Remember That You Are Alive

8/2/2019 Remember That You Are Alive

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Remember That You are Alive: Jesus' Last Supper and Sacramental Living

Exodus 12:1-14a; Psalm 78:14-20,23-25; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26(27-32); Luke

22:14-30

I love the television show The Simpsons ("One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue

Fish," from Season Two), which chronicles the life of an eccentric and flawed, but

nevertheless loving, family in the fictional town of Springfield. In one of my

favorite episodes, Homer Simpson, the bumbling father of the family, is told that the

exotic blowfish he has eaten was not properly prepared, and so is very poisonous --

and Homer has 24 hours to live.

What would you do if that happened to you?

I think Homer does what most of us would do. He makes a long list -- a list that's

probably been growing in the back of his mind for a long time -- of things he'd

wanted to do before he died, and he hadn't done. He has to cross off the major

achievements -- climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, make millions, win an Oscar, that sort of

thing -- immediately. There's no time to do those.

But there are a lot of important things he hasn't done yet that he could do, or at

least start. He teaches his son to shave. He tells those he loves how he feels about

them. He calls his long-neglected father in the nursing home and tries to renew their

relationship. And the guy who would rather stay home making his famous ultra-

sweet "moon-waffles" wrapped around sticks of butter than go to church gets a

recording of Larry King reading the entire bible, and he listens to the whole thing

after his family has gone to sleep. He finally gets to some of the most crucial items

on his very long list of "things ... left undone," and in the process, lives out whatmight be the best day of his life.

What would you do, if you thought you were going to die tomorrow?

Jesus faces that question on the night we now call Maundy Thursday.

I do believe that Jesus performed miracles, but on this night, it wouldn’t take a

miracle for Jesus to know what was coming the next day. It was Passovertide, when

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all pious Jews were commanded to offer sacrifices in the Temple in Jerusalem.

There were about six million Jews spread across the Roman Empire, and a

significant percentage of them headed for Jerusalem. The city was clogged with

pilgrims. Have you ever seen footage of what Mecca looks like during the Haj, thepilgrimage commanded of all pious Muslim men? Jerusalem probably looked

something like that during Passover, as thousands upon thousands of pilgrims made

their way to Jerusalem to celebrate the liberation of God's people from unjust

foreign rule.

Those vast crowds, all aware of how God delivered them in the past from foreign

rule, and many eagerly awaiting a new prophet like Moses, who would deliver them

from the power of Rome, would make any governor in the empire jumpy, and with

good reason. Trouble was easy to stir up in crowds like that, and any governor who

allowed such trouble to arise would lose his job, if not his life. Most governors of

Judea only lasted a couple of years. Pontius Pilate was not a man to take chances,

and he held the populace in such terror that he ruled Judea as governor for nearly

twenty years.

But Pilate knew that Passover was a particularly dangerous time for Rome, and to

make sure the crowds didn’t rise up, Pilate lined the pilgrims' way into the city with

crosses, the victims on them serving as an endless and unspeakably horrific living

tableau of what would happen to any who dared disrupt the peace of the empire.

Even then, Pilate made sure that his guards could keep careful watch over the

Temple, where streetcorner prophets proclaimed a God who was more powerful

even than the Roman armies. Guards stationed in the taller building next to the

Temple could see directly into its courts and be ready to respond if there was adisturbance.

That was the situation in Judea as Jesus celebrated the Passover with his friends.

And days before, in the midst of all of that tension, Jesus had entered Jerusalem

surrounded by crowds who loudly proclaimed him, and not Caesar, as king. That

alone would have provoked Pilate, and any local authorities who depended upon

Pilate for their positions of power and privilege.

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But that wasn’t all that Jesus did. After Jesus took part in this Palm Sunday

demonstration, he made his way to the Temple, where -- in the midst of vast and

easily agitated crowds, and in full view of the Roman garrisons -- he was shouting,

overturning tables, pushing people ... disturbing the peace of Rome in a verydangerous time.

And so, on this night, Jesus knew what was coming. He and his friends had walked

by those crosses on their way to Jerusalem. Jesus knew what was coming -- he knew

it ever since on the mountaintop, shining like the sun and appearing in the company

of Moses, Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem to accomplish a new exodus. I do

believe that Jesus worked miracles by God's power, but no supernatural knowledge

would have been needed on this night to see that he was headed for a cross. Jesuschose this path, and he knew that this night was probably the last night before his

death.

What would you do, if it were you? What would you do, if you knew that

tomorrow you were going to die?

Here's what Jesus did: He put on a dinner

He did what he did every night: he invited people to eat with him. He invited his

friends; he also invited the man whom he knew would betray him. He gathered

friends and enemies, righteous and wicked and places in between, and he broke

bread with them, and offered them wine. He ate with them, as he had countless times

before. He celebrated the Passover with them, as he did every year.

That's a life lived with absolute integrity. Jesus knows that in all likelihood, he'sgoing to die tomorrow. This is the time for any unfinished business -- to say

anything that needs saying, to do whatever has been left undone, put off.

But Jesus does what he always does, because what he always does, his entire

career -- his healings, his parables, his wonder-working -- was doing what he does

this night, what he does every time he sits down to a meal. When people want to talk

about Jesus' power, they often talk about the spectacular, the stilling of the storm,

the raising of the dead. But Jesus' power is demonstrated at least as clearly in what

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happens when he breaks bread.

When Jesus broke bread, everyone -- the Pharisee and the leper, the rich and the

poor, righteous and sinners -- experienced God's welcome at his table. When Jesusbroke bread, the hungry were fed. When Jesus broke bread, serving any who came

to him, people experienced what REAL power, God's power, does:

The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are

called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become

like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one

who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am

among you as one who serves. (Luke 22:25-27)

Jesus, having lived with integrity to his last meal, does what he always does: he

issues an invitation in the breaking of the bread. On this night, as Jesus invites us to

his table, he invites us to live with that kind of integrity, to remember him EVERY

time we break bread -- at the altar, certainly, but also in the lunchroom and the dorm

cafeteria, the family dinner table or the counter at the diner. Whenever we break

bread, or draw breath, we are invited to do so in remembrance of Jesus, until he

comes to complete the redemption of the world for which God anointed him.

And there is another invitation, in this breaking of bread. For on this night, on the

night he was betrayed, on the night before he died for us, Jesus broke bread, and

said to those gathered, "This is my Body." Not just the bread, but the company who

gather to share it: this is Jesus' Body, given for the world. And whenever we gather

with others made in God's image, other for whom Christ gave himself, Jesus invites

us to do so in remembrance of him, aware of and honoring his presence.

It's a solemn charge Jesus gives us tonight. Paul cites Jesus' words on this night to

back up his contention that those who fail to "discern the Body" gathered for the

Lord's meal, those who fail to recognize everyone Jesus invites to his table as being

members of the Body of Christ, are "eating and drinking judgment upon themselves"

(1 Cor. 11:29).

But what an opportunity, to encounter and receive Christ in the homeless veteran

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in the Winter Shelter where we volunteer, in a client with whom we're having a

business lunch, in a daughter as we share a snack before bedtime. What an

opportunity, to live every moment as an invitation to feast with Jesus, who held

every meal as if it were the Messianic banquet.

Somebody said, “remember that you will die.” That’s an invitation we receive

tonight, as we witness and reenact what Jesus did when he knew he was about to die.

And as we do that, we receive another invitation, one that follows from the first:

Remember that today, you are ALIVE. Today, you have the most precious of gifts,

the most important of opportunities: to LIVE as Jesus lived. Today, Jesus invites

you and me to experience the fullness of abundant life. TONIGHT. Don’t put it off

until you think you’ve earned it, until the nest egg is big enough, until the kids are in

college, until you think you have time. This is it! Tonight’s the night! Tonight is our

last supper together before the resurrection of the dead. Tonight is the night to

experience God’s power as Christ, come among us to serve. Tonight, Jesus invites

us to approach this table as he did for his last supper, fully alive, fully receiving and

serving everyone willing to receive and be served. Tonight, we are invited to break

bread in the presence of the one who celebrated his last supper as he did every meal.

TONIGHT, Jesus invites us to BE in the world the Body of the one whose body was

broken FOR the world. TONIGHT, we are alive in Christ, and tonight is the night to

live into that truth, that abundant and eternal life. Now. Tonight.

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Remember That You Are Alive