A Meal to Remember
- Richard Selke
- Aug 12
- 4 min read
Updated: Sep 16
August 13, 2025
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As our family knelt at the altar rail at Palmer Memorial Church, we were offered the bread and wine – the body and blood of Jesus Christ - as part of the sacrament of Holy Communion. At Palmer, Communion was celebrated during every worship service.
As the Reverend Jeffrey Walker offered our daughter, Erin, the cup of wine, she looked up at him and asked, “Do you have any White Zinfandel?” White Zinfandel was very popular at that time. Advertising was working – at least on six-year-olds!
Holy Communion – also called the Lord’s Supper and the Eucharist – is one of the most sacred traditions in the Christian faith. It is celebrated in remembrance of the final meal Jesus shared with His disciples just a few hours before he was betrayed, arrested, tried, beaten and crucified.
It was Passover, the Jewish holiday which celebrated God’s rescue of His people from slavery in Egypt. The disciples expected the special Passover meal with the traditional prayers and blessings. But in the middle of that meal, Jesus did something completely unexpected.
Jesus took the bread, gave thanks and broke it and gave it to the disciples. And as he did so, he said, “This is my body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22:19) Later, when the supper was over, Jesus took the cup of wine and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” (Luke 22:20)
To the disciples, Jesus’ statements about the bread, wine and new covenant must have been puzzling. They knew about God’s covenant with Abraham and that valid covenants were sealed with blood – but always with the blood of sacrificed animals. Now Jesus was talking about a “new covenant,” sealed in His own blood.
But before His disciples could ask Him what He meant, Jesus announced that he would be betrayed by someone at the table. He warned Peter that he would deny Him three times before the rooster crowed the next morning. And then everyone got up and headed for the Mount of Olives where the events in the Garden of Gethsemane, his arrest, trials and crucifixion, began to unfold.
During their last meal together, Jesus didn’t say, “Hey guys, listen up, here’s a holy sacrament that I want you to commemorate and repeat often, so that Christians down through the ages will remember.” In fact, considering all of the fear, confusion and grief that followed, it’s a divine miracle that the disciples remembered this sacred event at all and continued to pass it on through every generation of believers that followed.
Sometimes we participate in Holy Communion and leave the altar rail without sensing the magnitude of what has happened. The ceremony may seem simple: We confess our sins. We pray. We hear the words of Jesus. We take bread – sometimes a loaf baked in a kitchen, sometimes bought at H-E-B. We sip wine or grape juice. Instead of bread, I’ve eaten tortillas, chips or crackers, and instead of wine or grape juice, I’ve sipped water, Coke or orange juice. It's so simple from our human perspective – and yet it is so extraordinary in a spiritual sense!
Across every time zone, somewhere at this very moment, believers are kneeling and remembering Jesus’ sacrifice for us. The Communion meal has reached from that Upper Room in Jerusalem, across twenty centuries and around the world – to chapels and cathedrals, forest meadows and mountain tops, lakesides and seashores, kitchen tables and prison cells.
I first took Holy Communion as a small boy in a Presbyterian Church in Houston, Texas. Since then, I’ve shared it in Catholic, Baptist, Episcopal, Methodist and non-denominational congregations across this country. Many of you have done the same – perhaps in places all over the world. Wherever we gather for Communion, we join a global, timeless, community of believers far bigger than our own church or denomination, all of whom choose to remember and honor this blessed sacrament.
Over two thousand years ago, our Lord Jesus Christ’ shared His final meal with His twelve disciples before His suffering, death and Resurrection. And over the ensuing two thousand years, hundreds of millions of believers, have participated in the sacrament our Lord instituted that night. Every time Communion was, is and continues to be celebrated, someone says, “This is the body of Christ broken for you … This is the blood of our Lord Jesus, shed for you.” And the believers present eat a piece of bread and drink a sip of wine or juice. And eternity breaks in, and God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit smiles and all the company of heaven rejoices.
What a meal! A meal to remember. And we do this in remembrance of Him!
REMEMBER & BELIEVE
Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.
In the meantime, we live as people who have been fed by His grace
and sent out to share it!
QUESTION
When you receive Communion, how deeply do you reflect on what Jesus has done for you?
PRAYER
Lord Jesus, thank You for the gift of Holy Communion. May we never take this holy meal for granted. Let it remind us of Your sacrifice. Renew our love for You, and unite us with believers everywhere – past, present and future – until You come again.
Our Father Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil and the evil one. For Thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.
Amen
“This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118:24, ESV
God bless you!
Richard
Christ Worshipper | Disciple Maker | Hope Giver
Welcome to In the Meantime. I'm glad you're here! We are living in the time between Christ's ascension into heaven and His promised return to earth. In the Meantime is a collection of stories about God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and His presence, love, mercy and grace in my life. In the Meantime, Jesus is Lord! Hallelujah!
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