Two Services: Two Cups-a Cup of Salvation and a Cup of Wrath

Two days into Holy Week...reflection on Palm Sunday?  Ended with tremendous frustration at not being able to post the audio of the sermon. 


Thursday-Friday-Sunday, one journey and three worship services.  And that which links them is the image of the Cup.  We could do a whole "Holy Grail" thing here.  Yes, "The DaVinci Code" was on cable this morning.


Thursday is Maundy Thursday.  In the Gospel timeline, it is where Jesus celebrates the Passover with his disciples, what is for us the "Last Supper", the "Eucharist", the "Lord's Supper", the "Mass".  We share the Bread and the Wine, the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.  During that service, we will read from Psalm 116, one verse in particular: I will lift up the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord.


Friday is "Good" Friday, a misnomer if there ever was one.  Good, why, because Jesus dies that day?  Our service is a Descent into Shadows, a Tenebrae service, reading through following the Last Supper (from Thursday) through Jesus' final hours and death on the cross.  Good Friday, all dark and depressing-but with good reason.  Jesus died for us.  Any 'feel-good' in our religion is based on real pain and suffering.  In that service, one of the verses is Luke 22:42, "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done."


That is the OTHER cup, the cup of wrath, the cup of punishment, the cup of destruction, the cup to be poured out on the world.  It is the cup we deserve for our actions on this gift of God's earth.  It is the cup that Jesus will drink from instead, even though he didn't want to.


On Sunday, we remember that we are privileged to drink from the cup of salvation because Jesus drank from the cup of wrath.  But there are the dark places in the soul, those places where the cup of wrath sits most comfortably, before we come to the light of the new day.