Sermon on Maundy Thursday

1. As the gospels tell the story, the passion narrative events were all over in a moment of time. The final chapters of the gospels have this breathless quality, of events moving too fast, moments in time, over in a flash.

2. Things were happening and unfolding that seemingly none of his followers could stop, not even Jesus, not even the great healer and teacher.

3. What could Jesus’ followers take away from those last moments of his life, those last days lived in such haste? He must have wondered what he could teach them during those harried final moments.

4. We know that Jesus had taught and prayed with them for months on end. He had preached to the crowds. He had walked with his followers all around the countryside. The great parables and teachings had been pressed indelibly into their minds and memories.

5. But everything seemed to be ending in a just a few days, just a few hours. How could Jesus teach them a way of worshiping together that would stay with them in the scattering of all, that would follow the crucifixion?

6. How could Jesus show that God loved them in the world even unto the end, not only his end in the world, but towards their own ends as well?

7. This final sharing of a simple meal of bread and wine and identifying that loaf of bread and that wine with His body and blood, proved incredibly powerful to the followers. The liturgy of the communion meal, stayed with them during the early, very beginning time after his death, and stays with us even now into our lives today. Jesus’ simple meal captures in one simple action the eternal love of God for us, love unlimited.

8. Why this simple meal?

9. What better way to express the abiding presence of God’s love for us in the flowing changes and chances of our daily, human living?

10. What better way to express this presence with than this simple meal, this feeding of the body and soul with God’s loving presence?

11. Think for a moment What is a meal? What is feeding?

12. Meals are times during each day when we eat food to sustain our bodies, really our lives. Also, meals are often occasions for sharing our social life together. Meals are the way our physical bodies continue to exist in the daily flow of energy, of life, by taking in the nutrients we need from the bounty of nature’s creation.

13. On any particular day, or at any particular time, you might think our bodies are really solid and fixed and permanent. The body seems to maintain the same appearance, more or less, day in and day out, and even over many years. But biology teaches that actually the cells in our bodies are constantly dying and being replaced by new cells, so that the body that is seen today is not in fact made up of the same molecules and cells that were in it even quite recently. So, even in our seemingly solid bodies, there is that rushing going on, too! We have all seen a flesh wound heal in just a few days, which is because the cells in the wound die and are replaced quickly with new ones, all the while drawing on nourishment from the food we eat. The constant solid appearance of our bodies in the midst of these constantly changing organisms that are our bodies continues only by eating, eating what can properly feed us.

14. Jesus chooses to place his eucharistic meal, the literal feeding of his people, at the center point in a world of constant change. This is a power filled symbol of grounding life in God, using the symbol of feeding the body that is itself is solid, yet constantly changing.

15. Jesus’ feeding reveals the intersection of the eternal and the ordinary time in the present moment. The communion meal is both practical, (literal bread and wine), and mystical (the body of Christ). The communion meal expresses both the peace of God that passes all our understanding and the literal, physical restoration of our lives day by day.

16. If we fail to eat we die. If our bodies fail to process the food we eat, we die. If the spirit of a person is not fed, the spirit may die. The eucharist pulls all these strands together.

17. As I said, the Gospels show the final days of Jesus life on this earth as having a kind of breathless quality, moments just flashing by, forces at work that were driving towards the awful end of the crucifixion. And, Jesus, if you will, interrupts that rushing force of events with a simple meal that will be repeated over and over again for centuries to tie together the feeding of our physical bodies with nature’s food and feeding our souls with God’s love-food.

18. Sometimes the daily events of life begin to feel as if they are rushing forward breathlessly in response to forces beyond control. Do you ever feel that way? Does the world and time sometimes seem to be rushing by you? Do you ever want to ask God, please give me something my spirit can really hold onto in the midst of everything happening?

19. Jesus suspends the rushing away of life by feeding the world in the communion meal. He offers what is eternal and sacred and truly abiding in our ever changing bodies and world. He transform the real nature of human feeding by giving spiritual food that never changes.

20. This evening, the church and altar are ritually stripped bare and prepared for the Good Friday liturgy, the commemoration of the events of the crucifixion. The church collectively holds its breath wondering whether all of Jesus’ teaching and preaching, healing, and loving hope will be lost in his death. The gift of the communion meal was Jesus’ last gift to his followers of living, serene hope in a seemingly ever-rushing world.

21. In Jesus name. Amen.