Sermons

Maundy Thursday

United Eucharist at Lidgett Park Methodist Church
Thursday 5 April at 7.30pm

Simon Cowling
Readings: 1 Corinthians 11. 23-26; John 13. 1-17 & 31b-35

Contributors to the bottom left-hand corner of The Guardian's letter page have recently been sharing their least favourite clichés. Here's one such letter: I hear what's being said, but all I'm asking for is closure. Then we can all move on. And an even briefer one: In a nutshell - put a sock in it. I'm sure that all our various denominations have phrases of the moment that can all too easily begin to grate: the Church of England, for instance, is currently suffering from a surfeit of Fresh Expressions. Now I am thoroughly on board, so to speak, with the principles of imaginative and new ways of being Church behind Fresh Expressions. I just wish that we could take a rain check, as it were, on that particular phrase.

Here's another phrase from within the Church that grates. The Eucharist, we often hear, is the Christian family meal. Well, to call the Eucharist a family meal is rather like describing Jesus as a good man. It's true - but it rather misses the point. To call the Eucharist a family meal tames and domesticates something which is of cosmic significance not only for Christians but, so we believe, for the whole world. To paraphrase, if I may, some words of Jesus: something greater than a family meal is here.

In 1 Corinthians 11, as we've just heard, Paul gives an account of what happened at the final meal that Jesus took with his disciples before his trial and execution. What I infer from this account is that Jesus chose the Last Supper, probably a Passover meal, for one of his final, and most important, acts of teaching. In the Gospel accounts of Jesus' life and ministry his disciples, that close group of friends with whom he had travelled throughout Galilee and up to Jerusalem, had been the recipients of often very concentrated teaching. Yet as the Evangelists show us, despite this proximity to Jesus, they often got hold of the wrong end of the stick: glimpses of insight are followed by crass misunderstanding. Now, in his final hours, Jesus seeks to convey to his disciples the significance of what he is about to undergo. He wants to teach them about, and cause them to remember, the meaning of his death. He does this through what, for his companions, must have been startling additions to the traditional words of blessing and thanksgiving as the bread was broken at the start of the meal and over the wine that was traditionally drunk at the end of Sabbath and festival meals. The words Jesus added are ones that have become central to the great prayer of thanksgiving which is said each time Christians gather to celebrate the Eucharist: as Paul has it, this is my body, which is for you; do this as a way of bringing my memory into the present; and, this cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, as often as you drink it, as a way of bringing my memory into the present.
Through these highly charged words, Jesus was teaching his disciples that his imminent death would be a sacrifice, an act intended to reveal the depths of the self-giving and all-forgiving love of God. By remembering and reflecting on these words in the future, when they ate together, his disciples would come to understand more fully their true meaning and significance.

And for us? Well firstly, as for those disciples in the upper room, our gathering together for the Eucharist helps us to understand more fully the meaning of Jesus' death, a death which shows us a God who has forgiven us from eternity and who calls us into fellowship with him.

But the Eucharist is more than about simply understanding Jesus' death and about fellowship. In the light of Easter Day, it is also about making his death and his resurrection a present reality. The word we usually translate as 'in memory of', anamnesis, is a word which doesn't just mean 'memory', or 'in remembrance', it means recalling a past event in such a way as to make it a present reality. So each time we celebrate the Eucharist, Jesus' offering of himself on the cross and his resurrection from the dead become a present reality for us, something which is here and now, not just then.

Thirdly, through the sharing of bread and wine, we feed on the sacrifice of Jesus - we appropriate for ourselves all that Jesus has done for us through his death and resurrection. What does this mean? Not that we eat actual flesh and drink actual blood, but that through this most blessed sacrament we receive the spirit of Jesus into our spirits; we receive his life, so that he lives in us and we in him.

Finally, and to return to Paul, the Eucharist is a proclamation and anticipation of what is to come: for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are proclaiming the death of the Lord until he should come. That proclamation and anticipation is surely not simply for ourselves, an in-house, family affair. The proclamation and anticipation is for the world into which Jesus came and for which he died, the world which we are called to serve in Jesus' name and which cries out in so many places with longing for freedom from the bondage of despair.

In the Eucharist we enter into God's eternal time which is past, present and future. We begin to understand more fully the meaning of Jesus' death as we gather in fellowship; we make Jesus' death and resurrection a present reality in our lives; we give thanks that Jesus lives in us and we in him through the bread that is his body and the wine that is his blood; and we proclaim Jesus to the world, bringing his life to others and sharing our anticipation of the consummation of all things at the messianic banquet, the final supper of the future of which we are given a foretaste in this and in every Eucharist.

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay