Today is Easter, the last day of Passion Week, and we had a Good Friday Lord’s Supper service this past Friday evening. During the week, brothers and sisters had a good opportunity to meditate on what the salvation through Jesus Christ has accomplished for us. It is a time to draw near to our Lord.

Jesus Christ had instituted the Lord’s Supper on the Passover evening the day before He was crucified. This year, on three consecutive Sundays before Passion Week, messages related to the Lord’s Supper, based on 1 Corinthians 11, were preached at the ECC Seattle Mandarin services.

Some past experiences related to the Lord’s Supper entered my meditations. I remember my first Lord’s Supper. Although at the time my understanding of the Lord’s Supper was superficial, I was moved and could not control my emotions and tears. I knew it was the work of the Holy Spirit. Later, our pastor asked me to lead our fellowship to preside over the Lord’s Supper service. My wife taught me how to make the bread used for the service following strict specifications. I believed I must follow the specifications without any deviation, because it represented the body of the Lord Christ. Because of this reason, I also taught my co-workers at the church to make the bread in exactly the same way. Later, after I had the opportunity to attend the Lord’s Supper services at different churches, I found the bread used by different churches were actually not the same. I complained to myself that they did not make the bread strictly according to the way of Jesus. In 2018, I had the opportunity to visit the Holy Land, and I found the bread I made strictly following the specifications was just a Chinese bread. It is completely different from the one the Jews eat at Passover. The experience helped me to understand that the true focus of Jesus’ teaching at the Lord’s Supper was to “remember Me.”

How should we remember the Lord Jesus? It is “whenever we eat this bread and drink this cup,” we will “proclaim the Lord’s death." Only by fully understanding the meaning of "the Lord’s death" can we, as Paul said, "always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body” (2 Corinthians 4:10).

In the Holy Land, I saw Christians from all parts of the world. There are great cultural and traditional differences between them. What makes these seemingly different people share the same essence of faith? What is the essence of faith? What are those which can be different and immutable? I hope we can draw closer to the Lord this year through our devotional meditations so that we may gain a better understanding of His will and our own faith.
(Translation by Bob Tang)