Maundy Thursday
2010 April 1
The First Meal
On this evening, Jesus eats a last supper with his followers, prays for deliverance
in Gethsemane, is betrayed by Judas, denied by Peter, abandoned by the rest
of the disciples, arrested, interrogated, and condemned to death—all before
daybreak on Friday. The Synoptic Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke record this
evening as centered on a meal. John’s account differs totally, as we just
heard; no word is offered about the institution of the sacrament of Christ’s
body and blood. Thus, as crucial as the foot washing is for our understanding
and our seeking to embody the peace, love and service of Jesus Christ, we would
do well to meditate on what Mark (who is followed by Matthew and Luke) recognizes
as the Passover Meal which Jesus shares with his disciples—more than a
Last Supper, it is the first meal.
“Where do you want us to go and make the preparations for you to eat the
Passover?” the disciples asked Jesus. Mark records that Jesus instructs
two of the disciples “to go into the city” where they will be met
by “a man carrying a jar of water.” Follow him, and wherever he
enters, say to the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher asks, where is my
guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’” The
disciples follow Jesus’ directions, find the man in the street, and are
led to the householder and then to an already furnished large upper room, just
as “Jesus had told them” (Mark 14:12-16).
This pre-planning had some secrecy to it. Jesus sent only two disciples. This
could have been because, as reported in the verses previous to finding the upper
room, Judas “began to look for an opportunity to betray Jesus” (14:11),
and Jesus was trying to prevent Judas from having knowledge of the precise location
for the Passover Meal. After all, as Marks tells the story, Jesus knows precisely
what will happen—that his arrest and execution are inevitable. Yet, we
should not attribute this foreknowledge to any supernatural ability on Jesus’
part or to any divine necessity that the death must happen. Rather, anyone with
eyes could see what had been happening around Jesus. The more he impressed the
people that he taught with authority, the more the religious and political authorities
felt pressured. These social realities need to be kept front and center; the
upper room for the Passover Meal was not a retreat or a safe space.
“When it was evening, he came with the twelve… and while eating,
Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them,
and said, ‘Take: this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, and after
giving thanks he gave it to them; and all of them drank from it. He said to
them, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many…’”
(14:17-25). They ate the Passover Meal together; Jesus spoke of his imminent
betrayal (“I tell you, one who is eating with me will betray me”),
and then Jesus invests the bread and wine with meanings associated with his
impending death (“I will never drink of it again until the day I drink
it new in the Kingdom of God”).
“One of you will betray me”? Let’s be careful here. They all
failed Jesus before the night was over—betrayed by Judas, denied by Peter
and abandoned by the rest of the disciples! However, Jesus activity—his
public ministry—had largely taken shape in the context of shared meals,
with controversy and provocation both evident and cloaked. This meal was not
to be an exception. He taught at meals; his parables couched his teachings in
images of banquets; and one of the major reasons his opponents were maneuvering
to neutralize him was because he ate with undesirables, the marginalized and
the outcast. In the society of Jesus day, you are who you eat with! Jesus table
etiquette, his meal practice, was about reaching across to include people. To
make the inclusion happen, Jesus crossed boundaries, came into bodily contact
with the excluded and, while casting the protocols of guest lists aside, obscured
the boundary between politics and religion in so doing. Religiously, he ate
“with tax collectors and sinners” in the name of the Kingdom of
God. Politically, with his bodily presence, he thus affirmed a very different
vision of society—and not just a heavenly vision but a concretely on earth
action. This comes into clearer focus if we consider the bread of his supper.
The meals of Jesus were real meals, and real food—bread—mattered.
“Give us this day our daily bread” fuses prayer and social agenda.
That’s not a 21st century read-back into the Gospel. In the Lord’s
Prayer, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven”
marries divine will and daily existence. “Give us this day our daily bread.”
For Jesus’ audience, bread, enough food for a day, was one of two central
survival issues; the other was debt. And isn’t that the next petition
in the Lord’s Prayer—debt forgiveness? The Last Supper then continues,
and is the culmination of, Jesus’ emphasis upon meals and food as God’s
justice.
Then, at the Last Supper, what does Jesus do with the bread? As Mark narrates
it, Jesus took, blessed, broke and gave. He’d done that before. When?
While feeding the five thousand: “Taking the five loaves and two fish,
Jesus looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to
his disciples to set before the people” (6:41). On a day when the disciples’
solution for the people’s hunger would have been to “send them away”
(6:36) to fend for themselves, Jesus instead gives them a seemingly impossible
solution: “You give them something to eat” (6:37). Do you see, then,
how the whole miracle is something other than the way we usually frame it?
The miracle is that is that Jesus moves the disciples from solution “a”
to solution “b”. Jesus engages the disciples to participate in the
transition and transformation step by step. They go from “Where are we
going to get the money to feed them” to looking around to see what food
might be available (6:38), organizing the people to sit down in groups (6:39),
distributing the food (6:41) and gathering up the leftovers (6:43). The miraculous
feeding is not a miracle of multiplication but of distribution. As biblical
scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan elaborate in their book The Last
Week, Jesus doesn’t rain down manna from heaven or turn stones into food.
He takes what is already there and when it passes through Jesus’ hands,
it is more than enough. Is that miracle enough for you? It bears meditating
upon. The resources of this world, when passing through the hands of Jesus,
are more than enough. The hands of Jesus are doing the work of incarnating divine
justice. The disciples working in that field of hungry thousands are working
as the hands of Jesus. The Church as the hands who take up the job of being
Christ’s disciples is working for the incarnation of divine justice.
Whether loaves and fishes or the loaf of bread and cup of wine, the gospels
illustrate that Jesus’ passion is for the great sacramental meal of the
Kingdom being the primary practical program on earth, and not “next year
in Jerusalem,” but whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup.
On that night when he would be handed over, Jesus’ Last Supper with his
friends was a poignant New Passover, the First Meal of Eucharist. Neither for
them, nor for us as we do this for the remembrance of him, is this meal a retreat
from the pressures and harshness of life. The ancient Hebrews ate on the run
to be steps ahead of Pharaoh. Swallowing the meal served in the upper room was
not pleasant for the followers being told there was a foe among the friends.
And for us? A Eucharist that memorializes miraculous multiplications is not
going to cause any uproar among the powers that be. However, the miracle of
justice, the practical work of equitable distribution certainly will. Just consider
the healthcare debate in our country. Then try to imagine the working of justice
as the equitable distribution of food resources; then, the Church’s mission
of daily bread as laid out on the Eucharistic table—the first meal of
Christ’s love with and for others.
As did the ancient Hebrews, we do not linger over this meal. Christ our Passover
is our food for the journey, nourishing us for the practical reworking of everyday
life. In this meal, we celebrate who we become in Christ. Through this meal,
we work for this becoming with others. The last Supper is our First Meal, and
every Eucharist is about bread-as-body and blood-as-wine. Bread and Wine: not
sip and dip but daily bread for the world; committing our body and blood to
God’s justice overcoming human injustice, a new Passover from “as
is” slavery to incarnational freedom—living in Christ, on earth
as in heaven.
This meal is real; not easy, not utopian, not without controversy. However,
at the heart of living this meal is a peace and love grounded in something that
only God could have started: radical forgiveness. For remember, at that meal,
Jesus gave the sacrament to Judas too. AMEN.
©Thomas F Reese March 28, 2010