Experience The Last Supper Where You Are | Crossroads Church

Hey, my name's Andy, and welcome to The Last Supper Experience. Now, I got a quick story for you. I wonder if I'm the only person that this has happened to. So a few months back, the family and I went to the movies to see Moana 2, and I had to get up mid-musical number to go use the restroom, and afterwards I'm wandering through the hallways, making my way back through the theater, and I open the door, and bam! For some reason, Dwayne The Rock Johnson and Chris Evans are trying to kidnap Santa Claus. Monta Nui is nowhere to be seen, and I had exactly zero idea what was going on. Now, turns out, I had walked into the wrong theater, and it was in the exact middle of a different story. Have you ever done this? Or maybe, maybe for you it's streaming, right? Maybe an inconsiderate family member watched your favorite show on your account without you knowing, and they're wrapping up season two when you were expecting to be in the middle of season one. Either way, the experience is disorienting, right? Because you don't know where you are in the story, so you're not only confused, you're robbed of, like, the weight and the power of the story. It's like starting a book in the middle. It's confusing, and we miss out on what's really important. Honestly, I think this is what's happened with Easter, where we end up missing something beautiful and important, and I bet I'm not the only one here. I think our lack of context for the larger story and jumping right into the middle of it has robbed us of the beauty and the brutality of it. It's like that, and a few too many pastel shirts and plastic eggs with candy in them has just made us numb to the most important story in our lives. Now, I know I've been missing something here, and when I randomly pick up any book, or especially the Bible, and just jump into the middle of it and read a specific verse or passage or story without understanding how it connects to everything that happened before and after it, man, I miss out.

I don't want to jump into the middle of the story. I want to understand how what I'm reading and how what I'm living and experiencing fits into the much larger and more important story of what God is doing. And really, that's what Holy Week is all about, trying to give us our bearings and context of how we're deeply connected to the story of God, where we stand in God's story, and so that we can see it for what it is and see God for who He is. Recently, someone sent me this picture called the hyperlinked Bible, and it's this visualization of how each verse and chapter in the Bible points ahead to other verses and refers back to others. Not only is it just kind of beautiful, it shows how the Bible isn't a series of random disconnected stories, but how there's one deeply connected arc throughout. You see, the Bible isn't just the stories of what God has done, it's the story of what God is still doing in ancient Israel and in my life and yours today. So this moment is for you. I might be prerecorded on a screen right now and you might be watching this alone or with family or friends, but I hope that you hear me in this. This isn't really something to watch so much as something to experience. This is designed to help you and I remember. So before we go much further, grab something to drink, something to eat, maybe wine or juice or bread or crackers, whatever it is. And with that being said, we're just going to take a minute. This is our chance to pause, to clear our heads, to do our best to set aside the stress of our day or the stuff on your to-do list and focus our mind and our hearts on God. If it's helpful, maybe just pray something like this. God, help me regather my scattered senses. Help bring to my attention the beauty of what the Easter story means to me. Now, take a deep breath and then exhale slowly. Let even your breathing be a prayer. With each inhale, consider something that's on your mind. And with each exhale, let God take it off your mind for the next few minutes.

When your head feels clear, just say something simple to God. God, would you speak to me and help me to remember your story in a fresh way right now? That's nice, right? Since we know that walking into the middle of a story can be really confusing and just generally unhelpful, and to see how deep this story goes into us, we need to take a moment We need to rewind. We need to go way back from the end all the way to near the beginning in the book of Genesis, where we are looking at the sacrifice. There's this guy named Abraham and God does something that seems wild, but it is the pre Passover and it sets the stage for everything that we're gonna be looking at and experiencing with the last supper. This is the sacrifice. God tells Abraham that he is to go up a mountain and to take his son Isaac with him. Isaac was the son of his promise. It was not just his son, not just his firstborn, not just his beloved child, but it was also representative of his entire hope, his entire future, his downline, his legacy, and a sign that God was true to his word. God asked him to take a knife to all of that, literally his hopes, his dreams, all the things that he prayed for and wanted for his life and for his children's lives. All of that was going to be gone in a flash. Take a second and consider what that would feel like. Put yourself into the story.

It sounds insane, right? And on some level, it must've sounded that way to Abraham too, but he obeyed, believing somehow that God would make a way. Abraham takes Isaac on a mountain, lays him on an altar, and just as he raises the knife, God stops him. God sees Abraham's faithfulness. God saw a father willing to sacrifice his son and his future. And instead, God provides a ram caught in a thicket, a substitute sacrifice. God was testing Abraham's faithfulness and Abraham got to see God's faithfulness too. So no matter how we feel or how long we've been waiting, we have to remember that God always, always fulfills his promises. Now hold on to that idea because this in essence is the pre Passover and it's foreshadowing something huge. But to get there, we have to fast forward again about 500 years and a bunch of pages to the Passover in the book of Exodus. Exodus 12, the people of God, they are stuck, not just in a bad season, not just having a rough year. They are stuck in slavery for 400 years. They've been beaten down. They've been trapped with no way out. And they cry out to God. They say, God, help us, get us out of here. And God, he hears them.

He sees them and he moves. There are plagues and all kinds of miraculous things going on, but God speaks and he tells them, tonight, tonight I'm going to set you free and here's what you need to do to get ready. Take a spotless and innocent lamb, kill it, take its blood and paint it over your doorframe. Then eat the meal quickly because freedom is coming fast. And that night, death swept through Egypt. Every house without the blood of the lamb, the firstborn son died, but every house covered by that blood was spared, was saved, was redeemed. This was the first Passover where God's judgment literally passed over the homes of those who believed and trusted him. Here's something to remember. That night, every home experienced death. For the Egyptians, it was the death of their firstborn, but in the Israelite homes, it was the death of an innocent lamb. And after that, Pharaoh, he couldn't take it. He couldn't hold them anymore. And they walked out of Egypt free for the first time in generations. Let that sink in. God saved and freed Israel. Where do you need God to free you? Where do you need freedom from past mistakes, from future fears, from addiction,

from just feeling the need to make everyone happy all the time or trying to make yourself happy all the time? Remember, this wasn't just about that night. God was setting up a pattern. He was showing us that something bigger was coming. He was showing us exactly what our freedom costs and exactly what our freedom would cost him. So one more time, we're gonna fast forward again in the story through 40 books, through 907 chapters all the way till we get to Jesus and the Last Supper. Luke 22, this is what happened. It's nighttime and we're in a room that might've looked something like this one. Jesus was sitting with his friends around a low table like this. Maybe they're back hurt like mine does, but they're sitting there and they're celebrating that Passover that we just came from. Jesus is there too, maybe in the middle of the table where he could talk with everyone with his. closest friends, celebrating Passover, they're remembering, remembering back to that Exodus, to that night of the Passover, that night that they made a rhythm of remembering every year. But this time, Jesus does something wild. And I keep using that word because really, Jesus is flipping the script in huge ways. Instead of just talking about Egypt and lambs

and plagues and doorposts, he talks about them right there in that moment. He takes the traditional Passover elements and he says, this here, this is my body broken for you. He takes the wine. He says, this is my blood poured out for you so that judgment would pass over you. Think about how wild these words would have sound. But again, within hours, Jesus would be falsely accused, would be arrested, would be convicted, and would be murdered. He was that perfect lamb slain whose blood was spilled. Why? Because we are still stuck. We still need freedom, not from Egypt, but from our own brokenness and sin. And this freedom is not coming in Egypt. It's coming right here in our lives, in our sin and our fear and our shame and our anxiety and our addictions. In the weight of our own lives, Jesus brings freedom. And just like in Egypt, God says to us, I see you, I hear you, and I am here to set you free. Jesus' blood, it covers us. It brings us new life. Those chains are broken. Death passes over, freedom is here, and Jesus has paid the price for it. And if you remember all the way back to those thousands of years ago

and hundreds and hundreds of pages that started with Abraham and God saw a father willing to sacrifice his son and his future, way back here at the end of the story, we're looking at the same thing, except God is the father who's willing to sacrifice his son for our hope and for our future. Isn't that amazing? This is the story that you and I get to live into. I wanna fast forward one more time, past the last pages, past the end, in fact, past the back cover to today, to right here, right now. Now, I'm doing this on a set that looks a little bit like what a 40-year-old Midwestern guy thinks a cool first century tent would look like, but this is basically a dining or living room, right? It's where people gathered. It's where people gathered, where meals were shared, where conversation was shared. And this is really important. For most of us, we think of communion as something that only happens in a church service, right? And it only happens when the pastor offers us the thing and maybe we walk forward, or maybe it's just like a little tinfoil shot glass with a wafer and a tiny little bit of juice. There's something beautiful that happens when we lean into the way that Jesus did it, when Jesus set up this whole thing, this whole set of tools to help us remember.

He did it around a table, not just as a taste, but as part of a meal, something that would fill us, something that would sustain us. That's what I want for you. So if you wanna pause and do this with me right now, you can do that. If you wanna pause and do this as a part of your Easter celebration, your Easter meal with your family or both, that's great. It's good to have the extra rep and the extra chance to obey Jesus' words and remember that we are a part of this story. And today we get to do what Jesus told us to do, not just with our heads, not just with our hearts, but with our stomach and even with our taste buds, we get to remember that God loves you so much. So first, we're just gonna say thank you. Maybe something like this. God, we thank you for the gift of this bread and this wine and all that they represent, all that they represent from the beginning of your story to the end of it to today, that your judgment passes over us because of the innocent shedding of blood. God, that you have created a way to make us right with you, to restore us to you, to remove our brokenness and our sin. We are grateful. Help us to remember with every part of us how loved we are about you. In your name.

Amen. So if you're ready and you have your elements, we take the bread as Jesus did. And he said, this is my body broken for you. He said, this is my blood poured out for you, take and eat and drink. Jesus always, always flipped the script in an unexpected ways. He showed up to bring us healing and bring us hope. This is your rescue. This is your exodus. This is your new life. Remember you are not stuck. Remember you are not a slave. Remember you have been set free, live in it, walk in it and never forget what Jesus has done for you or the story that you are a part of.