Maundy Thursday 2023

The Eucharist is key - Paul has been talking to a church divided, and many things can wait, but not this.

This is the earliest account we have of the Last Supper, and of how Jesus commanded us to remember him. The gospels were written later, and Paul tells us that this tradition goes back to Jesus himself.

Three things that this meal declares;

First, that Christian faith is about gathering together and action, as well as private belief and words.

In the night that he was betrayed - Jesus sits down with his friends, including the one who will betray him and the one who will deny even knowing him, and shares a meal with them.

In his gospel, John doesn’t tell us about what Jesus did with bread and wine. He was writing quite a bit later, and he could assume that people already knew that bit of the story. He wanted to tell us what surrounded it. He’ll go on after the bit we read, to speak about and pray for our unity in love. But already he’s shown us the kind of community that he wants to gather around the table; a community where people kneel down to serve and care for each other, not pushing for position or prestige but looking to be of as much service as they can as quietly as possible.

That’s probably linked to why Paul says that the thing the Corinthian christians have most urgently to get right is their celebration of the Eucharist. That is where their division is becoming most focussed, and that makes a nonsense of the whole thing.

When we pray the EUcharistic Prayer and when we come forward to receive, pray for wisdom to see that we are one; pray for those with whom you share the sacrament, especially those you find it hardest to love.

Second, that this is about freedom.

The Last Supper was a passover meal - we heard about that in the first reading.

Tradition observed for over a thousand years before that night.

Commemorating God’s setting Israel free from slavery. Remembering for all time the gift of freedom, and the call to live out that freedom for God.

Jesus adds two things to the ancient pattern of the meal; and scandalously says that the bread and the wine represent his body and blood, his coming death like the passover lamb - to bring freedom. Freedom not only for one nation but for all people. Freedom not only from slavery to others but from slavery to sin, shame, guilt and fear.

This is our passover.

When we pray the Eucharistic Prayer and when we come forward to receive, thank God for your freedom - and pray for strength to find and live that freedom for his glory.

To the world, that Christ has died, Christ is risen and Christ will come again.

The passover meal wasn’t just a remembering - it was and is a time when Jewish families gather together, and as they celebrate they remind each other in a repeated phrase, ‘It was not for our ancestors only, but also for us’ that God did these things. It’s as if they’re back there at the first Passover. God acted and acts for them. When we celebrate the Eucharist, we are back there with the disciples in the upper room. Jesus goes to the cross not just for them but every bit as much for us. History collapses. We are there and he is here.

At the same time, the eucharist collapses the time between now and ‘until he comes.’ One of the main images of heaven and earth at the end of time is of a great feast, and what we do here, this evening, with a tiny piece of bread and a sip of wine, keeps us in touch with what is to come; of our resurrection and the joy of the new creation.

Until that day, the fact that this meal is at the heart of our worship declares the gospel, God’s good news to the world. The good news of invitation to be part of a new community in love; the good news of freedom to know God and to be ourselves within his love; the good news that Jesus died for us, for there is no gospel without the cross; and the good news that there is ahead of us far more, far better, far greater a celebration than we have yet dared to dream of.

That’s a lot going on in this one tiny, shared meal; but it is more real than you can know. And Jesus invites you to share here in his life, and to take that life into his world.