Drinking the Cup – The Cup of Salvation

Through this exploration of our lives in the metaphor of the cup, we have been encouraged to reflect on what our life contains: its sorrows, its joys and its blessings. Taking hold of our cup is a way of taking hold of our life and exercising ownership over it. By that I mean that we recognize and realize that the sorrows in our life are our sorrows, the joys in our life are our joys and the blessings in our life are our blessings.  God has given us the breath that enlivens us, he has given us a heart to know love and a mind to be able to think and process this life.  But we need to live this life as no one else can.  We look to God to be with us and guide us as we face our sorrows, celebrate our joys and receive our blessings but it ever remains our life.  hold it and lift it up, we are looking to our God to bless that cup that is our life.  Asking for a blessing is to invoke the strength, courage and wisdom from God that have been promised to us in the Holy Spirit. It is to recognize that this life that we live is not just a random progression of moments in time but that it has purpose and meaning. We are encouraged to not just survive in this life but to see the path our life has taken – reflecting on it to discover where God has touched our life and where we have found his presence. Whatever the life to come may be, this is the life we have to live now, and it is this life that we lift up to God and to one another.

Today marks the beginning of Holy Week.  We heard once again of the triumphal and joyous entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.   Celebrated as a hero of the people, seated on a donkey with palm branches and coats strewn on the road with the people shouting praises as they witness Jesus, the Messiah come to be with them in this time of remembrance.  This joyous moment will soon change, and moments of great sorrow and suffering will take place before once again a joyous moment appears again.

The cup that was given to Jesus, a cup that contained all the sorrow, joy, and blessing of creation will become the cup of salvation. On that fateful night before his crucifixion, on a night when betrayal was in the air, Jesus would take hold of the cup before him, lift it, bless it and declare that the cup they would all drink of tonight would become the cup containing his blood, the blood of a New Covenant, one that would break the bond of death and separation from God and draw all who would believe into the loving grace and mercy of God the Father. Forgiveness of sin would become real and everlasting – a true cup of salvation.

Knowing the symbolism of the cup, we recognize that our cups contain our blood – the nourishing fluid that sustains us in this life.  And while we will never suffer everything he suffered, symbolically, as we live our lives as God’s people, our cups are drained.  But that action becomes the opportunity for God to refill them with his peace, presence, strength and guidance in our lives.

Can we drink the cup? We know that we cannot drink the cup given to Jesus for that was his cup but we can drink the cup that has been given to us trusting that God will refill it every day. Jeremiah reminded the people that the mercies of God are new every day.  We need not drink our cup for fear of it running dry.  Henri encourages us to not be afraid to drink our cup, but to let it become empty to the bottom, to not hold back for to do so is to hold on to past sorrows, to hold on to those things that prevent us from living the life we have been given and preventing God from renewing our life.  We need to drink it to the bottom in order that God might fill it daily with new life.

When I was in China, our host served wine.  At the meal, he raised his glass and encouraged us to empty our glass.  He encouraged us with these words: “No more tears.” Tradition in China is that as much wine as you leave in your glass, that will be the number of tears you will cry in your life.  True, there will always be something left in the glass and so we will never avoid tears, but we can be encouraged to empty our glass, to pour out our life so that God can fill it again.

Just as Henri has given us stories and thoughts around holding our cup, lifting our cup, and blessing our cup, he now shares thoughts about drinking our cup.  He sees three disciplines that can help us drink our cup of salvation – the discipline of silence, the discipline of the word, and the discipline of action.

Drinking our cup in silence may seem like a silly thing but so often we use distractions such as radio, television, books, films, long hours of work and even an overactive social life in order to avoid dealing with our life.  Silence is a discipline that helps us to go beyond the entertainment quality of our lives. There we can let our sorrows and joys emerge from their hidden place and look us in the face, saying: “Don’t be afraid; you can look at your own journey, its dark and light sides, and discover your way to freedom.”   At first silence may frighten us.  In silence we start hearing the voices of darkness: our jealousy and anger, our resentment and desire for revenge, our pain over losses, abuses and rejections.  Our most spontaneous reaction will no doubt be to run away from them and return to our entertainment.  But if we have the discipline to stay put and not let these dark voices intimidate us, they will gradually lose their strength and recede into the background, creating space for the softer, gentler voices of the light.

The voices of light speak of peace, kindness, gentleness, goodness, joy, hope, forgiveness and most of all love. They come from a very deep place and from very far.  They have been speaking to us since before we were born and reveal to us that there is no darkness in the One who sent us into the world, only light. They are part of God’s voice calling us from all eternity. The powers of this world will attempt to drown out these gentle voices, but they are the voices of truth.  Remember Elijah found God not in the earthquake or hurricane but in a still small voice.  Being in silence is the first way we learn to drink our cup.

The second way is with the word. By this Henri means living our life in a trusted circle of friends.  To know ourselves truly and acknowledge fully our own unique journey, we need to be known and acknowledged by others for who we are. We are not to live our life in secrecy.   But to do this, we need loving and caring friends with whom we can speak from the depth of our heart.  When we dare to speak from the depths of our heart to those friends God gives us, we will gradually find the freedom and courage to live this life that is ours fuller than we ever have imagined. And that freedom and courage will be with us to the end of this life and beyond.

The third discipline is in action.  Action is not so much about what we do but how we do it. Discovering who we are, discovering friends, companions with whom we can share our life will lead to opportunities to be the person we are and allow us to offer the gift of our life to others through words or deeds that will bring encouragement and hope.

The disciplines of silence, word and action will focus our eyes on the road we are traveling and help us to move forward step by step in our lives. We will continue to encounter obstacles, but we will also experience splendid views.  We will make wonderful friends.

And so, I say to each of you:  Take hold of your cup, lift it up, ask a blessing upon it and then drink.  God has given you this life. Live it to the fullest – l’chaim.

AMEN