April 5, 2007 Maundy Thursday
April 5, 2007
Maundy Thursday, Holy Thursday, Year C
Scripture Exodus 12: 1 – 14 (P.104)
The Gospel John 13: 1 – 17 (P.1673-74)
Summary:
God chose to save Israel. God chooses to save us. We are but beggars, deserving a judgment of condemnation, standing before a gracious God who wants to give us eternal life. The Israelites who followed God’s instructions were saved by the sign of the blood of a lamb. In the Eucharist, the followers of Christ acknowledge God’s saving grace through the blood of the Lamb of God.
“Beggars Can Be Choosers”
If there is one thing the Old Testament teaches, it is that God chose to save the people of Israel. In fact, they came to be known as the “CHOSEN PEOPLE.” Unfortunately, much of the Old Testament record is about the failure of the chosen people to choose to follow God’s way.
If there is one thing the New Testament teachers, it is that God chooses to save the rest of us a well, and that we are all his chosen people.
God chooses to save us. How do you respond to God’s offer?
In the Old Testament, God chose to save Israel – not because the people of Israel were any more worthy than others, but because God loved them. On the night of the Passover, God told the captive Israelites what they must do to be saved. With great detail, he directed them as to the type of animal to be sacrificed, the number of pieces into which it the ratio of people to animals needed and even how to prepare and eat the sacrifice, including what to do with the leftovers. And the outward sign would be the blood on the doorposts so that God would pass over that home when bringing death to the firstborns of Egypt.
ACCEPTING SALVATION
God offered salvation, but to be saved, the Israelites
Had to respond to his offer. God gave them the way to salvation, but they needed only to follow his instructions. Was it ironic or specifically planned that before Jesus was crucified, he spent his last evening celebrating the Passover meal with his disciples? Was it coincidence or divine ordinance that the memory of God saving Israel from bondage in Egypt by the blood of a lamb of God? God chooses to save us. How do you choose to respond?
In 1830, George Wilson was convicted of robbing the U.S. mail and was sentenced to be hanged. President Andrew Jackson issued a pardon for Wilson, but he refused to accept it. In an historic Supreme Court decision, the justices concluded that Wilson would have to be executed. “A pardon is a slip of paper,” Chief Justice Marshall wrote in his explanation, “the value of which is determined by the acceptance of the person to be pardoned. If it is refused, it is no pardon. George Wilson must be hanged.”
For some, the pardon comes too late. For others, the pardon is not accepted.
We are beggars for the Bread of Life, but once offered, we still must choose to eat it. Refusing to choose is still a choice. On the night before his crucifixion, the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus offered himself to his followers. They would choose whether to eat from the bread he offered and drink from his cup, or go “SPIRITUALLY” hungry. Beggars can still be choosers.
The famous opera tenor Luciano Pavarotti tells a story about how his father introduced him to the wonders of singing. He credits his father with urging him to work very hard to develop his voice. So he was delighted to be accepted as a student of Arrigo Pola, a professional tenor in Pavarotti’s hometown of Modena, Italy. At the same time, Pavarotti also enrolled in a teachers college.
When it ws time to graduate, he asked his father with some indecision, “Shall I be a teacher or singer?” His father replied, “”Luciano, if you try to sit on two chairs, you will fall between them. For life, you must choose one chair.”
Pavarotti goes on to tell that he chose the singing “chair.” After seven years of study and frustration, he made his first professional appearance. It took another seven years to reach the Metropolitan Opera. He says that he believes whether one is laying bricks, writing a book or doing something else of one’s choice, one should give oneself. What is the key to Pavarotti’s success? COMMITMENT: You must chose one chair.
Jesus told his disciples that they could not serve two masters. They would have to choose between serving God, and serving their own desires.
God chooses to save us. Have you made a real choice or are you wait for a better offer?
Making the choice
A young man w as unsure of where he was so he pulled his car over to ask an old woman on the side of the road how far it was to a certain town. The old woman said, “Well, Sonny, if you keep going the way you’re headed, it’s about 25,000 miles. But if you turn around, it’s about three miles.”
If the people of Israel had stopped to ask God for directions would they have had to wander in the wilderness for 40 years? There’s an easy way to accomplish something and there’s a hard way. Are we such a stubborn people that we always choose the most difficult route?
If the Passover is Israel’s celebration about God saving them from the bondage to Egypt, then the Eucharist is the church’s celebration about God saving us from the bondage to sin. Both required a sacrifice and both required the blood of a lamb. Both also require a response, a choice, by the persons being saved and the recognition of who it is that is doing the saving.
Are you going to straddle the fence until you have no choice, or are you going to choose which side of the fence you want to walk on?
God has never dilly-dallied around about making choices. God chose the people of Israel and offered them salvation, and then stood by them. God chooses us and offers us salvation, and stands by us. Maybe it’s difficult for us to accept God’s choice. Maybe the problem is that we are conditioned to feel unworthy. Perhaps we feel that we must do something to earn God’s respect and favor. Israel didn’t “do anything” to be chosen. Israel didn’t do anything to earn its salvation. The whole miracle of the Exodus is that such a tiny, insignificant people became the beneficiaries of a true act of God. God liberated Israel from slavery to the most powerful empire on earth at that time. It wasn’t the Israelites, but God who demonstrated faithfulness and worthiness to be worshiped. God saved them because God loved them.
CHOSEN EARLY
Humorist Garrison Keillor tells a story to which most of us can relate about being selected. He recalls the childhood pain of being chosen last for a baseball team. After all the favorites are chosen, “the captains are down to their last grudging choices: a slow kid for catcher, someone to stick out in right field where nobody hits it. They choose the last ones two at a time – ‘you and you’ – because it makes no difference. And the remaining kids – thes crubs, the excess – they deal for us as handicaps. ‘If take him, them you gotta take him,’they say.”1
Just once, we would like to be chosen first. Just once, we would like to avoid the agony of waiting and waiting until everyone else has been selected. Just once, we would like to hear our name called with enthusiasm and excitement. Have you ever considered that you are so valuable to God he chose you early --- with enthusiasm. “You (fill in a name of someone listening), I want you on my team. And you (another name, and another, as many names as you want), I want you with me forever.”
We are just beggars, standing at God’s table seeking food and drink. W don’t have a foot to stand on when we are before God. And yet God allows us, even as beggars, to choose. Choose God with the same enthusiasm with which God chooses you. Amen.
1. Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days (New York: Viking, 1985), 181.