Maundy Thursday April 12,2012
Ex. 12:1-14a Ps. 78:14-20, 23-25
1 Cor 11:23-32 John 13:1-15
I
begin with a really bad joke which I’ve told over and over again but there is an
obvious point about it.
The
rabbi and the priest are talking together and the rabbi says, “Father, you Christians
have stolen your religious beliefs and practices from Judaism.” And the priest replied, “Rabbi, what do you
mean?” And the Rabbi said, “Well, take
for example the 10 commandments; you’ve stolen them from us.” And the priest relied, “Yes, rabbi, we did
steal the 10 commandments, but we didn’t keep them.”
The truth of our Christian origin is that we
borrowed much from Judaism, but the punchline truth is that we haven’t kept
what we borrowed from Judaism in the same ways in which Jews have kept to their
ancient traditions and in the ways in which their own traditions have developed.
This evening is Maundy Thursday and we
commemorate the institution of the Holy Eucharist. And we must know that the Holy Eucharist as
it appears in the New Testament writing is not presented as a complete Seder or
Passover meal. The first reference to
Holy Eucharist is in St. Paul’s writings in his writing about the Lord’s
Table. He found that the church in
Corinth had so removed the lines between a meal with holy implications from an
actual eating of a meal that the spiritual meaning of the meal was being lost
or diminished or trivialized. St. Paul
told the people of the Corinthian church to eat at home before they came to the
practice of Eucharist in the gathering so that they would discern the presence
of Christ in partaking of the bread and wine.
St. Paul said that he received this tradition from the Lord himself,
even though St. Paul never walked with Jesus.
We are told that the early Christian gathered on the first day of the
week for the breaking of the bread and the prayers.
The Eucharist on Maundy Thursday traces the
normal practice of Sunday Eucharist back to a Passover time event. One can
find significant ways in which the Eucharist has departed from the Passover
tradition. Of the Passover meal, there
are only two elements which remained; the bread and a single cup of wine. The Eucharist is a weekly celebration on the
first day of the week; the Passover was a once a year celebration and most
often done with family and invited guests. When there was a temple it there was a
gathering at the Temple because Passover was an important pilgrimage time. In the
Passover meal there were and are prayers and recitations and the four questions
which were part of the liturgy of the meal.
Yes, the Eucharist retains words of our salvation history and Jesus is
regarded to be understood under the symbol of the Paschal Lamb, but the
Eucharist is significantly removed in its identity from the Passover. I think it best today to allow the Passover
Seder to be observed by our Jewish brothers and sisters within the settings of
their community. We can note how our
Christian origins involved a significant re-interpretation, re-editing and
reduction of what we inherited from Judaism in our formation. The best way to observe a Passover meal is
to be privileged to accept an invitation from our Jewish brothers and sister
and learn to understand and appreciate how the Passover tradition still remains
for them a crucial root event for their identity as a community of people.
At the same time we cannot deny that our
founding apostles and early teachers understood the life of Jesus from the
Hebraic roots of the Christian Gospel. We
“stolen” from the Hebraic roots in the development of Christian theology and
practice, but we haven’t kept the theology and practices of Judaism in the ways
in which the continuing Jewish communities have kept to their roots.
I do not think that we want to return to a
literalism about a Paschal Lamb. The
Paschal Lamb as the main course of a meal which celebrates a covenant relationship
is based upon understanding that God is a God who would kill all oldest sons
except for the families with inside information about how to avoid it. The Israelites had insider instructions to
eat the substitutionary Passover lamb, whose blood was on the door post of the
homes, because presumably the angels of death would avoid those homes. The same Hebrew people who had this Passover
story also had prophets who proclaimed that God did not want the blood of
animals; God wanted the living sacrifice of lives willing to love mercy,
practice justice and walk humbly before God.
The life of Jesus was a living sacrifice, a
gift of God’s most intimate presence to us.
His love of mercy, justice and his humble walk brought him to be killed
on the cross.
And so the early Christians believed that the
living sacrificial life of Jesus could continue to be in each person and the
profound remembrance of this sacrificial presence was known in the bread and
the wine, in the feast of the renewal of the remembrance of Christ’s
sacrificial presence.
When Jesus took the role of a servant in
washing feet he was exemplifying how the Paschal lamb was to be known in living
a life of loving service. Loving service
is how we express being living sacrifices.
Let us be thankful for the Passover
tradition tonight. Let us be thankful
for the integrity of this tradition which is still observed by our Jewish
brothers and sisters.
Let us freely acknowledge how our Christian
identity has grown out of the Hebrew-Judaic traditions and let us share with
them the notion of dynamic remembrance.
In the Passover meal, the Jews believe that the power of salvation which
was present in the Passover deliverance is a power that can be known as they
are renewed by the very same saving power today.
We as Christian believe that the power of the
life, death, resurrection of Christ and the Holy Spirit of God are celebrated
and dynamically remembered in the Eucharist which we believe is a gift to us by
Christ as being the most intimate expression of the social reality of the
gathered church.
Tonight we gather to give thanks, for
Thanksgiving, because Eucharist is an act of thanksgiving for the saving power
of Christ which is able to inhabit each of us and help us to be living
sacrifices for God and each other. Amen.
