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While they were eating . . . .Matthew 26:26.
Out of everything we’ve experienced with Jesus and his disciples this evening – the preparation for the Passover meal, the foretelling of the betrayal, the meal itself and what lead to his arrest in the garden, and of everything we’ve experienced in the last month – the closing of schools and non-essential businesses, the spread of the virus, isolation and social distancing, the move to being an on-line church whether through YouTube, Zoom or telephones lines, the donning of face-masks, the loss of jobs, the sacrifices of healthcare workers and first responders and for some of us, illness, and even the death of loved ones – all of it overwhelming — tonight let us focus on a table.
It’s in a borrowed room in a house in Jerusalem, a city teeming with pilgrims on the first day of Passover. Jesus and his disciples are sitting around this table. He brings up betrayal and identified Judas as that betrayer. But let’s not get distracted by that drama. Stay focused on what Jesus is doing at their last supper together. See him taking a loaf of bread, offering a blessing, breaking the bread and giving it to his friends, including the betrayer. Along with the 12 disciples, we too, remember when he took bread and blessed it and fed the multitudes, over 5,000 of them. And now Jesus once gain feeds hungry people, famished in may ways, who gather around him, including you and me.[i] Tonight we are at this table, though it is virtual, even as we long to be face to face.
Watch now, as Jesus pronounces a blessing over the bread – not of the bread itself, but a blessing of God who gives us “our daily bread.”[ii] When we say grace at mealtime – we’re not blessing the food, but are THANKING God who gives us the food and everything else. At this table we are reminded that every meal is a gift from God, a breaking of the bread with Jesus.
I remember in my Grandmother Krommes’ kitchen where two pictures on the wall, along with some cross-stitch prayers. The first was a copy of Leonardo Da Vinci’s last supper. It hung over the clock so that you saw it whenever you check the time. The second was picture of an old man with a bowl of soup and a small loaf of bread set before him. His head was bowed in prayer. Most of my Grandmother’s meals were eaten by herself, but always with Jesus, his disciples and that old man. Daily bread given to her, to them. Daily bread given to us.
Then hear Jesus saying, “Take, eat; this is my body.” The bread is Jesus himself. At the table Jesus gives his whole life to his disciples and to us. As Matthew tells it – we are given the son of David and of Abraham and the heritage of God’s covenant. We are always in relationship with Jesus, even when we are not aware of it. Jesus the teacher, imparts God’s wisdom and righteousness. Jesus the healer, offers God’s mercy and freedom. Jesus the preacher, shares God’s promises of hope and salvation. Jesus the savior, forgives sins. “Take, eat, this is my body, myself, I give everything to you.” In his command to “take and eat” he invites his disciples, invites us, to receive the gifts of grace, to be joined to him and to take up his cause in the world. Thomas Long writes, “To take and eat the body of Jesus is to become his followers who deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow him, but it is also to become his faithful disciples who do mercy and seek peace, and when all is said and done, ‘enter into the joy’ of the master.”[iii]
Next Jesus takes the cup, gives thanks and gives it to his disciples saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” His words bring forth deep memories. The blood of the covenant, reminds disciples, then and now, how the blood of a lamb was wiped on door posts as the angel of death passed over God’s people Israel. And how Moses sprinkled the blood of an ox on the people when God made the covenant of the law with them. And how the prophet Jeremiah promised that God would make a new covenant with Israel, one where the law of God would be written on their heart. At this table, the sign of the covenant is not the blood of Jesus himself, poured out for the forgiveness of sins. In him, God renews the covenant with God’s people including each one of us.
Think about this – God is with us always. With us, in these challenging days. With us, even when we turn away. With us, longing for us to come home. With us in community – both physical and virtual. God is with us in body and blood, in Jesus. In the sacrament, there no social distancing, God is intimately with us.
But there’s more. There’s a promise for a new day, a new community, a new beginning. Jesus says, “I will never again drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” Jesus is pointing over the horizon of time to God’s ultimate victory, to the “marriage supper of Lamb,” to the great day when many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, and the whole human family will gather at the banquet table and the mercy of God will cover the earth like the waters of the sea.[iv] On this day where there will be no more sorrow, no more grief, no more separation, isolation or fear, for all of us will be joined with the saints of every time and place at the table for the feast of victory. Amen
One more thing, for then right there at that table, Jesus and his disciples sing a hymn, and so shall we… Come Let us Eat for Now the Feast is Spread….
[i] Thomas G. Long, Matthew, Louisville Westminster John Knox Press, 1991, 296.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid., 297.
[iv] Ibid, 298.