Exodus 12:1-14a
Psalm 78:14-20, 23-25
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
LUKE 22:14-30
Maundy Thursday
Sermon
If we took a national survey and
asked people, “What religion was Jesus?”, I wonder what results we would get.
How many people – including how
many Christians – would say he was Jewish?
It’s easy to forget,
sometimes. And it’s easy to forget how
our indispensable roots as a faith are in Judaism – including the roots of that
most Christian activity, celebrating the Holy Eucharist.
For the Eucharist, or the Lord’s
Supper, or Mass, or Communion – different Christians use different terms – did
not come out of thin air. It had two
sources: the Jewish ritual family meal (especially Passover) and the ancient
synagogue service.
The Last Supper of Jesus and his
disciples was itself a Passover meal, as the Bible clearly states, including
the Gospel reading we just heard.
Jesus, as the leader of his band, acted as the host of this “family”
religious meal, and presided. Then he
added another whole layer of meaning when he said, “This is my body that is for
you” and “this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
But Jesus added a crucial layer of meaning—he didn’t eliminate the meaning
that was already there. The Passover
meal celebrated and celebrates the liberation of the people of Israel from
slavery in Egypt by the hand of God so that God might teach them and lead them
to the Promised Land. The Passover is
anchored in tangible, historical events and liberation from bondage as tactile
as the business end of a slave master’s whip.
While the Eucharist celebrates
our spiritual communion with Christ,
with each other and with other Christians in every time zone in the world who
are gathered tonight in remembrance of him, the Eucharist is grounded in a physical liberation from physical bondage by those who were
liberated from Egypt. Even as we
celebrate the vast spiritual possibilities open to us through communion with
Christ, let us not forget that God cares about the literal, physical liberation of people from literal, physical
oppression. And God expects us to care also!
So, while our regular communion
wafers are unleavened bread, we’re
making the connection between the Eucharist and Passover meal more obvious
tonight by using matzos as communion bread.
This is a feast of freedom in every
sense, and we stand in solidarity with our Jewish friends and relatives who
are blood relatives of the One we call the Messiah.
The Eucharist also contains
Scripture readings, a psalm, prayers and a sermon – all derived from Jewish
synagogue worship, which was first developed in the 6th Century B.C.
during the painful exile in Babylon of many Jews when Jerusalem and its temple
had become a smoking ruin after their destruction by the Babylonian army. It is that kind of worship – not worship at
the temple in Jerusalem – which has sustained the Jewish people for over 2,500
years all over the world, in good times and in very difficult times.
Early Christians blended synagogue
worship, the ritual family meal and accounts of Jesus’ sacred meals – the
feeding of the 5,000, the post-resurrection meals in Emmaus and with the
disciples in Jerusalem and in Galilee as well as the Last Supper – together to
form what we now call the Holy Eucharist.
The Scriptures, psalm, prayers, sermon – and hymns – joined with the
sacred meal have sustained Christians for nearly 2,000 years.
They can sustain us until we, by grace, may break bread
with Jesus himself, in person, in
his heavenly kingdom.
The Rev. Francis A. Hubbard
St. Barnabas Episcopal
Church
Monmouth Junction, New
Jersey
April 13, 2006