Maundy Thursday
The Rev. Dan Rondeau
St. Margaret's Episcopal Church & School
Exodus 12:1-14a | Psalm 78:14-20, 23-25 | 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 | Luke 22:14-30
Jesus said, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you….” Luke 22:15
They came hungry. They came hungry for the retelling of God’s mighty acts that delivered Israel from Pharaoh and slavery. They came hungry for relationship with Jesus. They came hungry for the community they were building with Jesus at the center. They came hungry for ways to serve Jesus in this Passover meal.
They came aware that great events, perhaps dangerous events, were afoot. They sensed, perhaps, that they would be in the middle of it all. Perhaps, they came hoping that nothing would happen, that they would become invisible, unseen, forgotten by both Jews and Romans. I have no doubt that they were somewhat on edge either way.
With heightened awareness they marked this meal with Jesus. With deliberate words and strong purpose Jesus blessed this meal. With attentiveness we come tonight to remember and mark, and Jesus comes, again and always, to bless this meal.
We come tonight keenly aware of how some words and actions become powerful and mysterious because of what happens after their speaking and doing. Remembering special moments that changed lives, that changed whole nations and people, is something we are familiar with.
In my parents’ generation the remembering often begins with where they were, what they were doing, who they were with and what they felt as the reports came across on the radio on December 7, 1941. The memories are written in the hearts of an entire generation.
Together with my folks I remember another fateful day, where I was, what I was doing, that I was home alone. Sick and alone on November 22, 1963 I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, what I was hearing. As the family returned later that day the sorrow only increased, the shock deepened.
Three generations of my family remember another day, where we were, what we were doing, who we were with, and how it felt. We remember and tell the stories of how, though thousand of miles distant, we were hurt, and harmed and filled with grief as terrorists crashed planes in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. on September 11, 2001.
We are keenly aware, in our own lives, how it is that certain events become a part of us by report. The mere mention of the events are able to evoke an emotional response in us. They touch not just our minds and memories, they touch our hearts.
So it is for us who follow Christ. On this day in Holy Week, on Maundy Thursday the generations come together to tell the story of the Passover meal shared by Jesus. This story touches our hearts.
We come hungry. We come hungry for the retelling of God’s mighty acts that delivered Israel from Pharaoh and slavery. And, we come hungry for the retelling of how Jesus began the final steps to deliver us from sin and death. We come hungry for relationship with Jesus. We come hungry for the community we are building with Jesus at the center. We come hungry for ways to serve Jesus in our neighbor and in the world.
Tonight hear the words of Jesus and remember that Jesus, too, desires relationship with us, community with us, and commands us to serve as he served.
Hear Jesus speak to you, speak to those sitting near you, speak to everyone in this room: “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you….”1 Jesus desires table fellowship with us. Jesus desires to enter into a relationship with us. Every time we gather to remember, to give thanks, to break the bread at this table, to share from this table, remember: Jesus desires this relationship with you.
Hear Jesus speak as he breaks the bread and shares the cup. His words are a profound testimony, a powerful invitation to be in communion with him and with each other. Jesus desires to build and nourish a community with you and me: “Then [Jesus] took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”2 As Jesus is in you and me in the bread and cup shared from this table, he desires to fashion us into a community with his love, his power, at the heart of the community.
It is refreshing that Luke tells us how little the Apostles understood of this (though their memory was firm and their lives did ultimately change). Luke reports that after this tender scene, after these powerful and mysterious words that continue to change us today, the Apostles began (incredibly) to dispute among themselves about who was the greatest.
So the word spoken by Jesus and remembered is this: “I am among you as one who serves.”3 Eventually they got it. Perhaps with enough re-telling and communal encouragement, we will get it, too. We are to serve as Jesus loved and served others.
Jesus, in this meal, reminds us that he desires, at all times and all places, to enter into a relationship with us. Jesus nourishes and forms us into a community where serving is more important than anything, where love is stronger than hatred and indifference, where life and light triumph over death and darkness.
We receive a wonderful gift tonight. We share a wonderful gift every time we gather to remember the command of Jesus. Let us renew our hearts this night to receive the embrace and friendship of Jesus, to welcome each other as brothers and sisters around this table God has set, let us serve each other, our neighbors and the world because that is the example set us by Jesus and that is the work to which we are called by Jesus and for which we are nourished in this meal.
Amen.
Postscript
Three truths gleaned from Luke 22. As we remember this meal we discover it is a meal to renew relationship, create community, and inspire service.
Relationship: 15[Jesus] said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer
Community: 19Then [Jesus] took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 20And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.
Service: 26 [Jesus said,] “But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. 27For 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.”
I found inspiration in these words for tonight’s homily:
Ellen T. Charry has written in The Christian Century (Nov. 15, 1995): “Christians are bound together by feasting at the Lord’s table. True, they are bound together by sharing in potluck suppers too, but there is a difference. In the parish hall, they share themselves, the work of their hands, their hospitality at a table set for one another. But the Lord’s table is set by God.
“In this shared meal, Christians become sisters and brothers in Christ. In this moment, they venture out from behind the screens of privacy and solitude, out of the fragmentation that characterizes their lives. The Eucharist is the great Christian equalizer. All come hungry, yearning to be fed of God; all leave filled, fed on God’s love. Whatever divides them from one another dies away.
“No one’s need is greater than another’s. No one’s pain is deeper than another’s. No one’s sin is fiercer than another’s. Issues of race, gender and inequalities of wealth and power cease to exist at the Lord’s table. Here Christians are knit together by their hunger for God and God’s satisfying that need for each and all. Such unity, fleeting though it may be, is a taste of the Christian hope for the time when, as Julian of Norwich put it, all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.”4
1 Luke 22:15
2 Luke 22:19-20
3 Luke 22:27
4 Quoted in Synthesis, April 13, 2006.
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