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# Remember
- URL: https://www.belonging.house/remember-f6e/
- Published: 2026-03-29T23:00:27.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-25T00:49:43.000Z
- Description: Being connected to your true identity.
- Author: Christ John Otto
- Tags: palm sunday, Eucharist, Holy Week, Sacraments, covenant, Podcast, #Migrated-1784940061448, #Import 2026-07-25 00:49

Remember

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Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedIn 2012  
we began  
celebrating Passover  
as a community.  
  
In the beginning,  
it was simply about  
reconnecting with my own Jewish roots,  
and also about  
having another excuse  
for a party.  
  
I wasn’t expecting it  
to be life transforming,  
or emotional,  
or the biggest event  
of our ministry year.  
  
Passover became all of those things,  
and the Belonging House Seder  
got bigger and bigger.  
  
And I worked very hard for it to stay  
like family,  
and Jewish flavored.  
  
We didn’t have an educational  
Christianized Seder.  
We had dinner,  
with plates,  
and napkins,  
and we used the basic Passover  
service,  
called a Haggadah,  
with a few tweaks.  
  
One of the rules about Passover is to invite your  
non-Jewish friends to participate,  
so they can hear the story.  
We were very good at keeping that rule.  
  
There are a couple places in the Service  
where I still become emotional,  
shed tears,  
and sometimes have to compose myself.  
  
“Our Father Abraham  
was a wandering Aramean  
we lived in the land of Haran,  
and we worshipped idols.”  
  
“We were slaves in Egypt,  
but with an outstretched arm  
and a mighty hand,  
Our God  
brought us out,  
and now we are free.”  
and this,  
  
“In every generation  
we must tell the story,  
and remember,  
as if we too were slaves  
in Egypt.”  
  
In every generation,  
we must act as if  
we were the ones who have been freed.  
That is what the Bible means,  
when it says  
“remember.”  
Remembering  
is becoming reconnected  
to an event in the past,  
and making it a part of who you are today.  
  
In little chapels and churches  
all over the United States,  
there are communion tables.  
  
And across the front is this inscription:  
THIS DO IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME.  
  
And once a month,  
usually on the first Sunday of each month,  
folks gather around these tables to  
remember Jesus.  
  
But mostly,  
they examine themselves  
and remember their sin.  
  
And it becomes a ritual  
in reinforcing a false identity.  
  
When Jesus said  
do this in memory of me,  
he said it in the context of Passover  
where he and his disciples,  
were remembering that they too  
were once slaves in Egypt,  
but with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm  
God set them free.  
  
Context is everything,  
and in every generation,  
the Jews reconnect with their  
redemption.  
  
And Jesus said,  
My own arm will bring the victory,  
I have tread the winepress alone,  
and my garments are red.  
  
I have stayed in the belly of the fish  
three days,  
and I am triumphant.  
  
You are no longer dead  
in your trespasses and sins  
but you have died with me  
and you are now raised  
and seated with me  
in heavenly places  
above all rule and authority.  
  
Remembering is not  
an intellectual  
exercise.  
  
Remembering is being  
reconnected  
to your true identity,  
through a retelling of a story,  
and an experience around the Table.  
  
The mind and the body  
are connected.  
  
The thinking and the doing are one.  
  
Jesus redefined  
and intensified  
an annual celebration.  
  
And from the night in Emmaus  
until now,  
every Sunday is Passover.  
  
Every Sunday is the day  
Jesus walked out of the tomb.  
  
Remember.  
Reconnect.  
Re-enact.  
Re-experience.  
  
You were with him by the cross,  
and you have heard the good news from Mary.  
  
Dying you destroyed our death,  
Rising you restored our life,  
Lord Jesus, come in glory.  
  
It is really not about you  
and your sin.  
  
Passover and the Eucharist are about Him.  
  
As Aristotle said,  
You become what you repeatedly do.  
  
And you become what you focus on.  
  
And Jesus knew that you would need to refocus   
at least once a week,  
and you would need a constant reminder,  
and you would not become who you really are,  
unless you remembered,  
reconnected,  
re-enacted,  
re-experienced,  
his saving work  
repeatedly.  
  
The Greek mindset puts a barrier between the mental  
and the physical.  
  
You can believe something  
and it never has to have anything to do with your life.  
  
This is why so many Christians  
think that eating a cracker once a month  
is enough,  
because they can think about Jesus  
anytime.  
  
Jesus was Jewish  
and he knew,  
your mental capacity  
is an intrinsic part of your physical life.  
  
We are often more spiritual than Jesus.  
Jesus said,  
take this bread  
and eat it,  
it is my body  
given for you  
and when you eat it,  
eat it and remember—  
reconnect  
re-experience  
re-enact—  
Me.  
  
It is in the doing  
not the thinking  
that remembering happens.  
  
Passover  
is a constant reminder  
to the Jewish people,  
that they exist,  
and have been changed,  
because of the intervention of God,  
from a wandering tribe,  
to an enslaved people,  
and then  
to a free nation.  
  
Eucharist  
is a constant reminder  
to the Redeemed Believer  
that they have been changed,  
because of the intervention of God,  
from sinners,  
to saints,  
a royal priesthood,  
a holy nation,  
and a new Creation.  
It is in the doing,  
that remembering happens.  
  
When we come to the end of the Gospels,  
Jesus says something interesting.  
  
“I eagerly long   
to celebrate   
this Passover  
with you.”  
  
For three years  
he has been preaching the message of his Kingdom,  
and performing signs   
to point the way to the Kingdom.  
  
And in one night,  
Jesus takes the national holiday of Israel,  
and he redefines it.  
His entire ministry  
is going to culminate  
in this one act.  
  
He takes what was about them,  
and makes it about Him.  
  
He simplifes and amplifies  
Passover.  
  
In a normal Seder there are four cups of wine.  
There is also a ceremony with three pieces of Matzah—  
unleavened bread pierced with holes.  
  
The seder begins with these three pieces of bread,  
stacked in the middle of the table.  
And the second one,   
the one in the middle,  
is broken.  
That broken one is hidden and found.   
After the meal,   
the broken one is eaten.  
  
And Jesus  
after the meal  
takes that broken Matzah  
and he says:  
  
“This is my Body,  
broken for you.  
Eat this in remembrance of me.”  
And he takes the bread,  
gives thanks,  
breaks it,  
and gives it to the disciples.  
  
And then he takes the third cup  
from the service,  
the cup of Redemption,  
and he says,  
“this cup is my Blood of the New Covenant.”  
  
Did you get that?  
God is doing a new thing.  
And when God does a new thing  
God makes a covenant.  
This covenant is being made  
not with the blood of a bull or a goat.  
This covenant is being made with blood   
shed from Jesus.  
And this cup  
is the New Covenant.  
And the sign of the new covenant  
will be:  
You will receive power when the Holy Spirit  
comes upon you   
and you will be my witnesses.  
Jesus is making a covenant with us,  
and this bread  
and this wine  
are the covenant.  
You can’t separate the covenant  
from the Eucharist.  
The early church knew this.  
That is why Sunday mattered.  
It was about renewing the covenant,  
not once a year at the temple  
but once a week in the Body.  
  
Before Jesus went to the Cross  
he made a covenant,  
an agreement with you.  
That agreement  
was   
that God would dwell in you,  
and you would receive a new heart  
and a new Spirit.  
You would be his people,  
and he would be your God.  
And this would be the sign,  
He would open their graves.  
He sealed it with his own body,  
through death and resurrection,  
and afterward  
gave us the Holy Spirit.  
  
The covenant was made the night he redefined Passover.  
And the cross and resurrection  
sealed it.  
  
It wasn’t just a memorial of something in the past.  
It was a remembering,  
a reconnecting,  
and a weekly renewing of that covenant.  
  
I still find it amazing   
that the church existed without a Bible for quite a while.  
The earliest New Testament books   
they estimate  
came twenty years  
after the church began.  
  
And the Bible as a whole   
really didn’t take the shape we recognize   
for several centuries.  
Yes, I said centuries.  
  
But we know   
that the Eucharist  
came first.  
It was the breaking of the bread,  
in Acts,  
and in the Gospels,  
and in Paul’s letters.  
This was a new thing.  
These folks understood that.  
  
It was the last thing Jesus told us to do,  
on the night before he died.  
  
We have lost so much.  
God made a new Covenant with Israel  
and all Humanity,  
and that Covenant  
is the legal foundation for the Kingdom.  
And the covenant was bread and wine.  
  
And Jesus,  
even in the New Covenant  
said he was looking forward:  
to drinking the last cup of Passover,  
in the Kingdom,  
when He comes again.  
Once you wrap your head around this:  
that it is all about  
eating and drinking  
in the Presence of God,  
then you see it everywhere in the Bible.  
  
It is why God ate with the elders of Israel  
on the mountain,  
and didn’t harm them.  
  
It is why Melchizedek  
offered bread and wine.  
  
It is why Elijah could live for forty days  
on one loaf of bread.  
  
And David ate the bread of the Presence.  
  
This Covenant  
is about   
sitting down in the   
Presence of the Father,  
and eating together  
as a new creation.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ed/59/ed590bfa-368b-4bcf-b1f2-6ba9ca9abcdb/content/images/2026/07/3068a5cf-a4a7-4629-bc5e-d8631431f97f_2250x965-heic.jpg)

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