Cup

Easter is approaching.

For all my kids and grandkids, I am already contemplating the Easter dinner, Easter baskets, Easter bunny, and Easter hunt. The same traditions of my own youth.  

I get a little excited. 

Two past years have interrupted the family celebration. So, I’ve not yet incorporated the story of Jesus in this plan with the five grandkids whose ages are one to five.  Literally, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.  Yet, I know we are to tell the story and let the children tell their children to pass the story down from generation to generation.

So, if I’m hosting Easter, I want to tell the story. 

But, before the important story of the cross, there’s a part of the story that involves a cup the night before that I’m wrestling with and wanting to tell.

At the Last Supper,  there was bread broken to remember the body of Jesus, and there was also a cup of wine that was given to His disciples to drink from. “This is my blood,” He said.   This was to remember the new agreement, the new covenant, the establishment of the New Testament.  It’s what we are to remember at communion.

So, there’s a cup to remember. 

Then leaving the supper, yet before His crucifixion on the cross, Jesus was anguished and distressed. To His friends, the 12 disciples, He said,  “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death.  Stay here and keep watch with me and pray.” 

There was another cup.  

He prayed it to be taken away. Yet, “If this cup cannot be taken away unless I drink it, your will be done.”

This was the cup of suffering.  

It’s the same cup, isn’t it?

I’ve never noticed this before.  

A cup is a vessel of containment, for sure, but it’s also a measurement within that containment.  Length x Width x Height.

Isn’t this the same amount of love He wants us to have the power to understand, “How high, how wide, how long, how deep, His love really is?

This measure was to the point of His death.  So much so, He asked for it to be taken from Him.

What’s more, He then asked His closest friends, 12 disciples, to stay awake and pray for Him while He was experiencing this grief to the point of death.

They fell asleep.

He woke them up.

They fell back asleep.

They did not.  They just COULD NOT fathom the cup either or they would have stayed awake, too.

I imagine it’s going to take stick pictures this year to understand the volume and how high, long, and deep the Love is that took Him to the cross.

In all the Easter traditions and the story of Jesus, I’m thinking about us drawing a new Easter tradition to remember.

A cup.

Matthew 26

Ephesians 3:18