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Maundy Thursday; April 01, 2010
Park Avenue Presbyterian Church; Des Moines, Iowa
Texts: Exodus 12: 1-14
Psalm 116: 1-2, 12-19
1 Corinthians 11: 23-26
John 13: 1-17, 31b-35
“The ‘Traditional,’ “Love one another”.”
--} Tonight begins with “tradition” in one form or another. Many church traditions start with the story that many readers of Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s gospels refer to as the “Last Supper.” That’s the story of the institution of the Lord’s Supper—on the night of Jesus’ arrest, he took the bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples….
The other tradition, from which Maundy Thursday takes its name, is the story from John’s gospel—where Jesus takes off his outer clothes, wraps a towel around his waist, washes the disciples’ feet, offering them “a new commandment”—“love one another.” “Maundy” taken from the word meaning, mandate—“mandate” referring to Jesus’ command.
As modern Christians, we’re not used to having to “choose” one bible story or the another; we often have them squished together for us into one easily discernable form. But, in fact, church tradition gives us BOTH stories—two traditions; and the part that’s most interesting to me is that John’s gospel doesn’t have any story about an “institution” of our familiar “Last or Lord’s Supper.” If we were to read John’s story in isolation, tonight would be a much different experience for us—where we’d be focused more on what Jesus says for us to “do” rather than “doing” or “reenacting” what the other 3 gospels “say” happened. And I want us to think about that for a few minutes. What if there were no last supper or memorial meal? What if the dinner party ended after Jesus’ act of extreme servant-hood followed by that famous “new commandment,” to “love one another?”
I do want to point out that what Jesus DOES in John’s story is a radical act that made his disciples uncomfortable, and should make us uncomfortable, too. First, only the wealthiest of households typically had slaves who would wash people’s feet. Jesus and his disciples didn’t fit that description. Further, Jesus puts himself—the teacher and leader—in the place of the lowest person in the room; inviting the disciples (and us, it seems) to a similar social position. And the mandate is not just to “serve,” but to “love”—as Jesus demonstrates. Jesus does seem to aim at followers putting aside social status and comfortability. And to do so makes this night a radical calling to meet other’s needs rather than our own.
Sometimes—I think we treat the Lord’s Supper as an act for our own comfortability. We declare it a special table (only at church), reserved for only special people (believers) and it can happen only in this serene, meditative environment. So cleansed from the outside world, we celebrate and remember Jesus and his death and resurrection—helping us to feel good, primarily about ourselves (since we don’t typically encounter others). It seldom is interpreted as a call to service.
But in John’s story, any “institution” of a “Lord’s Supper” is absent—missing. What scholars suggest that the closest John’s gospel comes to a “Lord’s Supper” is not the night before Jesus died—not at all; rather, it’s the day Jesus breaks the bread and fish beside the Sea of Galilee for at least 5,000 people to eat a meal and be filled. Yet even without a so-called “last supper” or formalized “Lord’s Supper,” it should be no surprise to us that LOVING is also about “feeding.” One of John’s unique stories is of Jesus asking Peter three times, “do you love me,” and Peter answering three times, “yes;” and Jesus’ follow-up is “feed my sheep,” “tend my lambs,” “feed my sheep.”
The feeding of the 5,000 is a much different story as a vision of a “Lord’s Supper.” John tries to tell us that Jesus is like the “manna” that comes down from heaven to give life to the world—reminiscent of the Israelites’ experience in the wilderness. “Manna” is not the bread of Passover—or unleavened bread. Passover bread is human-made bread; it belongs to the earth and to us as creatures. But it’s different from “manna” because “manna” is the bread that belongs to and comes only from God. “Manna” is reminiscent of Jesus’ statement, “human beings do not live by bread alone.” “Manna” is entirely God-provided; and to share it, to be fed by it means to live relying on God’s ability to love and deliver us and provide for all our needs—especially in the valley of the shadow of death.
John’s gospel almost deliberately distinguishes between Passover-bread and “manna”-bread; forging a distinction between a “Lord’s Supper” (what we call “communion”) and God-provided meals. One of my pet peeves is that we call it the “Last Supper” as if it were the “only Supper”—or the only supper that really matters. The other, is that we distinguish “this table” that we share at church from every other table that we share—as if this one has more meaning than the tables we use for “daily bread.” The Lord’s Prayer teaches us to pray, “give us this day our daily bread,” a reminder of God-provided bread in the wilderness that provided daily sustenance.
So, what could happen if we began to see AGAIN that every meal were sacred, reminding us to “remember”—not just one particular meal, but the power of what Jesus said and taught and how he lived, every day?
What John tells us about that day in Galilee was that people were hungry, and there were no means by which to feed everyone. Some commentators laud the reality that everyone would have carried a small supply of food for themselves, the “bread for tomorrow,” and that what must have happened was a “miracle of sharing,” where everyone suddenly broke out their small provision and shared with one another—enough for all to be fed with leftovers. But this seems, as John tells it, like “bread of the world”—human provided, human made. The other way of understanding Jesus’ act is to require us to see it entirely as God-provided—“manna bread”—that comes straight out of heaven to nourish and sustain. I believe John intends to tell us that this feeding of the 5,000 was a wholly other meal, by which God promises us, “human beings do not live by bread alone” and only God can sustain us completely.
In tonight’s gospel lesson, Jesus seems to say, “If you love me, you’ll do as I do.” He’s referring to his radical servant-role to be sure; but he’s also referring to all the things he said and taught along the way. He’s telling us about the meals, too—and there were plenty! Plenty of times when Jesus sat at table with friends and others and “ate.” I think about the places that you and I “eat,” and can’t help but believe that Jesus and his friends and others “ate” similarly, too—both bread of the world and the sustenance of God.
I think about our great family celebrations—Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter—and know they most often take place around food and tables.
I think about “loving the least of these,” and reckon the advertisements for the DMARC food pantry and Door of Faith and soup kitchens everywhere, speak to the powerful hope that is found in “breaking bread.” And then I think about John’s story and wonder….
There’s Jesus, not talking fancifully about bread and body, but taking the role of a slave and washing feet.
There’s Jesus, not just saying, “remember me,” but instead, taking food from the kitchen and spreading it before them, “feeding them,” and inviting them into a similar ministry.
There’s Jesus, hoping that we don’t just build a ritual which we can celebrate over and over in order to feel special, but a means by which tending to other’s needs can be made “special.”
And I think about John’s story and wonder… what did Jesus really have in mind?
Many of you know that last fall I had the privilege of taking a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. And one of the places I most wanted to see was a place called Tabgha—the traditional “location” for the miracle of the loaves and fishes. I marvel at John’s description of Jesus inviting the crowds to sit down on the grass, then breaking the bread and fish and having them distributed—kind of like a Hy-Vee catered picnic or something. I imagined seeing that “place” and dipping my toes in the grass with a view of the Sea of Galilee. Well, it didn’t happen. Much to my surprise, you get off the bus in a parking lot, choking on the diesel fumes of 30-50 other busses, get herded into a modern church (built in 1964) to see a famous mosaic that dates back to the 4th century, to which you can’t get close enough to in order to take a good picture—and in a few minutes you’re back on the bus. There’s no “green grass” to dip your toes in, not even a view of the Sea of Galilee—I still have to use my imagination.
I lamented not getting to see the “place” where the loaves and fishes may have been broken and served. But then something extraordinary happened; I began to see the “bread” and “fish” both in human-provided ways and in God-provided ways. I found them literally on the lunch table when we had “loaves and fish.” I found them in compelling stories where people were being fed or sustained. I found them in the ways God was providing for me on the pilgrimage, and I related them directly to the ways that I know God feeds us from heaven every single day.
Several days later, one of the other places we visited was a school that had it’s beginnings in a church’s simple summer program. What began as something akin to what we would call vacation bible school eventually developed into a full-time school, where children who are Jewish, Christian, and Muslim all study and attend classes together as “people of faith” without having to deny one another’s humanity. But that first summer, such an idea was “new” and when the children from the community were invited, so many showed up that they didn’t have food enough to feed them—kind of like Jesus on that hillside. The Church leader had to go into the community to beg food from families that already didn’t have enough to feed themselves, let alone provide for others. And I suppose, in a manner not unlike that of Jesus—the food happened.
Several years later, the children of this one-time “summer program” would design murals to decorate the walls of their school—stories of their faith; and one of the murals they made was a “re-creation” of that 4th Century mosaic I had longed to get a picture of at Tabgha—but couldn’t. The school children’s recreation is the picture that appears on the long paper in your bulletin tonight, a piece of paper that I hope you will take and use as a placemat at a meal for you and someone else. A meal by which you can be reminded not of “A” meal or “THE” meal, but reminded nonetheless that God feeds us every single day—and on the basis of that “love” from God, we are called to go out and “love one another.”
Because tonight’s bigger tradition that we celebrate is that the love of God in Jesus goes out from the table to love the whole world—sustaining it not with bread alone but the unfathomable, salvific work of Love. And we, too, are called to serve likewise.
--+ AMEN.
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