The conditions in which they ate this last meal together
were quite a bit more comfortable than the conditions in which they had eaten
most of the meals on their journeys. A
wealthy, secret disciple (a wealthy disciple could hardly afford to go public)
had provided them with a well-appointed room in his house in which to eat the
first Seder of Passover and recount God's deliverance of his people.
"Let every person in every generation think of
himself as a former slave, freed from bondage in Egypt" ran the words from
the ancient text which they read that night.
Remembrance is of the essence of Passover. Peter and James and John and the rest of the
Twelve were remembering that night; they were remembering not only God's great
acts of deliverance in liberating Israel from bondage, they were remembering
other meals which they had eaten with the itinerant, self-ordained rabbi who
had called them from their fishing boats with a voice which did not admit the
possibility of refusal. Most of the time
their meals had been simple fare shared by the light of a camp fire. Usually it was no more than some flat, hard
dry matzoh and a handful of dried dates washed down with a mouthful of bitter
wine. When they were lucky there was a
piece of dried fish, too. But there had
been other occasions, as well. Some of them
had been present at the wedding in Cana at which the wine had flowed as freely
as water. And what wine! It could have been the nectar of the gods. There had never been much, but what they had,
had always seemed to be enough when they shared. Somehow when they passed around the matzoh
and dates and dried fish there was enough whether there were twelve or twelve
hundred or five thousand sharing the meal.
All of them remembered occasions, simple and elegant, which gave them
cause for gratitude. All of them except
Judas, that is; Judas had other things on his mind.
Shadows thick and dark seemed to gather around Jesus'
head as he presided at the ancient ritual.
In the air were anxiety, apprehensiveness, expectation, danger, much as
there must have been on the first Passover.
On this occasion in Jerusalem, twelve hundred years after the night on
which God had brought their forebears out of Egypt, none of the participants in
the upper room were quite sure why the atmosphere was so thick with apprehension. Jesus had been threatened with arrest and
even death often enough, but hadn't the people of the capital demonstrated
their support for him in impressively large numbers less than a week ago? Who would dare touch a leader with such
popular support? Nevertheless, the
uneasiness would not go away.
The meal was beginning. Jesus took the matzoh and over
it said the ancient words of blessing:
"Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who
bringest forth bread from the earth."
And then the disciples could hardly believe their ears when Jesus added
to the sacred Hebrew words a sentence in everyday, secular Aramaic: "This is my body." The shadows in the room seemed to darken
ten-fold. Jesus and the disciples
continued the meal, conversing only in hushed tones. Quietly they continued the ritual, reciting
God's saving acts and sharing the roasted lamb, the boiled eggs, the bitter
herbs, and the sweet haroset, a mixture of nuts and dates and honey and
wine. Somehow nothing seemed to taste
quite right. Then, after the main course, Jesus lifted the festal cup of
wine: "Blessed art thou, O Lord our
God, King of the Universe, who createst the fruit of the vine." Again he shocked the more pious of the
disciples (who after three years with this man should have been shocked by
nothing Jesus did or said, however unorthodox) and added another Aramaic
sentence: "This is the new covenant
in my blood."
"The blood will be a sign for you, upon the houses
where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you..." When Jesus had encountered the Tempter in the
wilderness, Satan had unwittingly given voice to a prophecy about Jesus which
on the night of this meal was in the process of coming true: "He will give his angels charge of
you..." The shadow which hung over
the table where Jesus shared the Passover with his friends was the shadow of
the Angel of Death which had hovered over the children of Israel on their last
night in Egypt. God's angels were
faithful to Jesus on the night of his arrest and on the day of his death, but
the angel who had charge of Jesus was the Angel of Death. The passersby who mocked Jesus, asking where
his divine help was, could hardly have guessed that the Angel of Death hovered
over them, too, and once again, the angel saw the blood of a lamb and passed
over a people under the sentence of death.
On the night of his betrayal, arrest, trial, and
conviction Jesus was not only wrestling with the Angel of Death, he was
transforming an ancient Hebrew ritual.
The words which he added to the sacred words of the Passover, "This
is my body... this my blood," were so shocking that Christians have never
forgotten them. At times Christendom has
stretched and pulled Jesus' life and message almost beyond recognition, but
these words we have never forgotten.
They forever transformed an ancient rite of remembrance. At the Last Supper Jesus showed us once and
for all how it is that God works. At
Cana water became wine, but at the Last Supper wine became the very blood of
God. The food with which Jesus fed his friends on the dark night of his soul is
our food tonight and forever. Not only
do the simple creatures of bread and wine communicate God to our souls and
bodies, they knit us into the Body of Christ, a greater transformation than
which I cannot imagine. What is it that
gives this feast such power? Words and
thoughts fail to explain, but powerful it is -- whether it is shared with loaf
bread and jug wine at summer camp or with all the pomp and ceremony they can
muster in a great cathedral. We have
argued for thousands of years about the meaning of the Lord's words at that
Last Supper with his friends, and we may argue for thousands more. But all we can say with assurance is,
"Thou art here, we know not how... thou art here, we know not how."
One could almost write the story of God and his people
as a story of transformations such as the one which Jesus wrought at the Last
Supper. We take and transform what God
gives us, and God takes and transforms what we are willing to give to God. The
crowd transformed their praises of "Hosanna to the Son of David" into
shouts of "Crucify him!" God
gave us this world, and we have transformed it into a cluster of armed camps. God gave us our lives and we spend our days
finding ways to hide from the Creator's hands outstretched in an embrace of
love, eager to tell us how precious we are.
God gives us wives and husbands, children and parents and siblings, and
we play Cain to their Abel. God gives us
bouquets of roses, and we turn them into wreaths of thorns with which to crown
him. God gives us forests and from them we take trees, hew them with great
care, and form crosses on which to crucify the Lord of love.
God's transformations are quite different. For one thing, God's transformations go
deeper than ours. We apply band-aids;
God heals. God does not simply repair;
God renews. The wine he makes from water
for a wedding feast is not a jug of Gallo; it's Chateau Rothschild of the very
best year. God turns a meager meal for
twelve into a feast for 5,000. The lame
do not merely walk; they dance. Not only
do the mute speak; they sing.
"Behold, I make all things new."
The meal is over now.
Using an ancient, mournful Hebrew melody they sang one of the Hallel
psalms and went out, each to his own fate:
Peter to deny, Judas to betray, and all the rest to abandon him whom
they had called "Master".
Judas could never come to terms with the fact that the one he had
betrayed was willing to forgive him and, in an effort to escape from that awful
love, he hanged himself. One by one, the
others found their way back to that upper room, but they were never the
same. The events of Maundy Thursday,
Good Friday, and Easter had unmade and remade them. But one thing was the same; when they
returned to that upper room, someone again took bread, blessed it with the
ancient words, and with trembling voice, added the words Jesus had given
them: "...and they knew him in the
breaking of the bread."
We come to the Lord's Table tonight not only in the hope
that God's transformations have not ceased, but with the certainty that they
continue. God in his Son, Jesus, gave
visions to blind eyes songs to speechless tongues, made water into wine, and
wine into blood; he transformed eleven cowards into an army that turned the
world upside down; he turned a wreath of thorns into the crown of the King of
glory; and he turned a cross, one of the cruelest instruments of judicial
torture ever devised by fallen human ingenuity, into the instrument of our
redemption and sign of eternal hope. If
God can take ignominious death and turn it into life, abundant and everlasting,
just imagine what God can do with these hard old hearts of ours if we will only
give him the chance?
