O God, beyond my words, let your Word be heard. Amen.

Transcription

1 1 The Meals Jesus Gave Us: the meaning of the Lord s Supper [Psalm 78:18-25] Lk 5:27-34, 22:14-20, John Rempel The First Mennonite Church January 29, 2017 O God, beyond my words, let your Word be heard. Amen. Long ago I made a visit to the Soviet Union. I was in Moscow on a Sunday and went to church at one of only two Baptist congregations in the city that were legally permitted to gather. The church was already packed when I arrived, with only a few seats left in the balcony. The intensity of the singing and praying moved me deeply even though it was in a language I did not understand. It was a Communion Sunday. From the balcony I could see everything that was happening. After the communion prayer and the words of institution the black suited ministers and deacons took the bread into the rows. It was their custom for people to come to the end of the bench to receive the elements. As if against their better judgment, people arose before a server neared them, some with trembling hands. An old woman actually wedged herself between others and stuck her hand forward as far as she could reach, to be sure to get her hands on the food that was more than met the eye: bread made out of grain had become for her the bread of heaven. I ve never forgotten this woman and her boldness. As a Baptist, she would not have had an elaborate description of what happens in the

2 2 Lord s Supper. But her behavior makes her belief clear: in taking the bread she was receiving Christ. By the time of the Reformation many people thought of the church s rituals as having power in and of themselves. For example, if you touched the bones of a saint your sins would be forgiven. The Reformers wanted to make it clear that Christ is the only one who forgives; he is the behind-the-scenes actor in all the church s rituals. The Anabaptists were among the most radical critics of elaborate rituals, including all the ceremony attached to the two core enactments, baptism and Communion. They are the most profound dramatizations we have of the Gospel. The Lord s Supper takes the narrative of Jesus life, death, and resurrection and enacts it in a single gesture. These dramatizations begin with the staples of everyday life in Mediterranean societies, water in the case of baptism, and bread and wine in the case of Communion. By the time of the Last Supper Jesus friends and foes would have been aware of the significance Jesus attached to table fellowship. Meals have an astonishingly important, and often overlooked, role in Jesus ministry of making God s presence tangible. Jesus is the face of God speaking words of welcome, the hands of God passing around a cup of welcome. Let s now take a look at the meals of Jesus ministry, of his death, and of his resurrection. The opening words of our passage from Luke 5 take our breath away. Jesus meets a man named Levi. He is a tax collector a Jew who extracts payment from his fellow believers on behalf of their Roman oppressors. We can imagine that there might have been a long conversation between Jesus and Levi, or even several before

3 3 we meet them here. At just the right moment Jesus blurts out, Follow me! and Levi does so, leaving all his treasures behind. In an outpouring of gratitude Levi gives a great banquet for Jesus. He invites people like himself, who loved mammon more than God. It is in the breaking of bread, in the vulnerability of a shared meal, that Jesus gives himself to them. And the dinner guests, like Levi, are drawn to Jesus because they sense he offers them something that money can t buy. The Pharisees, the keepers of the law, can t imagine unholy people being welcomed to a holy meal. Why do you do this?, his critics demand. Jesus responds, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Encounters like this one only intensify Jesus passion to be the voice of God to people who can t hear God, to be the arms of God to those who have never been embraced. Those in authority increasingly resent this other king, this usurper, who is turning the world up side down. They cannot tolerate this One who heals without price, who sets no limit but love. Ominously, the religious and political figures make common cause against him. One of Jesus own company is waiting to betray him. This is the backdrop for our second passage from Luke. Knowing that his life is on the line, Jesus longs to be borne up by the ritual of God s rescue and faithfulness to Israel across the centuries, the Passover meal. This time only those who have declared their loyalty to him are invited. In the most audacious act of his ministry, Jesus takes the symbol laden loaves and cups of the Passover and makes them signs of a new rescue, a new faithfulness that God will bring about through his death.

4 4 He takes a loaf, according to custom, gives thanks, offers it to his friends, and then shocks them by saying, This is my body. And likewise, This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. Nothing bolder could be said. Overwhelmed by his own words, Jesus takes his inner circle of companions to the Mount of Olives to pray that the cup he has just poured out for himself and his disciples might still be removed. Yet not my will but yours be done. It is our sense of awe at Jesus boundless self-giving that gives the Communion service its solemnity. It is not the suffering of Jesus, as such, that saves us but the relentlessness of the love that did not shrink from suffering. In the end, it is not only the Romans and the Jews but all the powers of the world who accuse him of being a usurper of the kings of the earth, who crucify him. In bearing this onslaught of evil to the cross he breaks its power and sets the world free. With this claim, the story of the Gospel has reached its climax but not yet its conclusion. To put it into sacramental terms, the Last Supper has not yet become the Lord s Supper. That happens on the evening of Easter day. Jesus joins two of his downcast followers on the road to a town called Emmaus. So sorrowful are they at the death of the one they believed would redeem Israel that they cannot recognize him. Nevertheless there is something that draws them to Jesus. Evening falls as they arrive home. They invite the stranger to be their guest. He accepts. No sooner have the hosts bidden their guest to partake than there is a reversal of roles: suddenly Jesus is the host and they are the guests! He takes bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to

5 5 his incredulous friends. In this signature gesture of Jesus ministry they recognize him. In offering them bread he offers them himself. No simpler one sentence description of the mystery of Communion can be found: in offering his disciples bread Jesus offers them himself. Let s step back from the meals Jesus gave us to look at them by means of two concepts, ritual and presence. Ritual has four basic characteristics: it is communal, patterned, condensed, and repeated behavior. These traits are inseparable; together they make a ritual come to life. One, ritual is the language of a community. To illustrate, when a minister takes Communion to someone unable to come to church she takes bread from which the congregation has already eaten in order to unite the sick person with all those gathered. Two, ritual is patterned. Jesus took, blessed, broke, and gave the bread. Each aspect of these gestures intensified its meaning. Three, ritual is condensed. We eat a symbolic meal made up of a morsel of bread and a sip of wine, not a literal meal. Four, we repeat these core gestures because over time they shape our spirits. Constant novelty in form undermines the power of a ritual. Now, what do we mean by presence? To be present to someone is to be within reach; the distance between us has dissolved. In the moment of encounter time stands still. Such intimate moments are rare even with the people we know best. If that is so, how could we possibly know we are in the presence of One who is not seen? The signs of bread and wine are Jesus promise that when we break bread together he will be in our midst. The Lord s Supper is the paradigm of God s presence: we recognize him in other times and places

6 6 by means of our Eucharistic encounter. Jesus uses shocking language to convince us of this truth. As he takes, blesses, breaks and gives the Passover loaf to his friends, he describes what he is doing with the accompanying words, This is my body and likewise with the wine. My understanding of these mysterious words is that body and blood mean the very person of Christ not simply a memory, not a disembodied spirit, but the actual if invisible person. The evidence for his hidden nearness is shared bread and wine: when we take the bread, we receive Christ. The bread and wine are a Jesus trustworthy promise that when we receive them we receive him. In a time when almost everything in our lives is uncertain, what a wonderful promise it is that we can count on meeting Christ when we gather around his Table. Remember the woman in the church in Moscow? She wedged her way between people to taste the promise Jesus had made. In a mystery too great for words, bread made out of grain had become for her as it can for us the bread of life. AMEN