On the first of the Days of
Unleavened Bread, the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Where do you want us
to prepare your Passover meal?” He said, “Go into the city. Go to a certain man
I will name for you, and say, ‘The Teacher says, My time is near. I and my
disciples plan to celebrate the Passover meal at your house.’” The disciples
followed Jesus’ instructions to the letter, and prepared the Passover meal. After
sunset, he and the Twelve were sitting around the table. During the meal, he
said, “I have something hard but important to say to you: One of you is going
to hand me over to the conspirators.”
They were stunned, and then began to
ask, one after another, “It isn’t me, is it, Master?” Jesus
answered, “The one who hands me over is someone I eat with daily, one who
passes me food at the table. In one sense the Son of Man is entering into a way
of treachery well-marked by the Scriptures—no surprises here. In another sense
that man who turns him in, turns traitor to the Son of Man—better never to have
been born than do this!” Then Judas, already turned traitor,
said, “It isn’t me, is it, Rabbi?”Jesus said, “Don’t play games with me, Judas.”
During the meal, Jesus took the
bread, blessed God and blessed the bread, broke it, and gave it to his disciples,
saying:
“Take this and eat it. This is my
body”. Taking the cup and offering blessings to God, he gave it to them, saying:
“Drink this, all of you. This is God’s new covenant poured out for many people,
for the forgiveness of sins.”
“I’ll not be drinking wine from this
cup again until that new day when I’ll drink with you in the kingdom of my
Father.” They finished the meal, sang a hymn and went directly
to Mount Olives.
*****************************************************************************
We now live in a world in which we can
produce a drink which contains every nutritional need the human body has. The
drink promises to end the annoyance of cooking and cleaning dishes as well as
the complicated decisions we have to make at every meal. All the decisions
about what to eat would be gone, everything we need provided.
Now, maybe this would work in
refugee camps, or perhaps in the case of natural disasters. But I have to say I
can’t see that working on a regular basis. We eat to live and thrive not just
to survive. We eat for pleasure, for the community created when people sit at table
together. We are stronger as a community when we can sit down after church to a
cup of coffee and cookies, or even a meal together. For all of us, around the
table with coffee is where relationships are formed and strengthened. We eat
because breaking bread and pouring wine turns an ordinary table into a place
where everyone is welcome.
So we read of Jesus and the
disciples, sitting at a common table – probably sitting on low cushions on the
floor. At the beginning of the meal, the Passover, God is blessed and then the
traditional bread and wine are blessed. The Passover meal celebrated Israel’s freedom
from slavery and from the bondage in Egypt, and liberation into a new life.
Yet there is a dark side in this
meal. One of you, Jesus says, will be my betrayer. The Gospel writers struggle
to understand why and how Judas did such a thing. Moreover, why would Jesus
even welcome Judas into the company of disciples in the first place? Yet even
though we are told Jesus knows Judas will hand him over, Judas is not excluded
from the table. He shares in the
breaking of bread, and the cup of the new covenant.
In the very first Harry Potter
movie, the Philosopher’s Stone, there’s a wonderful scene where Harry meets
Draco Malfoy – from the French ‘mal foi’ meaning ‘bad faith’, or ‘untrustworthy’.
We all know (and so does Professor Dumbledore, and Harry figures it
out right away) that Draco is the kind of Judas in this story. He, like Judas,
is not completely bad. In the first dinner scene, everyone sits down to eat
together, everyone is included, and Professor Dumbledore starts the meal with
the words “Let the feast begin!” No one
is excluded from the table, regardless of who they are or what they might or
might not do.
Today’s reading ends at verse 30,
but if we go ahead to the very next verse, Jesus turns to all his followers and
says they will “all become deserters because of me this night.” Peter denies it
strenuously, but we know Peter, and we know Jesus had correctly read his character.
Jesus’ right to death stands over against the faithlessness of Judas, and also
all the disciples. Perhaps it is a reminder to us when we gather to remember
and celebrate this meal with all our sisters and brothers, here at this table,
but at all other tables too.
This is the last time that Jesus
breaks bread and drinks wine with his disciples before his death, but he also
makes a promise.
“I tell you, I will not drink this
wine again until the day when I drink it new with you in God’s realm.” This
serves as the last meal of a condemned man, and the first meal of a man who has
faith and trust in what comes beyond. Jesus leads, from the table. So, for us
the table becomes central to our faith. For me it’s the table which defines our
leadership, who we are as people, how we live in community. This is the table where
we are nourished and made whole, where our relationships with God, with each
other, form the core of our leadership everywhere else.
Jesus knew that the disciples, each of them, was somehow broken
people. We are broken people, but in the breaking of bread Jesus reaches out,
and holds us, and in those actions we are blessed, even in our broken-ness.
On this World Communion Sunday, as we participate in the
meal at this table, we know that not only we are broken, but the world is
broken and in need of blessing. Even in our best efforts at loving
relationship, we fall short – we struggle to love, we lose sight of our
promises, we fail to be partners who are kind, patient, and faithful.
God’s heart breaks to see how we are broken and how we break
others. So we are welcome at God’s table, because this is where the broken can
be accepted. This is where Jesus takes what is broken – our world, our
relationships, our lives, our promises, and our covenants, and offers
blessing. But that isn’t the end. As we have come to God’s table, we are then
called to take the table with us when we go – for every table is God’s table.
Our Former Moderator, Very Rev. Peter Short, talked about
communion in the church today, and how we need to discern the difference
between the ‘traditions’ of the church, and the ‘conventions’ of the church.
The tradition is communion. Period. Table, bread and cup. The conventions of
the church are how we do our communion services. He asked this question – in a
rapidly changing world with more and more people leave or are outside the
church, how do reframe the message of the table so that it is accessible to
everyone? Are we so stuck in the ‘how’ we do communion, that we forget the
centrality of those three things, - table, loaf and cup?
At the table in Hogwarts, everyone was included – no one was
left out ; at Jesus’ table, everyone was included, no one left out. Saints and sinners
gather together, none more important than any other; in this breaking, blessing
and giving we are renewed and restored. Then we are called out, away from the
table, back into the world, to other tables where God is present. This is our
calling, as followers of Jesus – to lead from the table, to take the life we
receive here, and carry it with us. Our actions here define who we are, not
just here, but everywhere. May it be so.
Sources:
1. Working Preacher – commentary by Eric
Barreto, Associate Professor of New
Testament, Luther
Seminary , Saint Paul, Minn. 2. “Broken”, a sermon by Rev. Christina Berry based on Mark 10:2-16. October 4, 2015, World Communion Sunday, First Presbyterian Church, Sterling, IL
No comments:
Post a Comment