1 Corinthians
11:23-32
Maundy Thursday
March 28, 2013
I suspect you
remember the story of the woman who was preparing her first Easter dinner for
her extended family. She was very
excited and wanted it to be just perfect.
Her mom was in the kitchen helping when the woman took the ham out of
the oven and carefully cut off about 4 inches from the ends before putting it
in to bake. Her mother was puzzled, and
carefully asked, “Honey, why did you cut off so much of the ham just now?” The daughter, equally perplexed said, “why
mom, I remember you always cut the ends off the ham when you made Easter
dinner. I figured that’s just what you
need to do.” Her mother laughed and
said, “I only cut off what didn’t fit into my baking pan. Your that ham would have fit perfectly well
in the pan you have.”
It
can be like that in the church. There
are certain things we do every year, or every month, or every week. But just because we do them doesn’t mean we
know why we do them. And if we don’t
know why we do things we are likely to do them in the wrong way or for the
wrong reasons. Part of Paul’s words
today are a warning about that. He
warns that it is possible to share this meal, this holy communion the wrong
way, with the wrong thinking. And in so
doing we are quite likely to enter into judgment when we were hoping to find
grace.
So
here’s a question. What does Maundy
Thursday actually mean? Maundy comes
from the same Latin word as mandate.
Jesus mandated that his followers eat this bread and drink this cup,
sharing a meal that has come to be known as Holy Communion, or the Lord’s
Supper.
Here’s
another question. Why do most churches
reserve the job of presiding over the communion to an ordained clergy
person? Think about that for a
moment. Back in the days before the
Reformation, when the Mass was conducted in a Latin that the people didn’t
understand, they came to believe all manner of untrue things about the Lord’s
Supper. They new something very special
and holy was taking place, especially when the priest said “Hoc es corpus” and
the bell rang and he lifted up the bread for all to see. But without understanding it all seemed like
magic. Hocus pocus. Some of them had learned a little bit more –
like the doctrine that the bread and wine they offered from home somehow became
the actual body and blood of Jesus, and must be revered as if Jesus were fully
present in the room. Because the priest knew the words to make this
transformation take place he was like a
magician, and the consecrated host seemed so magic that folks would often try
to put it in their pockets, save to use later like medicine.
The
Reformers, and since Vatican II the Catholic church also have sought to remedy
this problem, by allowing the people to worship in the language they best
understand, and seeking to teach people better about communion. The real reason priests have been singled
out as the presiders of Holy Communion is that it takes some training to help
the people of God remember rightly what this meal is all about. The number one job of a clergy person during
Eurcharist, and perhaps all week long, is to help people remember Jesus Christ,
and our relationship to him rightly.
Remembering
is so important that Jesus said it twice.
Jesus gave thanks, broke the bread and said This is my body that is for
you. Do this in remembrance of me. In
the same way he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new
covenant in my blood. Do this, as often
as you drink it in remembrance of me.”
When
Paul reminded the Corinthians this story he was concerned because it seems they
were forgetting what being a Christian community was all about. There were many things that they were
fighting over in their congregation. One was that they weren’t sharing food. In their day in Corinth
the church was gathering for a meal, bringing food from home each time they
shared communion. The trouble was it
was expected in their culture that wealthy people would have plenty of rich,
delicious food in their baskets, but there were poorer people who had no
food. They had to sit around waiting
for those with food to dine, and then worship together, and usually the poor
ones left the service hungry. In
retelling the story of Jesus and the disciples at the Last Supper Paul is
reminding them that Jesus meant the community to eat and drink together,
thinking of Jesus, sharing as Jesus shared, forgiving as Jesus forgave. Paul
reminds them that the Last Supper took place on the night he was betrayed. Even Judas was given the bread and the
cup. The cup of Jesus’ sacrifice was
the cup of the new covenant – forging a new relationship with all the followers
of Christ as brothers and sisters. Paul
hoped that the act of sharing communion would help the church in Corinth
remember who they were, and what Jesus intended them to be and do. He hoped that they would proclaim the Lord’s
death by the way they lived, as much as by what they said. He wanted it to be completely true that the
people of Corinth would know the Christians by their love for one another and
for the stranger.
The
proclamation of Jesus Christ is what sets us free. The word in the bible for proclamation combines the word for out
with the word for message. And the
Greek word for message is – angelon
– the same word for angel. Paul is
telling the church that every time we take communion rightly, every time our
behavior matches the true memory of what Jesus came to do, we are like angels,
proclaiming Jesus’ good news to the world.
But on the other hand, every time we fail to remember rightly, and live
in discord with the Message of Jesus we block and bind up the good news,
preventing it from spreading. If we
live in faith in a way that forgets Jesus’ purpose we can block people from
knowing the true Christ.
This
isn’t just with communion. One example
is the second half of our worship this evening, the Reproaches. This service was developed in Ancient France
and was meant to help Christians feel the gravity of the sins of the world for
which Christ died. It was meant to help
us remember all the many ways we can get bound up, even after receiving the
saving grace of God in our lives. Even when like the Israelites and Moses we
are freed from slavery, freed from sin by the waters of baptism, we would turn
on our savior and make a cross for him.
Even when God has faithfully given us our daily bread, day after day,
year after year; even when God leads us through the hard times, we would turn on
our savior and make a cross for him. Even
when he made us the branches of his vineyard and gave us the water of
salvation, we would give Jesus vinegar and gall. Even though God led us through the wilderness to a land of
freedom and prosperity we have felt free to judge, mock and even beat him. The Reproaches are meant to help us, as a
church, take ownership for the sins of the world and turn back to God our
merciful to save us again and help us change.
Yet as the ancient service was used year after year, the people and
priests forgot to see themselves as the ones Jesus was reproaching. In many of their villages there was a
neighborhood of Jews. How convenient to
begin to think that Jesus was reproaching the Jews. It didn’t take long before the Good Friday service of Reproaches
incited the Christian worshippers to anger against their Jewish neighbors – an
anger that boiled so hot they left the sanctuary like Patriot’s fans after the
Superbowl – but instead of turning cars upside down they pummeled any
unfortunate Jew they could find. The Reproaches
was disbanded, even by the Catholic church, because it had deteriorated from an
act of worship to a catalyst for evil once the people forgot what it meant.
But
the Methodists revived the service. After all Paul tells us we are to proclaim
Christ’s death until he comes. But the
words have been changed to help us remember and proclaim rightly. The reproaches tonight will help us to
remember the ways in which we are bound up.
Each one of us comes to [worship] bound up in ourselves, in our own sins.
But the prayer of the liturgy inserts each of us into a story that is older and
deeper than ourselves, giving us language for ourselves that we would not have
discovered looking at ourselves in the mirror.
For yes we are sinners. We are
the ones who betray Jesus. But his
mercy is so great that he still gives us his body and blood for our
salvation. And that salvation comes not
only through his death, but in the good news of his resurrection, and the hope
that he will grab each one of us by the hand and lift us up with him to eternal
life.
Clergy
are given the duty of presiding over communion so that we will all remember
rightly, and we won’t do anything for the wrong reasons. We are given the challenging of helping the
congregation remember in a way that we eat and drink this meal rightly – in
right relationship to God, to one another and to the world – so that in sharing
this meal, and living together as brothers and sisters in Christ our lives and
our words will freely proclaim the Lord’s death and resurrection until he comes
again.
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