Have you ever received a really remarkable, overwhelming gift from someone? How did you feel? I can tell you, I’ve received some pretty amazing gifts throughout my lifetime: some wildly expensive, some incredibly time consuming, some extremely well thought out and executed, and some so practical that I couldn’t understand how I’d gone through life without them! What do you do when you receive those gifts? I have always been a nervous gift-getter, personally. I awkwardly fumble around with the wrapping (if it’s wrapped), and then when I do open it, I’m usually speechless—especially if the gift is of a certain magnitude.
Yesterday morning as I sat in the quiet auditorium of the East Hill congregation, I pondered a gift. Then, I thought about gifts I’d received from others and how I reacted to those. Often I have been speechless, emotional, and exceptionally grateful. I have felt undeserving, thankful, and moved by the act of generosity. Yet as I sat, quietly meditating on Jesus’ sacrifice on Calvary, I felt ashamed that I’m often more overcome with emotion over physical gifts than I am the gift of Jesus’ blood.
Romans 6:23 tells us that “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” and Ephesians 2:8 tells us, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.”
These verses tell us explicitly that Jesus dying on the cross was a gift for us. James 1:17 tells us all good and perfect gifts come from God, which only adds to the magnitude of this gift. Jesus was God’s only Begotten Son (John 1:14, 3:16), yet He gave Him to us as a gift. Not a shiny, beautiful, new gift, but a broken, scarred, beaten, scourged, nail-pierced gift; tattered and torn and bruised for us. As Jesus was lifted up on the cross, He became the greatest gift we would ever receive—the gift of eternal life.
Every Sunday, Christians are given the opportunity to reflect on this gift. How sad that we sometimes become calloused; distracted. If you were to be surprised with one of those extreme home makeovers, when they revealed the gift to you, would you stand there texting, looking up only when someone passed something to you? Would you appear to be interested in what was happening, but really be thinking about what you were going to eat for lunch? Those things sound ridiculous! Of course you wouldn’t! You’d be emotional. You’d be speechless. You’d be all-in that moment.
How are we during the Lord’s Supper? Distracted? Ungrateful? Unappreciative? As we partake of the bread and drink the fruit of the vine, we are to remember that gift. We are to think about Jesus’ sinless body hanging on a cruel cross for us. It is no wonder, then, that Paul warned in 1 Corinthians 11:27, “Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.” How terrible to sit at the foot of the cross and be distracted. How terrible to sit at the foot of the cross and be unappreciative. How terrible to sit at the foot of the cross and not be moved.
Hebrews 6:4-6 tells us, “For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame.”
Let us be careful not to become calloused to this beautiful, costly gift of God. And I get it: it’s easy. It’s easy to get into a routine. It’s easy to make the Lord’s Supper just another thing we always do. But it shouldn’t be. It can’t be. We must, every week, reflect on this precious gift, and thank our God and Father for it; humbly, reverently, and fervently.
