body given for you. Take, drink, this is My blood shed for you. This do in remembering Me." These words are written four times in the Bible and St. Paul emphasises that we should remember. He had a church group that often had the Lord's Supper without remembering Jesus' work and their great need. They went to the Lord's Supper without thinking of their need and how Jesus met their need. They went to show off their rich and beautiful clothes and because of church rules and custom.

So when we eat and drink like that, without remembering our need and how Jesus helps us in our need, we are mocking God, and receive no blessing. As we eat and drink let us think and remember what is happening here: the body and blood of our Lord, given for the remission of our sins. Its for us because we need it, now tonight, this minute, to unite us again with our heavenly Father. It is for giving us a new start, pulling us back into the family of God.

On the night Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper He told His disciples much about the work they should do after He ascended into heaven. In our text He tells them, "I have given you an example that you should do to others what I have done for you." He had washed the feet of His disciples to show them how they should love and serve one another, be humble and kind and forgive.

This is very hard work. It means giving ourself, even our life, to help another person to save him from destruction and eternal death. It means doing many things we don't want to do and never could do except God gave us the power. We all want the name Christian and we want to be members of His church but we don't want the pain and trouble connected with that.

But if we don't want the pain and the trouble then we also don't want the real value of being a disciple. The value of following Jesus is that we experience how wonderfully God gives us the power to bear the pain. The value of following Jesus and doing His work is to have God and His Son and His Spirit with us, sustaining us as we sacrifice ourself for the world in which we live.

At the first Lord's Supper the disciples received the body and blood of the Lord from Jesus' own hand. And still they did not understand what He intended to do and what He wanted them to do. He told them He must die for them, but they did not appreciate that. They only worried about His leaving them and argued about who was the greatest and worried about getting hurt by Jesus' enemies.

The Lord's Supper gives power for service. At the first Lord's Supper they had trouble remembering just as we do today therefore let us think hard tonight and try to understand what is happening or should be happening when we eat and drink the Lord's body and blood. We do not come here to His table just to show that we are church members, or because that's a church rule or custom.

But what is happening? God is saying to you and me: "Look here is what My Son the Christ has done for you. He offered up His body and blood on the cross. He did it for you, so that you could know and feel His love again and then love and worry about your brothers and sisters who come here to eat and drink with you." He is saying to you: "See what great sacrifice I have made for you, even to die for you, now you go and love others like that.

Don't anymore be selfish and stingy but give yourself, risk yourself to help anyone who is in trouble or need: the alcoholic, the drug addict, the mentally disturbed and all without Christ's comfort and hope.

If we go to the Lord's Supper thinking of these things we will receive power to remember and do His work.

Amen