The Covenant in the Cup

Saturday Psalm: 4.19.25

Apr 19, 2025

The Saturday devotion focuses on a part of a psalm – a verse, a phrase, even a single word. We pray that it is a blessing to you.

Psalm 16
v5a The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup.

Imagine that you aren’t hearing these words for the thousandth time, but for the first – the very first; imagine a friend handing you a cup and saying, “This is my blood.”

OK, it wasn’t quite that simple. Matthew says the full sentence that Jesus spoke to his disciples was, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins,” but “this is my blood” is in there.

Do you take it? Sniff it? Do you look for suspicious marks on his body?

Do you drink? My first inclination would be to take to heart David’s words from verse 4 of this psalm: “Their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out.”

This psalm is chosen for Easter Sunday, but it has echoes of Maundy Thursday and the initiation of the Eucharist as well. I can imagine saying the words that start verse 5 to myself as I walk up the aisle: “The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup.” The body and the blood.

I’m sure David had no idea how his words tied in with events in his city hundreds of years later. I’m sure none of the participants in that meal had any inkling, either. We benefit from two millennia of speculative theology about the extent to which these words indicated something physical and the extent to which they indicated something metaphysical, and receive years of training on the same. Imagine having this sprung on you instead!

And from that moment, you find out that Jesus’ “drink offering of blood” was both less literal than the ones known to David’s time – the cup held “the fruit of the vine,” not type O- – but also more literal, because he gave his blood on a cross for the forgiveness of all.

To me, one of the most striking aspects of the Lord’s Supper is that it takes something as mundane as dinner and makes it miraculous. Isn’t that just the way with Jesus, though? He can make the commonplace special. He can make the average into apostles. He can justify and sanctify everyday, guilt-ridden sinners like you and me.

And when we’re with Jesus, as the rest of verse 5 says, “you hold my lot,” Lord. Our destiny is secure when the Lord is our chosen portion and our cup.

Happy Easter, everyone.