Maundy Thursday - The Meal that Changed Everything

Text: Mark 14:12-26 (see below)

While I was living in Paris, some of the ex-patriots who attended the American Cathedral had a ritual of sorts that we came together for a community meal during the holidays. The parish hall would be transformed into a magnificent banquet hall with floral arrangements, a well set table, and good music playing in the background. These were wonderful times of fellowship, great conversation, and delicious food. Those many occasions will always be a cherished memory of my time living overseas.

NT Wright suggests: “It’s a deep human instinct – I believe a God-given one – that we mark significant moments with significant meals. Sharing a meal, especially a festive one, binds together a family, a group of friends, a collection of colleagues. Such meals say more than we could ever put into words about who we are, how we feel about one another, and the hopes and joys that we share together. The meal not only feeds our bodies; that seems in some ways the least significant part. It says something; and it does something, actually changing us so that, after it, part of who we are is ‘the people who shared that meal together, with all that it meant’” (Mark, page 193).

By New Testament times, the feast of Passover and the feast of Unleavened Bread had been combined into a single eight-day ceremony. On the 14^th day of Nissan, the Day of Preparation, the paschal lambs were slaughtered by the thousands from 3:00 p.m. until 5:00 p.m. in the Temple. (That must have been an awesome and at the same time terrible sight to behold.)

The Passover meal began at sundown (the beginning of a new day). The ritual consisted of eating the meal and recounting the story of the exodus and its meaning for those gathered around the table. As is true even today, there is much singing at that meal with songs of praise drawn from the Psalter. This can be seen in our text in the final verse when it states that “after singing a psalm, they went out to the Mount of Olives.”

Tonight, Christians all over the world will be gathering to share in a banquet and to remember a significant meal in the life of our Lord. A Passover meal with all of its undertones of liberation, rescue and hope for the future, was turned upside down as Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to his disciples and said, “This is my body.”

Wandering Pilgrim

What is interesting here is that the act of blessing and sharing which Jesus engages in was not in and of itself extraordinary. This was pretty much the normal ritual of a Jewish family meal. Joachin Jeremias in his book The Eucharistic Words of Jesus notes: “When at the daily meal the paterfamilias recites the blessing over the bread… and breaks it and hands a piece to each member to eat, the meaning of the action is that each member is made a recipient of the blessing by this eating; the common ‘Amen’ and the common eating of the bread of benediction unite the members into a table fellowship. The same is true of the ‘cup of blessing,’ which is the cup of wine over which grace has been spoken, when it is in circulation among the members: drinking from it mediates a share in the blessing” (Eucharistic Words, page 232).

What is so significant about this moment is that the disciples are not asked to pass this bread and cup along to others like they were in the feeding of the 5000. Jesus is making this action deeply personal. This meal was about him and them. This meal would become the center of the community’s new symbolic life – a new way of living – a new way of being community. By participating in these actions, the disciples were joining in solidarity with their Master and uniting with him in the way of the cross.

What does this meal mean for us today?

The Community of Saint Peter's, Cleveland

Tonight as I gather with Christians in Cleveland and share in this Eucharistic feast I will be reminded that my life is bound to the life and way of Jesus. He calls me, like he calls you, in this meal to a unity of Spirit, to a new way of living my life, to a new way of being with one another. In this meal there is no pecking order, there is no one greater than the other. We are all one in Christ – equal members called to be servants to one another in Jesus’ name.

This wondrous and mysterious truth is often difficult for me to grasp because I live in a world that constantly tempts me to think and act only for myself in selfish ways. Jesus calls me in this meal to remember, to celebrate, and to witness to a greater truth that real life is not about self but about living for the well being of the other. The way of the cross is about giving ourselves in love and service to each other and by doing so bringing about the Kingdom of God in the here and now.

I pray that as you go to your church for service this evening you will be nourished by this meal and strengthened to live a life that exemplifies the way of the cross.

Love One Another - Brian

The Eucharist is Celebration

Jean Vanier

The Eucharist links both communal and personal nourishment, because it is itself both at the same time. The Eucharist is celebration, the epitome of the communal feast, because in it we relive the mystery of Jesus’ gift of his own life for us.

Source: Community and Growth

Mark 14:12-26

On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb is sacrificed, his disciples said to him, ‘Where do you want us to go and make the preparations for you to eat the Passover?’ So he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, ‘Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you; 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?” He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there.’ So the disciples set out and went to the city, and found everything as he had told them; and they prepared the Passover meal. When it was evening, he came with the twelve. And when they had taken their places and were eating, Jesus said, ‘Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.’ They began to be distressed and to say to him one after another, ‘Surely, not I?’ He said to them, ‘It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the bowl with me. For the Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that one by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that one not to have been born.’ While they were eating, he 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. Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.’ When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.