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Summary
At the end of the old movie, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Nazis raid the inner room of a temple with many cups — one of which is supposedly the Holy Grail containing “Eternal Life.” The ancient knight guarding the cups tells all to choose wisely. One of them chooses to drink from a golden cup studded with jewels. He dies, turns to dust, and is blown away. “He chose poorly,” comments the knight.
Drinking is dangerous, because you can’t always tell what’s in a cup and how it will affect you until you drink it. So, if someone hands you a cup, it’s wisdom to only drink cups from those who have earned your trust.
The Gospel of John is all about drinking: water to wine at a wedding feast, living water for thirsty Samaritans, life in his blood for those who drink it, a promised fountain rising from within. At the last supper, He hands His disciples a cup. In John 17, Jesus prays that He would be “in them.” In 18:1 he enters “a garden.” In this garden, He prays “Father, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will (that’s one will) but thy will (that’s another will) be done (that’s a third will that wills what it does not will).” I think that’s called “faith,” or perhaps, “The Helper” who is the Spirit of God in us.
In John 18, Judas and a detachment of soldiers arrive in the garden to arrest Jesus. Peter draws his sword and cuts off the ear of the High Priest’s slave. John 18:11, “So Jesus said to Peter, ‘Put your sword into its sheath; shall I not drink the cup that the Father has for me?”
In John 19:29, hanging on a tree in a garden, Jesus drinks sour wine; He drinks our cup; He drinks sour wine from sour grapes, from Israel his Vineyard. Jesus from “the bosom of the Father,” the heart of God, drinks sour wine and bleeds perfection — the wine of the kingdom. A heart constantly drinks spent blood (sour blood) and bleeds oxygen enriched (spirit enriched blood), a river of life that flows through every member of the body and back to the heart (the throne). “The first Adam became a living soul; the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.” This is “The Seventh Sign That is the Substance.”
We say, “Fine, but what does it mean for me now?” John 18:11, “Jesus said to Peter, ‘Put your sword in its sheath; shall I not drink the cup the Father has for me.’”
Nineteen years and one month ago today, I had just finished preaching, breaking the bread and pouring the wine. I was sitting next to my wife in the front row as people filed past. Suddenly, she grabbed my arm and whispered loudly in my ear, “I just saw your dad!” (He had been dead for three years.) “He was so young and alive. His eyes were on fire! He was so excited. He leaned forward with a bowl in his hand and said, ‘Peter and Susan, do not be afraid to drink from the cup that the Lord has for you.’ And then he vanished.”
Within three months, I had been publicly tried, condemned, and defrocked. So, for 19 years I’ve been asking, Am I drinking the cup? Do each of us have a cup? What’s the cup, and what’s in it? How do we drink it? How do we refuse it? Have we already chosen poorly? Has God already chosen well?”
I was tried and condemned for hoping that “As in Adam all die, so in Christ will all be made alive.” My father was tried and condemned for reasons I don’t fully understand, except that I know he wanted to preach Jesus from Scripture. The Lord has shown me that I had resolved to never allow what happened to my dad to happen to me. But I drank my dad’s cup, and now I can’t wait to see him again —I now know him as I never did before. I drank my dad’s cup, and I drank my Father’s cup (at least a little bit), and “knowing” Him, “and Jesus Christ whom he has sent is Eternal Life” (John 17:3).
According to the Dictionary of New Testament Theology, “the cup” symbolizes the way in which God’s gifts and judgments come to us. The cup is like circumstances containing experiences. “The Lord has assigned my portion and my cup,” writes David. “Consolation, Joy, Blessing, Salvation, Suffering, Wrath”: It’s all The Father’s Cup. Isn’t reality . . . the Father’s Cup? He speaks all things into existence with His Word. So, evil must not be a “thing” so much as a “no-thing,” not Truth but lies, not Light but dark, not Logos but chaos, not Reality but illusion — and only known because of the pain it produces in who it is that “I am.”
The 17th century mystic Jeanne Guyon writes: “You must utterly believe that everything that has happened to you is from God and is exactly what you need.” Julian of Norwich wrote: “There is no doer but God.” Scripture agrees. So, the cup is the reality that meets you every day as the circumstances of your life, and because there is no doer but God, everything that’s anything is Grace. In other words, the drink in the cup of reality is always the Blood of the Lamb.
My dad was holding a “bowl.” The priests in the temple collected blood in bowls to return the life as worship—return the Life to the One who constantly gives His Life to the world. In the Revelation, seven angels pour the blood on the earth; it burns away “me-sus” and reveals Jesus. We drink that blood every Sunday. That can be stressful. How do we know it’s the Father’s cup that we are, in fact, drinking?
When I drank the cup, I had a revelation (my wife’s vision). I also knew that to deny the cup would be to lie, to be untrue (all truth is revelation). And I had faith . . . but we sometimes confuse faith in me-sus with faith in Jesus, lie to ourselves, and we don’t always have visions. Yet I think there is another way (that is the same way) to discern the Father’s cup. It seems backward to us because it’s opposite of this entire world. If we’re grateful to the Father for a cup, we’re drinking in faith by grace, true to God, and everything becomes the revelation of reality — our eternal life.
1 Timothy 4:4, “Everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy (sanctified, made eternal) through the word of God and prayer.” So, if you are a self-made man, you’re not good, and therefore you’re nothing. And yet “a nothing” cannot imagine it’s “a something.” And so, you must be created by God, and when you confess your sin and thank Him for yourself, you will come to see just who it is that you actually are. You’ll find the Something growing in the depths of your nothing like a baby in a womb.
Jesus broke the bread, and He took the cup… and “when he had given thanks, he gave it to them.” Did you hear it? Jesus thanked God for His own body broken and bloodshed. Which means that He thanked God for those who broke His body and the sins for which His blood was shed. Which means that He sanctified all things with Himself; He is the Word of God, and the Faith with which you pray all of your prayers. It means that He thanked God for His experience of evil in you, and yet He transformed it into good, which is who it is that you actually are, such that “where sin increased, Grace abounded all the more.”
Each of us is like a temporal clay cup filled with the eternal blood of the Lamb. He doesn’t only save part of you but all of you — past, present, and future. When we trust, we live our eternal life now, or I should say, Eternal Life lives us now.
I have a friend who found some old pictures while cleaning her house. The pictures were of events in her past, which triggered memories that kept her from living now. In prayer, Jesus appeared to her in a vision. She asked Him to hold her, and He would not. Understand that He had held her many times in visions before.
“You must give me those pictures,” He said. I prayed, “Jesus help her to see herself as you do.” Much to my dismay, He responded, “Those pictures are part of who you are.” At first, I wondered if it was Jesus who was talking. But each time that she would hand Him a picture, He’d reveal his presence in the picture: The Truth in the lies, the Light in the darkness, the Grace in the sin, the Logos in the chaos, and the meaning of the picture would change entirely. He’d do this with each picture, place each one in a frame, and then hand them back to her.
The last picture was of a Halloween night long ago. She remembered that she had always wanted to be an angel, and so her mother dressed her as an angel. When her father came home that night, he flew into a rage and took her to a meeting where men abused her in the vilest of ways. Jesus entered the picture with eyes of fire, took her from the table, dressed her in white, held her in His arms, and said, “You are and you will always be my little angel.” He has shown her that her scars are on His body — that whatever they did to her, they literally did to Him. I said, “Look, He is holding you, and He is telling you just who it is that you truly are.” Then Jesus said to her, “Your pictures are my pictures.”
After a time — the vision now over — she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, “How do you think it makes Him feel when we’re ashamed of those pictures?” I thought for a moment and said, “I guess it would mean that we’re ashamed of Him.”
We die with Him and rise with Him and are never dead again.
If the Father’s cup is reality, how could we NOT drink the cup the Father has for us? Jesus had asked Peter to stay awake, but he slept “for sorrow” (Luke 22:44). Then Peter drew his sword, and Jesus said, “Put your sword in it’s sheath; shall I not drink the cup that the Father has for me?” I drank my Father’s cup, but I also did not and still do not drink His cup; I’m ashamed of those old pictures and terrified it might happen again. It keeps me from living now. Sometimes I sleep to them and act as if they never mattered. Sometimes I swing my sword and try to destroy them. And that’s why I need to come to worship, hear His story, drink the cup, and say, “Thank you, Father, for our cup,” then drink it with Jesus. When Jesus rose from the dead, He showed them His scars — they are His glory.
And it wasn’t every day that the Father handed Jesus a cup of crucifixion. Some days He handed Him a fishing trip with his boys, or six jugs of water to turn into wine. Because He had faith in His Father, He drank every cup. When Jesus heard a good joke, I think He laughed the loudest. When Jesus drank wine, to Him, it always tasted the best. When He made furniture, it wasn’t just work; it was worship. When storms came His way, He either enjoyed them or fell asleep on the boat. When He attended a funeral, He wept the most heartfelt of tears. And when the Father said, “Now it’s time to drink the bitter cup,” He made all things new.
We all chose poorly. It’s always the blood of the lamb that’s in the cup. It’s not the cup that is the problem; it’s that we take it and never say “thank you,” for we don’t yet know that everything that’s anything is Grace. Drink the cup, say “Thank you Father,” and Christ in you makes all things new. That’s Wisdom.