Sermon for Maundy Thursday, April 1, 2010
The Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper
By the Reverend Stephen Gerth
Exodus 12:1-14a; 1 Corinthians 11:23-32; John 13:1-15
 

We are here tonight to recall and celebrate the supper Jesus shared with his disciples on the night before the Passover. We will do many things tonight, but more than anything we are here for a meal, to eat and to drink together. 

Since the time of the earliest records that we have, and those are from the city of Rome, the New Testament lesson for this Mass has been the reading we heard from Paul and the gospel has been the one we heard from John.[1]

But Jesus washing his disciples’ feet is just the beginning of the longest single story in any of the gospels, John’s account of this supper. This story concludes with Jesus’ prayer that his disciples may be one as he and the Father are one. Remarkably, the long passage says little about the meal beyond Jesus’ dipping a morsel and giving it to Judas. But, it was a meal.

The first generation of Christians possessed very little. Those Christians who had been Jewish were no longer welcome in the synagogues of their youth. By the time the first gospel is written, Peter and Paul have been martyred and the Roman government has begun a persecution that will last for over two hundred fifty more years.

What those first Christians had was a community of believers. They shared belief in the risen Lord. They gathered weekly for a meal – and to remember. Their bread and their wine, like whatever else appeared on their table, was part of their daily food. My own experience of the Eucharist, and, I think it’s fair to say, the experience of Christians for fifteen hundreds years or more years now, is very different.

Yesterday as I was distributing Communion at the 12:10 Mass, I was suddenly aware of someone running in behind the altar. The next thing I know this person, a man about my age, was kneeling at the rail with his hands out. I had never seen him before; I don’t expect to see him again.

I gave him Communion. He left shortly after receiving. I couldn’t help but wonder how the Eucharist had become for him just the eating a wafer.

Ten or fifteen years ago, I probably would not have given him Communion. But I am older now. That stranger’s desire to receive Communion seems far more reasonable, understandable to me than, for example, the practice Saint Gregory of Nazianzus described of his sister healing herself by smearing her body with the Holy Eucharist – and this was in the fourth century.[2] I don’t even want to think what that looked like. A tragic number of examples can be cited of the ways in which the Eucharist stopped being a meal and became an object, a form of incantation, magic.

The gospels of Mark and Matthew are far more the gospels of Jesus’ death than gospels of his resurrection. Luke and John are have several stories each about the resurrection appearances of the Lord. Luke’s gospel alone among the four carries a strong sense of mission to a wider world. John is primarily about how the members of his community are in relationship to God and to each other. 

We know from the gospels and the letters of Paul that Jesus’ followers, before and after his resurrection, have a difficult time with each other.[3] They argued over who was greatest among them.[4] They argued about which disciples could eat together.[5] 

Most remarkably, the gospels are almost silent about the relationship of the disciples to God, to the Father, to the Holy Spirit. But at the end of this supper on the night before the Passover, Jesus prayed that his friends would be one as he and the Father are one. That prayer is as compelling as any other message in the New Testament.

We human beings are made to be in right relationship with God and with each other. But it’s been easier for a great deal of Christian history for the Eucharist to be an object more than meal. It’s easier though for us human beings to do object than relationship.

The first Christians met in secret for many reasons, not the least of which was to avoid arrest and persecution. Our doors are always open, and I genuinely hope there may many here tonight for the very first time. But if there is a greater festival on which the smallest part of our community assembles, it is tonight. This is probably the most intimate, the most congregational liturgy of the year. I don’t think it’s necessary at all for our worship to follow the pattern of the first Christians – to have a bread ritual, then a meal, and then a cup ritual – what seems to be the pattern of New Testament Eucharist. We’re not here at all to do historical drama. As my former colleague John Beddingfield likes to say, the question is not “Were you there?” but whether we are here – and why? I think the answer our best selves should want to make is that we are trying to grow in our relationships with each other and with God. Relationship is fundamental to what it means to follow Christ.

Tonight we will give thanks over bread and wine so that we may share eat and drink the Lord’s Body and Blood tonight and tomorrow. And though in our service we he have a heritage of Eucharistic adoration, we take the Sacrament to our Mercy Chapel so that the Church may feed on the life-giving Jesus as we gather to venerate his cross and praise and glorify his resurrection tomorrow. At the heart of it all, we are about eating together.

One more thing. Today there was the fire commissioner of the City of New York held a press conference here in Saint Mary’s. He and his staff wanted to use story of the cardiac arrest that happened here during Solemn Mass on Epiphany to get the word out about the importance of cardiopulmonary resuscitation. I remember many things about that night, especially the strong sense of prayerful watching by this whole congregation as we waited for the gift of life to be renewed in Leroy Sharer. During the press conference Rick Miranda recalled how he had spelled Father Smith who was doing mouth to mouth resuscitation while a visitor, Marie Axiotis, was doing chest compressions. Ric remarked that when he did his CPR training his group was told most likely to be called on to do CPR with someone they knew, family, friend or colleague. As Rick spoke I found myself thinking again about how we have come from Epiphany to Maundy Thursday together, about the relationship we have with each other and why Christ himself continues to call us together to know his peace and to share his supper.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
 

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