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Maundy Thursday, Year A
1 Corinthians 11:23-26(27-32) - link to NRSV text
Luke 22:14-30 - link to NRSV text
What would you do if that happened to you?
I think Homer does what most of us would do. He makes a long list -- a list that's probably been growing in the back of his mind for a long time -- of things he'd wanted to do before he died, and he hadn't done. He has to cross off the major achievements -- climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, make millions, win an Oscar, that sort of thing -- immediately. There's no time to do those.
But there are a lot of important things he hasn't done yet that he could do, or at least start. He teaches his son to shave. He tells those he loves how he feels about them. He calls his long-neglected father in the nursing home and tries to renew their relationship. And the guy who would rather stay home making his famous ultra-sweet "moon-waffles" wrapped around sticks of butter than go to church gets a recording of Larry King reading the entire bible, and he listens to the whole thing after his family has gone to sleep. He finally gets to some of the most crucial items on his very long list of "things ... left undone," and in the process, lives out what might be the best day of his life.
What would you do, if you thought you were going to die tomorrow? Jesus faces that question on the night we now call Maundy Thursday.
I do believe that Jesus performed miracles, but he could have known without a hint of the miraculous what was coming. It was Passovertide, when all pious Jews were commanded to offer sacrifices in the Temple in Jerusalem. There were about six million Jews spread across the Roman Empire, and a significant percentage of them headed for Jerusalem. The city was clogged with pilgrims (ever seen footage of what Mecca looks like during the Haj? Jerusalem probably looked something like that during Passover) there to celebrate the liberation of God's people from unjust foreign rule.
That's a situation that would make any governor in the empire jumpy. Pilate stood to lose his job if there was trouble, and he was not a man to take chances. During Passover, Pilate lined the pilgrims' way into the city with crosses, the victims on them serving as an endless and unspeakably horrific living tableau of what would happen to any who dared disrupt the peace of the empire.
Even then, Pilate made sure that his guards could keep careful watch over the Temple, where streetcorner prophets proclaimed a God who was more powerful even than the armies of Rome. Guards stationed in the taller building next to the Temple could see directly into its courts and be ready to respond if there was a disturbance.
Days before, Jesus had entered the city surrounded by crowds who loudly proclaimed him, and not Caesar, as king. And then he made his way to the Temple, where -- in the midst of vast and easily agitated crowds -- he was shouting, overturning tables, pushing people.
And so he knew what was coming. Jesus and his friends had walked by those crosses on their way to Jerusalem, the city toward which Jesus, transfigured and in the company of Moses, set his face to accomplish a new exodus. I do believe that Jesus worked miracles by God's power, but no supernatural knowledge would have been needed to see that Jesus was headed for a cross. Jesus knew that this night was probably the last before his death.
What would you do, if it were you?
Here's what Jesus did:
He put on a dinner.
He did what he did every night: he invited people to eat with him. He invited his friends; he also invited the man whom he knew would betray him. He gathered friends and enemies, righteous and wicked and places in between, and he broke bread with them, and offered them wine. He ate with them, as he had countless times before. He celebrated the Passover with them, as he did every year.
That's a life lived with absolute integrity. Jesus knows that in all likelihood, he's going to die tomorrow. This is the time for any unfinished business -- to say anything that needs saying, to do whatever has been left undone, put off.
But Jesus does what he always does, because what he always does, his entire career -- his healings, his parables, his wonder-working -- was doing what he does this night, what he does every time he sits down to a meal. When people want to talk about Jesus' power, they often talk about the spectacular, the stilling of the storm, the raising of the dead. But Jesus' power is demonstrated at least as clearly in what happens when he breaks bread.
When Jesus broke bread, everyone -- the Pharisee and the leper, the rich and the poor, righteous and sinners -- experienced God's welcome at his table. When Jesus broke bread, the hungry were fed. When Jesus broke bread, serving any who came to him, people experienced what REAL power, God's power, does:
The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.
-- Luke 22:25-27
Jesus, having lived with integrity to his last meal, does what he always does: he issues an invitation in the breaking of the bread. On this night, as Jesus invites us to his table, he invites us to live with that kind of integrity, to remember him EVERY time we break bread -- at the altar, certainly, but also in the lunchroom and the dorm cafeteria, the family dinner table or the counter at the diner. Whenever we break bread, or draw breath, we are invited to do so in remembrance of Jesus, until he comes to complete the redemption of the world for which God anointed him.
And there is another invitation, in this breaking of bread. For on this night, on the night he was betrayed, on the night before he died for us, Jesus broke bread, and said to those gathered, "This is my Body." Not just the bread, but the company who gather to share it: this is Jesus' Body, given for the world. And whenever we gather with others made in God's image, other for whom Christ gave himself, Jesus invites us to do so in remembrance of him, aware of and honoring his presence.
It's a solemn charge Jesus gives us tonight. Paul cites Jesus' words on this night to back up his contention that those who fail to "discern the Body" gathered for the Lord's meal, those who fail to recognize everyone Jesus invites to his table as being members of the Body of Christ, are "eating and drinking judgment upon themselves" (1 Cor. 11:29).
But what an opportunity, to encounter and receive Christ in the homeless veteran in the Winter Shelter where we volunteer, in a client with whom we're having a business lunch, in a daughter as we share a snack before bedtime. What an opportunity, to live every moment as an invitation to feast with Jesus, who held every meal as if it were the Messianic banquet.
That's the invitation we receive tonight, to approach this table as if it were the Last Supper, to break bread in the presence of the one who celebrated his last supper as he did every meal, to be the Body of the one whose body was broken for us.
Thanks be to God!
March 18, 2005 in 1 Corinthians, Eucharist, Holy Week, Luke, Year A | Permalink
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Comments
While I do not believe in the performance of miracles, or even of the accuracy of the events surrounding Jesus's final days as depicted in the Gospels, I do believe that something profound is shared in the idea of Jesus's holy meals.
You've definitely hit upon what I think is important about the idea of communion over a meal, and that feeling of sharing that Christians so often overlook in their teachings (and actions).
Posted by: James | Mar 19, 2005 9:52:18 AM
Marvellous! Thanks.
Posted by: graham | Mar 24, 2005 6:03:06 AM
Sarah
I'm wondering why I'm not receiving the blog for which I signed up.
I pray this week's journey be fruitful and filled with Joy.
N+
Posted by: Nancy Malloy+ | Mar 24, 2005 3:28:46 PM
Sarah Dylan,
Wishing you a blessed and joyous Easter from the far North end of the compass.
-mb
Posted by: Michael Burke - Anchorage AK | Mar 25, 2005 1:49:43 AM
James, I hope you heard her preach it last night. The woman can preach! She has a powerful voice and knows how to use it. She knows Christ personally and gets his peronality across instead of her own. On a scale of one to Martin Luther King, Jr., she's already about a 9.1. I'd have left the room believing almost anything she said.
Go, Dylan. ...No! Stay!
Louise
Posted by: Louise Wheeler | Mar 25, 2005 9:23:42 AM
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