Jesus Made the Way for All We Need for Full Life (2 Peter 1:3, CSB)

Some things are okay in day-to-day living, but are not okay for our table of communion at church. And this is coming from a soul who has seen cornbread and even French baguettes as symbols of Jesus's communion body.

Until now, I haven't felt a call to say to a pastor that that is so wrong. I've just walked away discouraged. But I'm going to say this now:

I'm someone who feels and feels that the first communion bread, at Jesus's dinner with the disciples the night He was betrayed, was a rolled up slab of flat bread, similar to the big slabs of flatbread still made in parts of the Middle East today - although, I believe Jesus's bread was a darker color than today's Middle Eastern versions; because bread during Jesus's first walk with us, didn't have today's bleaching process but was made of whole, stone-ground wheat.

I know and I know it's no coincidence that God had in heart to compare His body to the bread of His "Last Supper."

But, nowadays, with so much reprobate thinking on the rise, many people have taken hold of profane ideas about bread as Jesus's body. Hundreds - likely thousands - of years ago, men began shaping bread in blasphemous ways, comparing their hand-made "rolls" of bread to rolls or scrolls of scriptures. One recently found roll of scripture, from Bologna, Italy, is a copy of the complete Torah part of the Bible. That scroll was made more than 1,000 years after Jesus gave His life; and the makers of that old scroll held to traditional Hebrew practices of sewing together animal skins to form the scroll before writing on it.

In ancient times, apparently sheep were the typical animals sacrificed to write down the Hebrew's painful history, particularly while the Hebrews were staying in a wilderness after slavery. And, again, it's no accident that the Hebrew struggle begins with stories about struggles between brothers, including Cain and Abel. It's no coincidence that Abel sacrificed not the work of his own toil but a work that was completely of God. Abel sacrificed a lamb, acceptable to God in place of human sacrifice - and a prelude to God's coming sacrifice of His own body to help end murder among mankind.

Jealous, and standing in judgment of Abel's acceptable sacrifice, Cain ironically killed his brother Abel. Cain did that, despite all that God had provided to sustain life and to discourage human sacrifice.

And now, we have Jesus, taking our place as the acceptable sacrifice. God didn't accept brother killing brother; but He accepted the lamb instead of justifying murder.

All of that was written down on sacrificial lambskins at one time or another. And that's the sense in which Jesus must have rolled out a flat sheet of bread at His Last Supper. And just like partaking of only one portion of God's expansive Bible word can be very filling to us today, I imagine each disciple's partaking of just a portion of Jesus's large slab of bread eventually made sense to them.

It's only wrong today that anyone accepts profane interpretations of that ritual - profanity and temptations that have lasted thousands of years but that cannot outlast God's enduring truths.

2 Peter 1:3, CSB:

His divine power has given us everything required for life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

 

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This brings me to a second lesson or idea for discussion today:

Jesus warned to beware of the "leaven" of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. He said there is such a thing as leaven from Heaven: leavening or something uplifting that can spread and cause a whole body of doctrine to grow and be good. But, again, He said not to accept even a "little," tiny, small amount of leaven that's like that of the Pharisees and of Herod: bad leaven that spreads and makes a whole lump or body of bread not what God accepts.

Some ways to look at that can include understanding that Jesus mostly used the idea of "leaven" as a metaphor for false doctrine, but also as a synonym for foolishness.

Herod, for example, was a deeply murderous, foolish soul who even murdered a wife who he had coveted.

Herod didn't begin to be like Moses or even David, both of whom had murdered. Instead, murder was something built in to Herod's personal constitution, and he was not capable of repentance. So Jesus warns not to accept even a little, tiny, abortive, murderous idea when it comes to human souls and longevity.

But the Pharisees are another matter, altogether. The Pharisees were a little like modern people who have carried on profane traditions, even something seemingly as small a matter as comparing long-shaped French bread to a biblical roll or scroll. The Pharisees generally were about maintaining the status quo and projecting worldly and Torah-bound ideas onto the light of scriptural truth we have now in Jesus. The Pharisees had their own worldly way of interpreting God's will and ways. They had their own way of thinking, substituting their own frame of mind for what Jesus had in mind. They had their own way of interpreting what was for our good and what was acceptable before Heaven.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations ... .

Ephesians 3:20-21, NIV