Edible Words

In Mark 10:35-44 we are given a fascinating insight in to what is going on at the communion table today. This communion meal today is an invitation to be part of the eternal kingdom of Christ but we must first understand more about what we are doing when we eat and drink.

On the road to Jerusalem, the disciples, James and John, ask Jesus a foolish question. They want to be great in the kingdom of the Son of Man, but they don't know yet how to be great.

Jesus tells them, verse 38, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptised the baptism with which I am baptised?”

Jesus asks the question expecting the answer
“no, we are not able” or perhaps even,
“we don't really know what you're talking about Jesus, what is this cup you will drink and the baptism that you will be baptised with?”

Instead of course James and John further expose their folly and say with their chests puffed out “we are able”.

Aren't we like them in many ways? Don't we think that somehow we can do what it takes to get into the kingdom?

But the cup to which Jesus is referring has been foretold by God through his prophet Jeremiah and in Psalm 75, it is the cup of the wine of God's wrath. The triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit had announced that the people of earth would be made to drink this cup and so fall by the sword and not go unpunished. This cup is a dreadful reality for a deserving world.

Yet, on the cross, Jesus, the God-man, fully divine and fully human, drains the cup of the wine of God's wrath for those for whom God has prepared it.

What then is the cup James and John will drink?
It can't be the cup of God's wrath, because as far as God's people are concerned, that cup is now empty. Jesus drained it for his people.
So, it must be another cup.
It can only be the cup of the new covenant.
There is an exchange.
Jesus says in effect,
“James and John, my disciples, you will drink the cup of the new covenant in my blood and be baptised into my death.
I will drink the cup of God's wrath for you and command that you drink the cup of God's mercy in my blood for me.

Yet that is not the whole story. This lesson of Jesus follows his statement that:

“Many who are first will be last, and the last first.”
Jesus had just taught that those who grab and take and accumulate for self-serving purposes will be last.
Those who give up and leave behind for Christ serving purposes will be first.

In the purposeful and willing giving over of himself to death, Jesus is exemplary.
There is no hint of hypocrisy in the teaching of this man.
He does not command us to give up everything to follow him without his first giving up everything for us.

The Son of Man gave up and left behind the glory of heaven to die on the cross. He drank the cup of God's wrath for those who would drink his cup. And he commands us to follow him on the road to Jerusalem. We drink this cup knowing that we will each give up and leave behind our own life and press on with Jesus no matter what the cost.