Friends: When Jesus says, “It is finished,” what does that have to do with the book of Exodus? Funny how the Bible all ties together. 

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Spirituality Column #1028

July 28, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Incomplete Passover

By Bob Walters

“I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God.” – Exodus 6:7

There is a thing – not sure if it is best to label it a heresy, a questionable doctrine, or merely a “controversial Christian theological belief” – called “supersessionism” that means the New Testament of the Bible replaces or supersedes the Old Testament.

Also known as “replacement theology,” it is the notion that with the completeness of Jesus Christ and the divine salvation described in the New Testament there is no need for the Old Testament’s stories of God, Israel, Creation, the Commandments … all of it. They become superfluous because Christ is sufficient. Who needs Moses?

As Christians we can all agree, I think, that Christ is sufficient, e.g., 1 Corinthians 12:9 where Jesus tells Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” The grace and power of Christ is infinite; there’s nothing quite like it, for humans, in the Old Testament.  But I will rail loudly against the negation of the Old Testament. It is the foundation for why we are here (God’s glory), what our purpose is (participating in that glory), and where our destiny lies (eternal relationship with God).

The Old Testament is a divine story with no ending and no solution.  It stops at Malachi, and through its many prophesies says something further is going to happen. In its 39 books (for my Catholic friends, 46 books with the Apocrypha, but that’s another issue), the OT describes who God is, who we are, what Creation’s problems are, and never exactly nails down an ultimate point.  It is more than “Israel will be God’s people.

Jesus Christ shows up in humanity, as human, and restores people – all people – to the promise of eternal relationship with God. But Jesus doesn’t just “show up.” A careful reading shows that Jesus has been “with us” all the time.  He is the Creative Word of God: “In the Beginning was the word … and the word was God.” (John 1:1).

I was taught to be very careful in assessing the “human” presence of a pre-incarnate Christ.  Father, Son, and Spirit are eternal – no beginning, no end – but one wonders exactly with whom Jacob was wrestling (Genesis 32:22). What was the deal with the burning bush? Various prophets physically encountering God – these are called theophanies – bring good questions that do not prove or disprove one’s faith, only one’s curiosity.  I’m like that.  My relationship with Jesus has jumped from the pages of the Bible into my heart, so I know it’s OK to question and investigate all that scripture offers.

That said, one can find Jesus on every page of the Bible if one knows what one is looking for.  And this past week I ran across a correlation I had never previously seen.

It was in a Traci Coston post July 19 (full post here and below). Jesus interrupted his final Passover meal – the Last Supper – that began in the upper room (John 13-14) but wasn’t completed until the Cross (John 19), when Jesus said, “It is finished.”

Costin notes, “The Passover meal traditionally includes four cups of wine, each connected to God’s promises in the Book of Exodus 6:67. The four cups represent 1. Sanctification – “I will bring you out,” 2. Deliverance – “I will rescue you,” 3. Redemption – “I will redeem you,” and 4. – Praise / Completion – “I will take you as my people.”

At the last supper in Luke 22, Jesus drinks the first three but not the fourth. That is reserved for the Cross when Jesus exhales saying, “It is finished.” What is “finished?”

Passover is finished; it is completed: the ultimate Passover sacrifice where God takes not only the Jews as His own but restores His relationship with all mankind. Faith in Christ is our acceptance of that offer, and our faith in Christ completes our salvation.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes: All scripture is useful (2 Timothy 2:16-17).

Traci CostonStrange Detail - Link

There's a strange detail in the Last Supper that most people never notice. Jesus stopped the Passover meal partway through.

And He didn't finish it until the cross.

The Passover meal traditionally includes four cups of wine, each connected to God's promises to Israel in the Book of Exodus 6:6-7. The cups represent:

1. Sanctification - "I will bring you out."

2. Deliverance — "I will rescue you."

3. Redemption - "I will redeem you."

4. Praise / Completion - "I will take you as My people."

Now watch what Jesus does. During the meal He lifts a cup and says: "This cup is the new covenant in My blood." (Luke 22:20)

Luke specifically says this happened after supper, which corresponds to the third cup - the Cup of Redemption. Jesus was declaring He is the redemption.

But then something strange happens. Jesus says:

"I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” (Luke 22:20)

He stops before the fourth cup. The Passover meal is left unfinished. Later, while hanging on the cross, Jesus is given sour wine.

Then He declares: "It is finished." (John 19:30)

The Passover Lamb had been sacrificed.

Redemption was complete. Jesus giving His life on the cross was the fulfillment of Passover itself.

Friends: Where there is smoke, there is fire, and there is an awful lot of smoke – the unhealthy kind – in our current political and religious culture.  More fire for the truth of God and the gift of Christ will save us.

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Spirituality Column #1027

July 21, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

A World Without Miracles

By Bob Walters

“You are the God who performs miracles.” – Psalms 77:14

We arrived in smokey northern Michigan a few days ago hoping mother nature would give us a break and clear the air for our family vacation. Nowhere is pretty in these conditions, but in this glorious God-blessed area, we trust the sun will return.

Massive chunks of Ontario, Canada and even parts of northern Minnesota are enduring wildfires of great human, animal, and woodland disruption and destruction. Still, it seems unfair these fires have the audacity to dampen our arrival Up North.

We live in a blame-crazy world, whether the blame is rational or not. It’s easy in northern Michigan – actually the entire U.S. northern Midwest – to blame Canadian forest fires or Canadian forest management or, somehow, Canadians themselves for our momentary inconvenience. I’ve not entertained the need to blame Minnesota, but a dose of human compassion for the death and destruction there and farther north is a more humane attitude. These fires are nasty; pray for the victims, ask God for rain.

Here, we will be inconvenienced by a day or two of dangerous air quality but our lives won’t be ruined: thanking God for that.  Vacation will commence. I’ll pray for a miracle for the folks farther north, and not stoke my annoyance with misdirected blame.

Still, there must be someone or something to blame, right? Since blaming humans is disconcerting and requires retribution, I’d prefer the peace of blaming an entity I can’t hold responsible, like, say, Mother Nature. And that leads to a thought.

G.K. Chesterton in his 1908 classic, Orthodoxy, mentions Mother Nature while making a point about God’s identity. He notes nature is a creation of God, just like mankind is a creation of God. The lesson? God and Mother Nature are not the same.

Chesterton instead sees Mother Nature as a co-creation, a relative of humans. And not so much like a mother, but more like a “funny little sister.” As created beings we need to worship God and as Christians give grace to God’s creation, not blame it.

 The “Gaia, the Earth Mother” worshipping crowd, I think, gets it all wrong. Humanity causes as many or more problems for other humans as does “Mother Nature.” In that vein, I think “climate change” is a human dodge to shift an explanation in nature back onto blame for humanity, thereby creating guilt and thus a lever for some humans to control other humans. A real miracle would be humans living in peace.

So, here is my actual point. That peace – that miracle – is what we have in Jesus Christ.  A miracle of all miracles, the point of the Resurrection, is God proving His reality, presence, truth, and love by sending His son into humanity for our salvation: not just from our sins but from the cloaking darkness of our blameworthy fallenness. 

Jesus is God’s light and it is a miracle we can see Him, live with Him, and have faith have eternal hope with Him. Blame evaporates. What’s a bigger miracle than that?

Living in a world with God, knowing God, trusting God, loving God is a gift.  It is the glory of our humanity.  Any human, entity, or ideology seeking to destroy and denigrate that gift – that truth – is an enemy we must righteously resist. 

A life without God? A life without miracles? That’s the threat we truly face in our world, and it is not wildfire smoke.  It is the very real fire of Islam’s attempted destruction of our Christian culture and Communism’s leftist challenge to our free market republic.

I pray for the miracle of America addressing these threats and not losing our nature. If our nation disappears – and it could – we’ll have only ourselves to blame.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) found this recent Marco Rubio Speech sobering.

Friends: These ovine sleuths solve a murder mystery and echo timeless truth in a movie for the whole flock. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #1026

July 14, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

The Sheep Detectives

By Bob Walters

‘Behold, the lamb of God!” – John the Baptist, John 1:29

“Do this in remembrance of me.” Jesus, Mark 14, Luke 22, 1 Corinthians 11

“... And a friend should never be forgotten.” – Mopple, in The Sheep Detectives

Pam’s daughter’s three kids (second grade boy/girl twins, fourth grade boy) were here for a grandkids sleepover last Sunday and Nana’s evening entertainment was watching this summer’s movie, The Sheep Detectives, on Prime.

Released in May, it is a secular movie loaded with Christian symbolism and surprisingly well-informed and non-hostile to several basics of Christian doctrine. I was working in my office publishing last week’s column, and from the living room I heard laughter, Pam talking to the kids while she paused the movie, and was unaware of the soft tears that welled up occasionally.

I was intrigued enough that I convinced Pam to watch it again the next evening with me.  I laughed, got teary eyed, was intrigued by the premise, and seriously curious about “whodunit.” We paused several times to discuss Christian metaphors and marvel at how a secular, Hollywood movie not the least bit promoted as Christian fare got this much right. One review came close: it is “entertainment for the whole flock.”

It’s playful, with same director as the Minions movies. It is thoughtful, written by the guy who wrote Chernobyl.

Briefly, a shepherd (Hugh Jackman) reads mystery books to his sheep. The shepherd – with no idea the sheep understand him – winds up dead, and the sheep solve the mystery. Emma Thompson plays an engaging character, while Julia Louis-Dreyfus voices Lily the sleuthing ewe and Chris O’Dowd voices Mopple, the wise old ram who, intriguingly, is the only sheep with complete memory. The other sheep protect themselves by forgetting bad things, and believe that when they die, they become clouds.

Again, it is obvious that the producers and most reviewers – I’m guessing on purpose or possibly out of politically correct feigned ignorance – whistle past the Christian themes. But they are definitely there: poignant, funny, and true.

Justice, for example, is described by Mopple this way: “It means the good should not be harmed by the bad. The weak should not be harmed by the strong. And a friend should never be forgotten.” It is not far-fetched to find our remembrance of Jesus, and then put it together with the sheep’s defense mechanism of forgetting.  When we forget, we lose our purpose; and our faith is what we remember. Something to think about.

There is a runt “winter sheep” shunned by the flock, and the fourth-grade grandson said: “Nana, they’re not showing justice to that little winter lamb.” Kids learn quickly.

I’m reminded how Jesus was shunned by the Pharisees … and so many others.

My out-loud cackle was when the sheep walked by a church and Mopple explained: “That’s where God lives.” “Who’s God?” a sheep asks. Mopple: “He’s a shepherd, but he’s also a lamb, and he’s also invisible, and he’s made of bread, and he damns things …”  The other sheep: “Like a beaver (dams)?” Mopple: “Yes. And they eat him on Sundays.” The other sheep: “Poor God.” A great transubstantiation joke.

Without giving away too much, Sebastian is another older, wiser ram who lives apart from the flock. But when trouble arises (think Jesus coming for our salvation), Sebastian returns, in danger, and explains, “You are my flock.” Pair that with John 15:13-15, as Jesus leads the Disciples through Jerusalem toward Gethsemane, and says, “I called you friends.” Justice is remembering our friends, and joy is knowing Jesus remembers us.

What a friend we have in Jesus, and what a thoughtful movie this is to behold.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) omitted some names to protect the innocent.

 

Friends,

Here is Common Christianity column #1025 (7-7-26), “A Dash of Thankfulness.” A friend from childhood passed away and I had a few thoughts during her Celebration of Life.  See the column below, or at our blog CommonChristianity.blogspot.com, or on social media.  Hope you had a happy Fourth of July!

Blessings, Bob

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Labels: 1 Thessalonians 5:18, Battle Creek, Celebration of Life, Chrysler, Kokomo IN, Lena, Linda Ellis, my sister Linda, The Beatles, The Dash Poem

Spirituality Column #2025

July 7, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

A Dash of Thankfulness    By Bob Walters

“Give thanks in all circumstances…” - 1 Thessalonians 5:18

My sister Linda and I recently went to childhood friend Lena’s Celebration of Life.

Linda remembers Lena, a neighbor, standing in our driveway to greet and meet us the day we moved into our new home in Kokomo, Ind. We had moved there from Battle Creek, Mich., where our dad had been city editor of the Enquirer and News newspaper. He now would work in public relations at the Chrysler Transmission Plant in the car industry hot-bed city 50 miles north of Indianapolis.

A piece of trivia I love about the move is that it was the weekend of February 8-9, 1964, the Sunday the Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. In a nation still stinging from President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, the Beatles from England sparked a re-shaping of American youth and music culture. For us, Kokomo was a great place to grow up. We lived there through our college years.

But, back to Lena. She was Linda’s age, and the word was out that a new girl was joining sixth grade at Lincoln Elementary School. In no time, we were folded into the Walnut Street “gang” of 12-15 kids (depending how you counted) going to school together, playing kick-the-can on Sunday evenings, hiking through Foster Park to the immense, round Seashore swimming pool, stopping off at the miniature golf course for sno-cones, and riding bikes all over Kokomo’s downtown and west side.

When I was an altar boy at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Kokomo, my usual short-cut foot route to church was through Lena’s back yard. Her family, when they went, attended the Greek Orthodox church in Indianapolis; now located in west Carmel.

Lena was a delight. Friendly, smart, full of humor, a beautiful girl of Greek descent. Two doors farther down the block was LeaLea, later a Kokomo High School cheerleader (a very big deal). “Lena, LeaLea, and Linda” were a tight unit of great friends who stayed in touch the rest of their lives. Lena died June 11 at age 73.

I wanted to share the flavor of our childhood days. At some point I learned that Lena’s name was actually Helen (a good Greek name), and LeaLea’s name was Leslie, though I never called them by their real names. LeaLea, sadly, could not make the funeral due to illness. I was last with them at a Walnut St. lunch reunion in early 2020.

Lena was married (then divorced) and had a son, Christian, who delivered a breathtaking eulogy at the celebration of life in Broad Ripple (Indianapolis) where they lived. We knew Lena survived cancer twice, but there were other difficult times of which neither Linda nor I were aware. From the pictures, Lena retained her beauty throughout.

Leading the service was a retired priest (now a police chaplain) who recited parts of The Dash Poem by Linda Ellis. Published in 1998, it is a popular verse noting that a tombstone has two dates – birth and death – with a dash in between. The poem’s end:

 “So, when your eulogy is being read with your life’s action to rehash, would you be proud of the things they say about how you spent your dash?”

Lena lived a full life, traveled, ran marathons, taught and tutored special ed kids, and loved her son and granddaughter intensely. But I grew uneasy as the chaplain returned multiple times to the line about “how proud Helen must be” of her “dash.”

I’m guessing Lena, ever gracious and humble, would have cringed, too. Proud?

Lena, I think, would be thankful for her “dash,” not proud. Pride is when we give our lives to ourselves; thankfulness, like love, are the eternal blessings we give away.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) and Lena’s younger brother Johnny were great pals.