Holy Dinner! No, wait. Santa Cena? - Communion

Santa Cena - Pastor Eli

In Spanish it's called "Santa Cena" which translates as Holy Dinner.

In English, it's called Communion - which means "participating together".

But what is it and why do we do it?

In Exodus 12 Moses was sent by God to the Egyptian Pharoh to get the freedom for the Israelites after they had spent 400 years as slaves. The Pharoh wasn't interested in letting them go so God sent plagues like flies and frogs and disease to convince him. The last of the plagues was when the angel of death was sent to each house to kill the firstborn or oldest of the family. To protect their families the Israelites sacrificed a lamb and put the blood on the door post so the angel would pass over their houses.



Once the people were free, they set a holiday to remember how God freed them from slavery. The name of that holiday? Passover. They celebrate with a meal of bitter herbs, flat bread, and wine.

When Jesus was coming to the end of his life, he had a special Passover dinner with his disciples. (Luke 22:15) He had been with them for three years and so they had celebrated other Passovers, but this one was special. Jesus took two items from the dinner to explain to the Disciples what was going to happen. I don't think they could have really understood everything at the time, but Jesus knew they, and now we, would get what he was talking about later.

Jesus said that the bread was his body. He broke the bread and they shared it.
He said the wine was his blood and the new covenant (promise, agreement) "poured out for you".
He also told them to "do this in remembrance of me".

So Jesus is broken? What? Wait a minute! If my pen is broken, I throw it away. Why do I want a broken Jesus???

When Jesus body was broken and his blood poured out, he died. But because he died and rose again, we can participate in the kingdom of God. One of the ways to show that we are part of the kingdom is to "take part in" or "participate" in communion. We remember that Passover (the holy dinner) and we come together to celebrate what Jesus did for us.

So try not to focus too much on the "broken" Jesus. Yes, he had to be broken, but as we take up a piece of the bread and we take Jesus's character and his spirit and we participate in his work and kingdom, we are each a piece of his body. His body is then reconstructed when we come together.

So that's basically how a holy dinner brings us together to participate in what Jesus is doing.