So this was an autograph from Mr. T. The A-Team was, and is, the best show of all time.

I’m actually a published illustrator. That’s my drawing. It says, “You can kiss all you want, but don’t have more than 2 kids.”

What else is in here? Ah… “Published and illustrated by Me. The Mystery of the Stolen Gem. Chapter 1: Magic. Chapter 2… AHHHHH!” Literally the name of the chapter.

Oh this is good. A Red Sox vs. Yankee ticket. If I recall that game, it was 11-1…Red Sox. Sorry, not sorry, Pastor Bryan. Mostly not sorry.

This is heather from Scotland. One of my best friends went to Scotland, when I was a kid, and my family is very Scottish. This heather is like 20 years old.

Ooooo! Wooden toy car. I actually stole this. I stole this from my kindergarten classroom.

If you had gone into my room as a child, you would have seen objects like this everywhere. It just littered my room, trinkets and knickknacks on every square inch of every flat surface in my room was covered in stuff and hanging up of the walls… It was ridiculous. But every object for me, especially as a little kid, had a meaning to it. It had a story assigned to it and so the objects just felt so important. It felt like a physical representation of that thing. And that's how objects work after all, isn't it? I mean, they have the value that we assigned to them. They have the value of the memories we assigned to them.

We assigned to them and for the Jewish culture it’s no different with a lot of what they do, why they do it, when they do it, the meals, the festivals, the Holidays, all of those things and everything in those things has a meaning and symbolizes something from their past that allows them to never forget what God has done for them throughout history. Passover is one of those important festival meals that reminds them of something very specific in their history. It reminded them of when their ancestors were slaves in Egypt and there were ten plagues and the last of those plagues was the Angel of death and he was wiping his way over Egypt and across Egypt taking the firstborns of every family.

And so the Jewish people were told if you want to live if you want to survive, if you want your your firstborns to live, then you have to go out, and you have to get a pure lamb, and you have to kill it, you have to spill it's blood, and you have to take that blood, and you have to wipe it across your door, and then and only then will the angel of death pass over you. So that's what

they celebrate when they do that meal and it was the same thing that Jesus and His disciples were doing in Luke chapter 22 right before Jesus went to the cross and was arrested. We know this meal also as the Last Supper because it was the last meal that Jesus shared with His disciples.

So, Jesus, as is frequently the case, He likes to take things and he likes to flip them upside down and assign new meaning to things. So He takes the Passover, which you just shouldn't touch, right, you just shouldn't mess with that and yet He takes that and He takes the bread and He takes the wine and He assigns new meaning to them. He essentially says that, “What you were celebrating as way in which your ancestors accomplished surviving the angel of death because of what they did and the sacrifices that they made, I now take on. It is no longer up to you because if you recall before then, and after then, and even now, and what will happen in the next 72 hours, you will find that you will continue to fail. What you rescued your firstborns from once, I am about to rescue all of you from for eternity. It is now about what I am about to do in accomplish that you could never accomplish for yourselves. I’m going to spill my blood and I’m going to break my bones and I’m going to suffer so that you do not have to experience death and eternal separation from God. So He shifted all of Passover.

But what struck me most about this chapter was verse 15 when He says, “I have been very eager to eat this Passover meal with you before My suffering begins.” Before I suffer for you. Before I suffer because of you. In the next 72 hours, Jesus would experience from His closest friends’ betrayal, pride, arrogance, weakness, abandonment, and denial and yet He desired to be with them to share this meal with them…and they missed it.

They missed it! Jesus, the God of the universe, the Creator of all things, the God who they keep celebrating in their history, with their meals, in their remembering and their traditions is standing right in front of them. He’s eager to eat with them even though they're awful, even though they’re weak, even though they’re arrogant and full of themselves, He desires to be with them. He is with them, sharing a meal with them. He was telling them His plan. He was acting out love. The God of the universe was washing their feet was feeding them and they missed it! …but i bet they never missed it again.

You see, every Passover after that would have been different. It no longer just celebrated what God accomplished for their people in Egypt thousands of years ago. No. Every Passover after this would have been different. The bread and the wine would have represented, as it does today, the body and blood of Christ broken and spilled for us, to accomplish what we could never accomplish for ourselves. Every Passover was different, but I think, for the disciples, every time they took bread every time they took a sip of wine, I bet they remembered because I think on the other side of the resurrection they realized what they missed. They put all the pieces together they realized what Christ had done. They realized the missed opportunity and i bet they never wanted to miss God at work in and through their lives ever again.

This is Eric and these are his parents. Eric Jacober and I went to high school together. He was kind and he just had this way of engaging everybody and making everybody feel comfortable

around him and he had this great sense of humor and he could just float from social group to social group to social group and it didn't matter. And so it didn't matter they hung out with me, the awkward one. He invited me several times to step into his social circles and I didn't want to. I was too shy for that and I didn't want the rejection or I was just too afraid and lacked a great deal of confidence, but he kept inviting me and…it just wasn't my thing.

In March of 2005 Eric died in a plane crash with his parents. I missed him. I miss him. I didn't have many friends in high school, certainly no guy friends. I missed the opportunities with Eric as a friend.

My students and their families, they hear a lot from me. I've been in youth ministry for a lot of years. I suppose there's always been this sense of urgency that might be felt by my students when I talk to them, when I reach out to them, when I keep asking questions, reaching out when I don't hear back… I suppose I just I don't want to miss them. I don't want to miss an opportunity with them.

We are welcomed into the presence of Jesus, Who eagerly desires to be with us. Things will get in the way. We are human. I have continued to miss opportunities, but as we head into this Easter I pray that you remember that this God is far more personal, far more for you and excited and eager to be in your presence than you will ever fully comprehend. He is right in front of you. Don’t miss it.