On the Edge of Empty

As the disciples gathered in the Upper Room with Jesus to share the Passover meal, they didn't know what was about to happen. They had no idea that all this talk He'd been sharing about going to Jerusalem to die was about to come true. They couldn't fathom that He was talking about a physical death. It wasn't in their most bizarre imagination that in just a matter of hours, they would lose their Rabbi and Friend. 

But Jesus knew. 

Jesus knew, and He tried to tell them. They didn't understand, and He knew they didn't understand. So He did the only thing He knew to do - He gave them the fullness of the Passover meal. 

This wasn't just about satisfying a physical appetite, although the Passover meal would have been the one that every faithful Jew looked forward to every year - all the best food, all the best flavors, the aromas wafting through the air. But this meal, this night, was also about building a fullness into the spaces that Jesus knew were about to become empty. 

The spaces He knew were about to fill the ache. 

It's why He made a point to explain to them that this was symbolic of what they were about to experience, of what they were all about to go through. It's why He told them this was His body and His blood. It's why He made sure that around that Table, they shared stories and laughed over memories and remembered all of the times they'd had together. He was telling them about tomorrow, sure, but He was making sure they were so full of today that when the bottom fell out - which again, only He truly understood was coming - there would be somewhere sort of soft for them to land. Something for them not to fall back on, but to fall into; something that would catch them. 

This Table catches us. 

None of us knows what tomorrow brings. None of us can imagine what might happen when the sun rises again. If it rises for us at all. None of us can plan on the things that we don't know, on what we don't see. Today could go on forever or tomorrow could bring it all crashing down. We simply don't know. And even if there are signs, sometimes, we don't understand. It doesn't register in our brains. 

But we have this: we have the fullness of God present in us. We have the physical gift of His body and His blood, all the best flavors in all of the world, and we have the spiritual gift of this moment - this time shared with Jesus and with brothers and sisters, laughing and remembering and relishing our time together. This Table fills us up so that if the world should crumble, if the world should fall, there's something there to catch us. 

And it's this: Jesus Christ came and dwelt among us in flesh and prepared a Table for us that we might come and eat with Him in the fullness of all things, even - even - on the very edge of empty, whether we know it or not. 

Be full in Christ, friends. For it is the only thing we can truly ever trust in.