A cup is a simple thing, defined more by what it carries than by what it is made of. This morning we gather around two cups. The first is the one Jesus held in the upper room, the cup of the new covenant, poured out in blood for the forgiveness of sins. The second is the one He prayed over in Gethsemane, the cup of suffering, the one He asked His Father to take away, and then drank anyway.
That garden prayer is one of the most startling moments in all of Scripture. We hear Jesus falling on His face in the dirt, asking to be spared what was coming. And yet every time He prayed for relief, He followed it with those words that change everything: “Your will be done.” In His humanity He shrank back. In His faithfulness He surrendered. And by drinking that bitter cup, He secured victory for all of us.
Here is the great mystery at the heart of God’s kingdom. Life comes through death. Victory comes through surrender. The crown comes after the cross. This is backwards from everything our hearts naturally want, but it is the true way of a kingdom unlike any other.
So when we take the cup of communion this morning, we are saying something with our whole selves. We agree with God about who we were, who we now are in Christ, and who He is as our Father and King. Communion does not end when the cups are passed to the aisle. A heart that has truly drunk both cups, the cup of grace and the cup of surrender, is communion ready every single morning of the week.