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The Week That Changed The World Devotional March 19

by David Joynt on March 19, 2024


MARK 14:22 | 22 While they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.”

 

Take, eat, this is my body. These famous words constitute the first part of the consecration in the communion liturgy. Many debates have occurred over their meaning. Do the elements become the actual body and blood? Do they represent His body and blood? Does the Holy Spirit use the elements to convey to spiritual power of His body and blood? These debates cannot be settled. But what is clear is that Jesus does in word and sacrament, what He did in word and deed in His ministry: He speaks and He touches. God     uses rituals and ordinary things for holy and beautiful purposes.

 

What rituals bless and feed you, personally and corporately?

 

 

Gracious God,

Thank You for holy rituals in which You touch and heal us. Don’t let  theological differences divide and separate us from You or each other.

Amen.

 

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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