"Do this in remembrance of me"-A Sermon for Maundy Thursday, I Corinthians 11:23-26
So, I will never forget a particular Sunday back at our beginning…in the first few months that St. Julian’s existed…shortly after God had called us into being, and we began worshiping weekly in the cafeteria of Henry Middle School. It was All Saints’ Sunday, so the Sunday immediately following November 1st. And I was so excited to celebrate our first All Saints’ Sunday together…to claim and celebrate our shared sainthood as followers of Jesus…to remember the sacred work of being Jesus’ heart and hands, feeding a hurting world, as his saints alive and active today. I had created a liturgy with special prayers and images of saints for the screens. I had included a renewal of our Baptismal Vows, which we commit to in the sacrament of Baptism, and which defines for us what the life of a saint of God really looks like. I was planning to do it up…celebrate big time…all the pomp and circumstance that our transcendent, ancient and beautiful Episcopal Worship could provide…at least all it could provide in a middle school cafeteria and not a gothic cathedral.
So, I arrived at the school that Sunday afternoon…pulling our trailer that contained all our gear and supplies to turn a cafeteria into a church…excited…ready to worship. But when I arrived, I noticed our dutiful and long-suffering set-up team was there as they were so many Sundays, in those days, to help with the transformation of the space…well they were sort of milling around outside the doors to the school. Which was unusual…for they would typically be inside where there was air-conditioning…and already moving things around as needed. So, before I began to back the trailer up to the doors of the school, I got out of the truck to see what was up…and the answer was that the doors to the school were locked. Apparently, the custodian who typically met us to unlock the school had not arrived…and, at least that Sunday, they never did.
So, what to do! I quickly moved into problem solving Miles mode. Wondering if there was a power outlet outside so we could still project the liturgy on the patio…even if the sunlight dulled the images on the screen…all the while hoping someone from the school would show up…again they didn’t, and there weren’t power outlets outside. So, how would we have church without all our holy hardware? How would we have church without screens or prayer books or a printed liturgy? How would we have church without our electric keyboard for hymns? What about the beautiful liturgy I had planned and prepared for All Saints’ Sunday? And, what would someone think if they were visiting St. Julian’s for the first time that day and things were in complete chaos and total disarray? Would they ever come back? Surely, they would think we were a hot mess and never come back. I was totally freaking out.
And at that very moment, God sent to me one of his saints. You know him, Jack Ely, one of our own saints who happened to be on the setup team that day. He approached me with calm and a smile on his face…and said something like, “Do we have bread and wine…are we here together…can we still pray and listen and speak and sing.” And I said yes to all of that. Then he said, “Great we’re fine. We have everything we need. Calm yourself.” And, of course, he was entirely right. We had everything we needed and more. We gathered around the picnic tables outside the cafeteria, we sang hymns unplugged, we offered prayers, which most of know by heart, I preached my All Saints’ sermon, we gave thanks to God for Jesus’ life among us over bread and wine…and we fed it to each other…and Jesus was indeed present…and we were all indeed filled. In fact, it was a glorious day. The sun was out and it was cool but not cold. Really a perfect day to worship outside in what I like to call the great cathedral of God’s creation…there was really nothing I or any of us could have done in that cafeteria to create a lovelier space than what we had on that patio, really the perfect space, to encounter the Holy in the midst of our shared meal of bread and wine…in the midst of the life we share with each other…with Jesus right in the middle of us…filling us all the way up.
The word Eucharist means…thanksgiving. And as I look back on our early days at St. Julian’s, that unexpected All Saints’ Sunday, is probably the Sunday for which I give greatest thanks. The worship was, again, stunning, deeply moving, and profoundly filling. And I…I was given the additional gift of remembering what worship is really all about. Don’t get me wrong…I love beautiful worship spaces, candles, vestments, organs and all the other inspiring trappings that often accompany worship in our tradition…but at the end of the day…two or three gathered together…some food to feed body and soul…and Jesus who dwells in the midst of us…really is all we need…all we need to be and become the very people God has made us to be…bread for the world.
Now, today, on Maundy Thursday, among other life-giving acts of devotion like foot-washing and the stripping of the altar, we celebrate and give thanks, on this day, for the establishment of the Lord’s Supper…at the Last Supper…what we also call Holy Communion, or Holy Eucharist or the Mass…this sacred meal around which we gather as a family of faith each and every Sunday of the year. Sacramental theologians have filled volumes, too many to count, explaining the meaning, signs and symbols of this primary sacrament of the church shared by all or most Christians of every denomination, tribe and language. We call it one of the two dominical sacraments, meaning Jesus our Dominus, our Lord, established this ritual, for his followers, including us today, in his own lifetime and ministry on earth. Specifically, on that night before his crucifixion…as he gathered with his friends to celebrate the Passover, God freeing his beloved from slavery in Egypt…gathered with his friends to celebrate their shared life and the myriad, life-affirming ways they experience God’s love that lives in the very midst of the relationships they share with each other…gathered to share a foretaste of the heavenly feast that awaits each of us because the very next day Jesus would go to the cross to defeat sin and death for all time and all people….opening the grave and gate of death…and preparing a place for each of us…even you…even me…a place at the great heavenly dinner party that awaits and never ends. Tonight, we remember that in their last moment all together, as a band of sisters and brothers, as a family of faith, Jesus and his friends did so around a meal of bread and wine…with Jesus reminding them…whenever you do this…I am in the midst of you…so do so in remembrance of me.
And so we do…each week…each Sunday…we gather in this place, just as Christians do around altars and tables all over this world, and we remember the gift of forever life we have been offered in Jesus’ death and resurrection…we remember the Easter promises that love is stronger than death…we remember that when we eat this bread and drink this wine our bodies are not all that is filled…but so are our souls…by the very presence of Jesus among us…nurtured by his Spirit in this spiritual food...and for that we give thanks…and because of that we rightly call this act of worship…Holy Eucharist…the Great Thanksgiving.
But as the oldest Eucharistic prayer in our Book of Common Prayer reminds us, this gift offered in our sacred meal of bread and wine, is not for us alone. Not only for our own solace and forgiveness and empowerment…but that we might, also, become the very thing we consume…as we claim on Sundays in the Easter season when we break the bread…may we become what we receive. The spiritual nourishment that we receive, which is grace and gift, is to then be shared like all gifts…grace upon grace spilling forth from our own lives into others…as we love them…love those in need…love those we share our own lives with. Henri Nouwen, the late priest and author, writes, “Don’t you think that our desire to eat together is an expression of our even deeper desire to be food for one another? Don’t we sometimes say, ‘That was a very nurturing conversation. That was a refreshing time?’ I think that our deepest human desire is to give ourselves to each other as a source of physical, emotional, and spiritual growth. Isn’t the baby at its mother’s breast one of the most moving signs of human love. Isn’t ‘tasting’ the best word to express the experience of intimacy…As the Beloved ones, our greatest fulfillment lies in becoming bread for the world.”
What I remembered on that patio on that All Saints’ Sunday, way back in our beginning together, is that Jesus comes among us and into us, as we do one of the most simple and ordinary of all human things, gather with others, friends and strangers, sharing a simple meal…filling us all the way up…that we might be the very thing we receive…food…to fill a hungry world. And to this end, my invitation tonight is to remember this yourselves, not only once a week when we gather at this table in our church, but each and every single time you sit down with those you love, offer a simple blessing over food, and eat together…for Jesus is present…the moment is entirely sacramental…the food, the fellowship, the conversation, the smiles, even, at times, the tears, are all holy. A time set apart…heaven meeting earth…wonder in the midst of the mundane…for we become the very thing the other needs…food for their soul…comfort in times of sorrow…a companion to celebrate moments of joy…a partner for life’s great journey…Jesus incarnate in our own lives…filling each other all the way up. Amen.