The world is full of losers, and there is no one who is not a loser. And yet, left to our own devices, we always construct religious systems based on work, striving, earning, winning. Perpetual losers, bred to the bone losers, we insist on devising and pursuing the calculus of success and winning.
Jesus is the only person who ever lived who was not a loser. And what was His calculus? To do the will of the Father, which was to go to the cross, suffer there, bleed and die, and to have His cooling body laid in a cold tomb. He was crucified, died, and was buried, as we confess every week. His resurrection from the dead was God’s vindication of Him, God’s justification of Jesus in the Spirit. God says, in this great event, that His ways are not our ways.
In this meal, we are summoned to remember what Jesus did. But do not content yourself with simply remembering the fact of it. We must remember here (for in remembering, we are declaring) that Jesus the winner died for losers. In doing what He did the way He did it, He declared forever that the first will be last, and the last first. Whoever wants to be great in the kingdom must become the servant of all.
But we have real problems in this area, for as soon as we are told we must become the servant of all, we treat this as nothing more than the requirement to change the goals halfway through the football game. But striving to stay alive on your own terms and death and resurrection are quite different, and not at all like a mere shift of direction, focus, or emphasis.
Since we have such trouble with this, what are we to do? The answer is set before you, on this Table. You cannot die and be raised all by yourself. You must partake, in evangelical faith, in the death and resurrection of Another. The word is declared, the elements are hearing, we will partake in a moment. And the thing that makes it efficacious for blessing is simple, God-given faith.