Preparing the congregation for the Seventh Day Adventist Lord's Supper

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

15 October 2010

This Friday night is a great time for us to be together. Great because it is the Sabbath but also great because tomorrow will be a high Sabbath. All of us will gather tomorrow to eat the Lord's Supper together. Tonight is the night we have to prepare for that event. Many are going to participate in preparation tomorrow. Many will run to find this or that and carry this or that but in our running, in our overlooking of objects to be expected for the meal, let us not overlook our relationship with Him. Tomorrow there will be no errors because when it is the Lord's Supper there are no errors. If you forgot something or does not do something correctly, there is no error since all can wait. Why? Because the Lord is willing to wait. It is His meal and that is His way. We are the guests not Him. He is the host. And so it was that He was the Host that Thursday night before His death.

All of us this week were glued to the TV news watching the rescue in Chile of those miners trapped 700 meters below. One man said that he will go. One man said that he will be the rescue man number one. He will risk his life, if that is what it takes, but he will go. We all watched him in anticipation and full of tension and expectation and when he broke through, we all shouted for joy. He made it. And when that first person came out, it was joy all over again.

We are all trapped down here far away from Heaven. Jesus said that He will go and rescue us. He came down that tunnel with His body as the capsule and became incarnated for us. When He was born all the angels who were watching sang for joy.

When we do the footwashing and Lord Supper tomorrow it will be in remembering the coming down of the Son of Man for our salvation.

We are going to do footwashing before the Lord's Supper because that is what Jesus did before the meal. And look at it, if Jesus came all the way from heaven for us, a distance that none of us can measure, surely we can afford to bend the knee half a meter!

So it was in John chapter 13 where it is all recorded for us, that Jesus took a basin and a towel and said that He is going to wash their feet. Peter was the first one to object. "You will not wash my feet at all". In Peter's mind it is the student who should wash the feet of the teacher not the teacher of the student.

But Jesus told him that He has to wash his feet otherwise he cannot have part in Jesus. The reason is simple. Jesus is telling Peter, just as no-one is going to stop Him from carrying out His divine plan of salvation for the whole world, just as much no-one can stop Him from demonstrating and stop us from washing each other's feet as He has showed us to do in remembrance of this unselfish voluntary act of salvation on our behalf. Because the act of footwashing is so directly linked to the stooping of divinity down into humanity, the incarnation process, the kenosis process of emptying Himself for us, therefore we cannot sidestep it in our day and neither could Peter when Jesus wanted to wash his feet.

Peter still did not get it fully since he typically overreacted the other way around. "Then if you want to wash me, wash my whole body. Shampoo my hair, brush my teeth, shave my beard, my shoulders, arms, face, ears, feet, legs, my whole body in and out. I want to be totally Yours so totally wash me".

But Jesus said to Peter that it is not necessary to wash the whole body. Just the feet since Peter and the other disciples were baptized by John the Baptist in thorough immersion in the Jordan river. Like Romans 6 explains, they went down in the grave with Christ, died the old man and came up from the water a new man. The external act of rebirth demonstrated in the baptism event is coinciding and even preceded by the inward transformation and conversion by the Holy Spirit. When a sinner cry "Holy to God" the Holy Spirit has already found a sofa in his heart.

We find the Holy Spirit already working in the Ethiopian eunuch's heart in Acts 8 because he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And it was the Spirit who said to Philip to climb into the chariot with him (verse 29) and when Philip explained to him the Word of God and navigation help him to understand, the Spirit convicted the eunuch's heart to say he believes in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, thus the divinity of the human Jesus. Then Philip stopped the chariot and baptized him there right at that moment and spot. So when a person is baptized, the transformed new man, with all his defective history as baggage in his/her memory, with all his defective DNA make-up from his ancestors, is a new potential for God, treasured by Him so much that he is in need only of footwashing in future.

And tomorrow, I want to remember the Great Rescuer to this dark planet. I want to step down half a meter in remembrance of His stepping down from heaven in the capsule of His body.

We are also told in the report of that Thursday night, that the disciples were arguing as to who is the greatest. Peter was saying to James that since he is an elder and James but just a deacon that he should have preference in heaven and so did all of them. For Christ the hour was very important and time was running out. The next day He was to die at 3 o' clock. There is not much time to waste on silly problems and partisan interests when Chilean miners are waiting down there to be rescued and similar to Christ no time to waste when this dark planet is in need of been rescued.

Tomorrow we all will hold the bread and the wine in our hands, remembering His body and His blood that was shed on our behalf.

Most of us will first die and then be physically rescued later to live eternally whereas the 33 miners this week did not die but was rescued only to die again and for some, never to live eternally. Our Rescuer came the first time to die in our stead and after He prepared the hearts of the whole of heaven in our favor in the Heavenly Sanctuary, He will come again and take us to join Him eternally.

And so we are to prepare for tomorrow, to eat the unleavened bread and the grapejuice provided as symbols, in a manner that is worthy, says Paul. What does it mean to be worthy for the meal?

In Seventh Day Adventism, it is a common habit to practice open communion. It means that anyone, from any church, who profess to believe in Jesus Christ, can participate in the Lord's Supper. No one can pronounce worthiness to another. It is an individual choice. The husband cannot decide for the wife, nor the father for the son. Each has to prepare his heart this night by himself. If there are those who says, "I am not worthy", tonight is the night to prepare. Look into your heart and search if there is anything that needs to be placed before the Lord. The New Testament tells us that if someone falls, do not judge him/her but go and help him/her. That is the Christ way and the Christ example. So worthiness can be ascertained only by the individual himself or herself. Worthiness is Christ embrazing the sinner. Christ cannot overlook a repentant sinner. It is against His nature to do so. Surrendering oneself to Christ unconditionally is a decision that lays the whole of Heaven in front of us and available for us on our behalf. In a split second. It is this unique part of God's character that Jonah could not understand in Jonah 3:10 and 4:1. He could not understand how God could accept a quick repentance since in his own theology he expected long years of good and pious deeds to be presented before acceptance. But the Lord is gracious and slow to anger and accepts instantaneous decisions towards Him.

Dear God

I do not know why You laughed that night while You were instituting the Lord's Supper. A joy for the victory You could see already? But we will rejoice with you tomorrow during the Lord's Supper for giving Your life in exchange to save ours.

Amen