Scripture:             Mark 14:12-26

Subject:                Jesus celebrates the Last Supper...

Complement:       ... initiating and explaining the New Covenant.

Big Idea:               The Lord’s Supper is not a boring ritual, but a celebration of Christ’s victory over death, and a proclamation of what the atonement means for us.

Introduction

Back in the mid-70’s I worked for three straight summers in a Johns-Manville factory in North Bay that manufactured sheathing and ceiling tiles for homes. It was an old, run-down place as I remember it, and much of the work which was doubtless automated at other plants still had to be done by hand. It was back-breaking, mind-numbing work.

My favourite job to hate was piling the 4’ x 8’ sheets of sheathing that came off of the assembly line. At one end of the dryers – huge furnaces with a conveyor belt inside – the wood pulp was formed into a sheet some sixteen feet square and was sent through to be dried. When it came out at the processing end, these sheets were then sawed into 8 sheets of pulp-board used in the manufacture of homes. Problem was, these sheets had to be taken off of the assembly line. That’s where I came in.

For twelve hours a shift we would catch the heavy sheets as they came through the imprinting wheel that put on the company logo, and then hoisted them onto a wheeled dolly in lots of 100. And the line never stopped. Miss your grip? Too bad. Need a new dolly? Change in mid-fly. It got to where my body was there working, but my mind was elsewhere! It was as boring a job as one can imagine. Nothing but endless repetition that should have been done through automation. To this day when I drive by that plant, I get shivers!

Too much repetition, and we get bored. But does repeating something over a long period mean that something must become boring? Set out before us today is a meal that Christians have been celebrating for two thousand years. We believe that we know the ritual off by heart. So why come? Why celebrate? What does this all mean for us?

I.          The Lord’s Table means a new solution to an old problem

To properly answer this question, we must look back to the very first time the meal ever happened, before it became a ritual. Jesus, on the very night when Judas betrayed Him to the Temple authorities, on the night before His execution, gathered his disciples together for one last meal. Only His disciples didn’t realize it would be their last meal with Christ before their world came apart. And it wasn’t just any meal to begin with; it was the Jewish Passover, the most sacred of all the festivals for God’s Chosen People. That night all over the world, Jews were gathering in homes to eat the same foods according to the same ritual that Jesus and His disciples observed: a roasted lamb, bitter herbs, flat unleavened bread, and wine. In every Jewish home, the host was taking up a piece of the flat bread and saying, “This is the bread of haste, which our ancestors ate in Egypt,” before passing it around.

But Jesus changed the ritual, broke the routine. He did something new. “This is my body,” Christ said as He passed around the bread. “This is my blood of the covenant which is shed for many for the forgiveness of sins,” he said, commanding everyone to drink from the cup. Hard words that doubtless confused and confounded His followers.

But how does the Jewish Passover and Jesus’ words that night relate to us and to this table here this morning? The Passover meal celebrated the Jews’ deliverance from Egypt. He said to them (in effect), “I will be your God; now you must follow my laws.” But try as they might, there was no way they could keep their end of the bargain. That first covenant was flawed, because we are flawed (sinful) and unable to obey God in the least degree.

And so Jesus, sent by God, did something about it. Like the first Passover, the celebration took place before the event! And like the first Passover, every time this meal is eaten, we are reminded of what He did. This simple meal of bread and grape juice is in fact a covenant meal. He was saying to His followers, “I will be your Lord; now you must follow my way of love,” and then to prove His love He offered Himself as the covenant-initiating sacrifice which solemnized and sealed this new relationship between God and His people. Only now, “His people” means anyone who will receive Him. That is why the Apostle John would write

“Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).

And so every time we eat the Lord’s Supper, we are remembering that his death brought us a “new deal” with God, a new relationship that provided for the removal and forgiveness of our sins. Every time we eat the Lord’s Supper, we are remembering that Jesus in His body became our Passover Lamb, providing a “new way” out of an old problem.

There’s an old Lucille Ball sketch where Lucy took a job at a cake-decorating factory. She had to squirt icing out of a tube onto the tope of the cake, put a cherry on the top, and put it in the box. But the belt bringing the cakes out to her moved just a little too fast for her to keep up. She gradually got a little more behind until finally she was trying to balance about seven cakes in her hands while she dealt with the new ones that kept coming out. It was a hilarious picture of ineptitude. There was no way she could handle it.

That’s an absurd but accurate portrait of humanity. We broke God’s laws, and we could never quite make up the ground we lost. We needed someone to stop the assembly line, to get us out of the mess we perpetually wind up in. Temptation keeps coming down the line, and we keep falling. So how do we escape this deadly routine? Jesus. Of Christ Paul wrote: “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!“ (Romans 7:24-25).

So when we eat at this table, we are celebrating the newness life that Christ offers to all who will come. This is not a boring, hum-drum ritual that we celebrate here today. Although it takes us back to our very beginnings every time we celebrate, we are reminded of the new thing Christ did for us. The Lord’s Supper is not a boring ritual, but a celebration of Christ’s victory over death, and a proclamation of what His death and resurrection means for us.

II.        The Lord’s Table means we are telling an old story to a new generation

Jesus left us specific instructions for the meal: “Take, eat, this is my body; drink of this cup, all of you.” Jesus meant for us to keep celebrating in this fashion until He comes back for us. But why so much repetition? Why keep doing the same ritual over and over again?

Back when Christianity was still illegal, churches continued to meet in homes at great peril to celebrate with the bread and the wine. As the Church spread from Greece to Italy and from Italy to Western Europe to North Africa: “This is my body” and “This is my blood” was spoken in Greek and Latin and Coptic and Syriac and Ethiopic and Slavonic and countless other languages.

After the Church became legal, the Christian faith was carried all over the world, as missionaries went to England, China, India and even Japan. Down through the Middle Ages, priests spoke the words sometimes not even knowing what they meant, but still they spoke them. Down to the time of the Reformation, when Luther and other reformers reinterpreted the supper, down to our own Baptist ancestors in England, who celebrated communion secretly in the woods lest they be killed, down to those who taught us. Do you see? This meal ties us to the whole history of the Christian Church, the entire Body of Christ. We are the next step in the chain of tradition, we are the ones who must faithfully celebrate and proclaim what this means not just for our own spiritual well-being, but for all who will come after us!  As Hebrews 12:1 reminds us we are never alone in our journey of faith:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

And through it all, through all the changes and mistakes the Church has made and will make, Jesus has been our Lord, and we have followed his command to eat this meal. It is a part of who we are, and who we are becoming in Christ. As Paul wrote, “There is one body and one Spirit— just as you were called to one hope when you were called—one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph 4:4-6). The Lord’s Supper is not a boring ritual, but a celebration of Christ’s victory over death, and a proclamation of what His death and resurrection means for us.

III.       The Lord’s Table means new hope from an old ritual

Repetition — ritual, if you will — helps us to remember the past, and that is important. But unless we have a future, ritual is sort of sad, like the hamster running around and around the treadmill in his cage, never going anywhere except where he’s already been. If the supper only reminds us of our beginnings, and of our past down to the present, then it is interesting, but sad. It is a commemoration of his death, to be sure, for Jesus said so Himself. But if it is just that, then all we are left with is ritual, and ancient history and death. But Jesus said that it was also a meal of promise, of proclamation, because we eat, not just to remember, but to anticipate the future. Jesus said: “I tell you, I will not drink from now on from the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new, with you all, in my Father’s kingdom.”

Think about that promise! When Jesus said it, there was yet to come all the suffering and the horror of the cross. And yet He was full of hope for the future! For the disciples sharing the meal, there were also hard times. There was yet to come times of great persecution and death for virtually all Jesus’ close followers. And yet once Jesus was raised to life, and once again broke bread with Him, they understood what His death and resurrection were about, and they were filled with hope! Remember the Emmaus story?

30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them.  31 Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.  32 They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”

33 They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together  34 and saying, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.”  35 Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread.            Luke 24:30-35

For us as well, life is no bed of roses and we know that at various times, testing and trial will come into our lives. We face struggles with sin and temptation. We get slapped around by life, knocked down by sickness; we are mistreated by others, we are misunderstood, we fail, we stumble ,we fall. Some days our life that of Sisyphus, the man condemned to roll a stone up a hill only to have it roll back down every time, for all eternity. At times like that we are tempted to give up hope, to view the world with the cynicism and pessimism so rampant today.

But it does not have to be so! Because every time we celebrate this supper, it is a  reminder that we are heading for God’s Kingdom! We are not sliding up and down the same hill, spinning our wheels! For each time we eat this meal brings us closer to the day when Christ will return in triumph and glory! Paul assures us of this: “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” Jesus said: “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:2-3).

Often times you and I look back wistfully to those days of the early disciples, of the early church and we talk about how different things were because they were so close to Jesus, not just physically close, but close to the time when He lived. Let me tell you, that we who are alive today are closer than ever to Christ because He promised to return!  And because of that, we can gain new hope from an old ritual!

Conclusion

A church had an unusual ritual every Sunday morning. Before the church sang the Doxology, they would stand up, everyone turned to the right facing a blank white wall, and they sang. Every Sunday without fail they did this. A newcomer to the church was confused by this and asked, “Why do you do this?”

No one knew. The only answer they could come up with was, “We’ve always done it this way.” But that answer did not satisfy the newcomer. Other people were asked the same question. Finally an elderly man who had gone to church longer than anyone else remembered the reason.

It seems that at one time they didn’t have hymnals and the words to this song were painted on the large white wall. Everyone stood, turned to the right facing the wall and sang. Over the years the words faded and the wall was repainted numerous times yet no one remembered the “why.”

-- Taken from “Why Communion?” by Wade Allen; <http://www.sermoncentral.com/print_friendly.asp?ContributorID=&SermonID=107285>

The Lord’s Supper is a ritual that Christians have been repeating for two thousand years. If we do it mindlessly, without thought for its meaning, then it is simply an old habit, and the world would be justified to shout “Boring!” at us. But if we remember all that it means, then this simple repast has the power to do something new each time we celebrate the Lord’s Table!

·         The Lord’s Table means a new solution to an old problem

·         The Lord’s Table means we are telling an old story to a new generation

·         The Lord’s Table means new hope from an old ritual

In fact, this memorial meal is like a time machine that strips away the centuries and takes us back to that fateful night when Christ instituted the New Covenant. This meal we partake of today has been celebrated through two millennia, down to our own day, to this very celebration this morning.  And this meal bids us look forward into the future, to that glorious moment when Christ will return for us and establish His eternal reign of righteousness.

This meal we celebrate, this Supper of the Lord is not some old, irrelevant ritual, but something new, something worth remembering, something worth doing. The Lord’s Supper is not a boring ritual, but a celebration of Christ’s victory over death, and a proclamation of what His death and resurrection means for us.