[picapp align=”center” wrap=”false” link=”term=fireworks&iid=7915505″ src=”0/9/f/b/Spring_Festival_Celebration_5c7d.jpg?adImageId=11964558&imageId=7915505″ width=”380″ height=”253″ /]If the opportunity fell to you to make the Fourth of July a more intensely celebrated holiday, what would you do?  Would you order in bigger fireworks?  Would you make it mandatory that every city hosted a massive free BBQ? Would you hand out red, white and blue facepaint?  How would you make the national celebration of freedom more meaningful?

This is the day the Church has set aside for generations for the remembrance of Jesus’ last meal with his disciples.  The manner in which the gathering of the saints is conducted changes from generation to generation, but the main point remains.

Jesus celebrated a “Fourth of July” kind of meal with his disciples, just a few hours before his death.  It was a meal that recalled the slavery of the people who were descendents of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  It recalled the hopelessness of their estate and their powerlessness.  These people were a related people but were not a nation.

But God called them out.  He gave them a meal of promise, a “pre-celebration” of what only God could do. God mandated the meal be observed perpetually by the generations to come as a remembrance of their salvation and a declaration that the God of Israel reigns.  It was THE meal of meals and Jesus intensified it.

Most Christians are aware of the great promise of deliverance in the words, “This is my body…this is my blood.”  Few, however, remember how Jesus humbled himself and washed his disciples feet.  Even fewer recall Jesus’ “new command” given the same night he was to be betrayed.

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. John 13.3, NASB

It doesn’t get any more intense that this.  What a command, that Jesus’ followers are to love each other with the same kind of love that went to the cross, entered the grave and calls others to follow into eternity.  It is extreme, it is intense.  It is impossible and Jesus knew it, that is why he promised his own Spirit to indwell those who would seek to obey him.  To love others with Jesus’ kind of love, requires Jesus’ kind of power.

I wonder what the disciples who shared that meal with Jesus were thinking.  To take a ancient and revered national holiday and transform it into a personal challenge must have been overwhelming.  It is two thousand years later and I still feel the sting of the command.

How about you?