Jacob Waldrip, Associate Pastor
1 Corinthians 11:17-28; Luke 22:7-30
Maundy Thursday. A tragic, clarifying meal. A meal that those who follow Jesus across the globe will share once more tonight. An empire-defying, evil arresting, Tower of Babel undoing, sin defeating meal.
A meal that, in this socially-distanced time, we will partake of decidedly apart but mysteriously and beautifully together. Listen in on what the Apostle Paul says about this meal in 1 Corinthians 11:26:
For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
We often wonder – “Why would we proclaim the death of the Lord in a meal, over and over and over? Is the death really the point? Is the point not the resurrection?
Let’s peel back a few layers together.
We’ve been saying all week to remember the Passover. There were any number of Jewish holidays that would have brought a crowd to Jerusalem. Any number of opportunities for Jesus to culminate his Kingdom-centric revolution with direct action. Perhaps the holiday that we most often believe that this death of Jesus reflects is the “Day of Atonement,” when the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies to make atonement for the sin of Israel. We so often hold the idea of a death of Jesus that would make him the scapegoat, the one who had to receive a punishment in order to satisfy the wrath of an angry God. When we press into the narrative of scripture, however, we recognize that the idea of Jesus’ death as punishment not only does a disservice to the idea of the Day of Atonement, but more accurately reflects the nature of an angry pagan god or goddess that demands retribution in exchange for benevolence. That, friends, is decidedly not the loving creator-God that we serve.
Instead, Jesus chose the Passover.
The Passover draws us back to the enslavement of the people of God in Egypt. The people were forced into serving an empire. They were trapped; forced to support the machinations of an empire that would seek to dominate the world. They were unable to live into their calling as the people of Israel – that is to be the chosen people through whom God would draw the world back together as one big family, one big just, loving, merciful, equitable family. On the night of the very first Passover the people of Israel consumed the meal as a way of identifying themselves as the people of God in Egypt who would soon be free to be all that God created them to be for the Kingdom.
Friends it is that identifying and liberating meal that Jesus chose to be the backdrop of his ultimate action, that is his willing death, in the world.
In the death of the Messiah, the power of the empire of Rome – and empires everywhere -- is exhausted. Jesus was killed because of the way of the Kingdom. The way of peace and justice and love and mercy was a threat to empires everywhere. The empire, therefore, did the only thing it knew to do to anything that threatened it – it killed the threat. It killed Jesus. It killed the way of the Kingdom. Evil did it’s very worst to Jesus on the cross. God, in the person of Jesus, exhausted the power of evil in his own flesh. As a result, evil no longer has any power over us. As a result, all of humanity is set free from evil and empire and sin to be all that we were created to be, much like the ancient Israelites were set free from the empire of Egypt to be the people of God in the world.
So friends, when you partake of the bread and the cup of communion – of the Passover – tonight, with your family, alone, in your home – know this: you are proclaiming the empire defying, evil arresting, Tower of Babel undoing, sin-defeating death of the Messiah. You are proclaiming that you walk in the freedom of the Kingdom of God with brothers and sisters all across the world.
In the midst of the evil of COVID-19, when we partake of this meal together tonight as the people of God all across the world, we do so with a foreboding sense of the tragedy of our times. But we also do partake as people who cling to a defiant, grief-filled hope – who have hope that COVID-19 will not have the final word; who have hope that empires that suppress the spirit of humanity will all one day fall away; who have hope that the nagging sin that seeks to control us individually has been defeated; who have hope in our common Messiah and Lord – across cultures and languages and borders and so many other things that would divide God’s family.
Let’s peel back one more layer.
When we read the greater context in 1 Corinthians, we recognize that the Apostle Paul is inviting us to not only move through the motions of this meal, but is instead inviting us to reflect on the way we order our lives as the family of God. In the Corinthian church, the rich would be able to make it to the gathering before the poor. After all, their “work day” was much shorter and easier. So before the poor could arrive the rich would eat of the communion meal – would take the very best that the table of the Messiah had to offer and leave the crumbs for the poor among them. When they did that, though, Paul says that they “brought judgment on themselves.” They were violating the very premise of the meal – that it proclaimed a death that did away with those social barriers – it proclaimed a death that brought the rich and poor together as one. So Paul challenged them – as a Christian community, before they came together at the table – to make sure they were really living as a merciful, just, equitable family of God.
So partake of that meal tonight, in your home, socially distanced. And use this time – use this meal tonight – to reflect on our global community. Are we like the Corinthian Church? Do we violate the table of the Messiah by allowing the rich to feast while the poor suffer? If the answer to that question is yes, then let’s commit together, right now, to fight for a different world – a world that has been inaugurated in the death of Jesus -- both now during a time of social distancing, and when the world begins to function again.
Eat the meal. Reflect. Commit to change. And proclaim with Christians across the globe the victorious death of the Messiah until he comes.