I Corinthians 11:23-26

John 13.1-17; 31-35

March 20, 2008 Maundy Thursday

I once heard someone describe Maundy Thursday as “family night”. If your definition of family is as wide and diverse as our own congregation then “family night” is an apt description of the congregation that gathers for this evening service without the crowds of Palm Sunday or Easter.

Maundy Thursday is more intimate and personally demanding, for tonight and Good Friday, more vivid than any other time you and I remember the depth of God’s love and the cost of our forgiveness. Here at the Lord’s table under the signs of bread and wine, we remember that there is a cost that comes before bright joy of Easter morning. The cost is not borne by you and me, or all the other broken sinners of this world, but a cost to Jesus, who, Saint Paul tells us, did not cling to his divine status but rather let it go to take upon the form of a Human being, became a servant to others, and gave himself for the life of the world. Your life and mine were bought with a price. It’s an astonishing gift freely given – this forgiveness and freedom – yet, we dare not forget the cost to the Gift Giver, who calls us his friends; knowing full well who we are inside and out.

In the candle lights of this night, before a table spread with sacrament of God’s love, imagaine, if you will, Jesus as our host at this family gathering around his table, not unlike the evening when he gathered his closest friends around a table. This evening allow yourself to enter deeply into the promise that we are not alone; that Jesus is present and will make himself known to you through Scripture, sacrament and sacred song.

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Years ago, I used to listen to a radio program called “You are what you eat.” You can imagine the subject. Week after week, the program dealt with eating and its consequences for how we live. What you eat, the host argued, really does influence how you live and not just your figure. How you feel and how you act are directly connected to what you eat. It was a fascinating program that covered foods and cultural practices related to them from around the world. Since then I’ve learned that there is a vast academic discipline related to the sociology of food and community life.

I think Jesus and Paul could have been guest hosts! They both are understand the connection between what we eat and how we live.

No wonder Paul was shocked when he discovered that the Corinthian congregation made no connection between their behavior and their celebration of the Lord’s supper. The rich were arriving early and eating all the food, so that when the poor arrived there was nothing left. Some were drunk, others flippantly careless about their lifestyles. Why was Paul so scandalized? Is he just being naive? A prude?

You are what you eat, says Paul, and what you eat is the Body of Christ. In other words, what we eat at the Lord’s table has a connection to who we really are as followers of Jesus Christ in the world. Paul went so far as to say if you eat and drink mindlessly, without considering the lives of your sisters and brothers in this one Body, then you eat and drink condemnation. That sounds so harsh. Yet, if there is a connection between how we eat and how live then it’s true. Paul understood that whenever the community of Christ to gather around the Lord’s Table we are mindful that God’s gift that makes us one body. To forget that is perilous.

But if this sacrament of Body and Blood were only about our capacity to participate just right, in some correct religious way, then we miss the meaning. The meal is the sign of God’s radical self-giving love. “This is my Body which is broken for you. This is my blood which is poured out for you. Eat and drink in remembrance of me.”

Here do we see the love of God poured out for us.

In John’s gospel, Jesus makes the connection between eating and living in a different way. Following the meal with his closet friends, including Judas who would betray him, Jesus bends down low to wash their feet, knowing full well that he is offering compassion to a man who will soon desert him, another who will deny him and another who will betray him to his enemies, and to two brothers so preoccupied with sitting at his left or right that they don’t hear a word he is saying. In other words, he is gives himself to ordinary sinners like you and me.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously criticized the Church for accepting cheap grace, a form of Christian living that was actually nothing more than a mockery of God’s call to faithful living. Cheap grace severs the connection between Eucharist and Life – the Lord’s Supper and the Lord’s life. Cheap grace is what scandalized Paul: how could one forget the poor and celebrate the sacrament? You are what you eat.

The alternative to cheap grace is not rigid religion or harsh legalism. The alternative is to ponder faithfully the events of this night and Good Friday; to open your heart to the wonder of our loving Lord Jesus on bended knee washing the feet of his disciples, knowing full well their capacity to deny, betray and fall away from him. I believe there is an alternative to cheap grace: it is grace freely given by a God willing to take all the costs so that all may live in joy and freedom. When you embrace this gift of God’s gracious love so freely given, you are made capable of rising from the table to serve others in the way of Jesus. First things first.

On this night different from all other nights, I invite you to open yourself to the Living Lord Jesus who is present with us. Offer to him your very self for his washing and cleansing, allow the word of forgiveness to be for you.

This night that is different from all other nights, gathered with our brothers and sisters in the One Body of Christ - hear again the words of Isaac Watts: “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”