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Tonight, as part of the community of faith around the world,
we gather at a table of remembrance and thanksgiving. We gather around the
symbols of our faith to speak words of blessing, to break bread and share
wine. This table around which we gather is a table of radical welcome, a
table where no differences of tradition or education or wealth or social
level or gender or age or power or marital status or culture or ethnic
background or length of time in the faith or anything else should separate
us. This is a table from which no one, no one, is excluded. Let me say that
again: This is a table from which no one,
no one at all, is excluded.
Do we believe that; that no one is excluded
from this table of radical welcome?
Do we, disciples of Jesus of Nazareth, who ate
with sinners, who touched lepers
and who spoke with the outcast,
believe that?
Do we, the friends of Jesus,
who made no distinction between Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, male and
female, believe that at this Table all are
welcomed?
Do we, the followers of Jesus,
who took the side of the woman about to be stoned for a sin that certainly
involved the active participation of a man, who honored the sacrifice of a
soon to be penniless widow and who forgave those
who nailed him to the cross, believe that all are
invited and included at this Table?
Do we entrust this table, this bread and this wine
to God with our whole hearts, without judgment on any who come to eat here?
Or have we in any way ringed this table with moats of self-righteousness,
with fences of pious regulations or the barbed wire of doctrinal tests?
Have we demanded that people be clean and presentable according to how we
see things? Have our rules excluded some?
“Do this in remembrance of
me.” This is the table of radical welcome because Jesus was a
radical host.
“Do this in remembrance of
me.” Tonight is not about whether the right elements are white
bread and wine or matzo and grape juice. Tonight is about remembering Jesus
and all Jesus stands for and all for whom Jesus stood. It is not about the
best form of words, or how the peace is shared. It is not really about
testimonials or creeds or doctrines or anything else that might separate us
from one another. It is all about our radical, merciful host: Jesus.
Poor Judas, he throws himself on the wrong people for mercy. Having turned
his back on the Master, he turns to his new masters who now own his soul
courtesy of thirty pieces of silver. Seeking from them a word of solace in
the face of his realization of his crime and his deepest need, Judas’ new
masters disavow him. And so it was that unable to endure his own burden of
guilt and shame, Judas takes his life. We know that Peter was almost equally
culpable, but Peter throws himself on the right person for mercy. Jesus
engages with Peter in corrective self-examination, and Peter is protected by
the mercy of the Master.
Tonight is about the life and death of Jesus exposing the lies by which the
world so often operates.
▪ Jesus exposed as a lie that it is
great is to be rich and powerful.
▪
Jesus exposed as a lie the idea that revenge is at the heart
of what it means to be human,
that it is natural and
right to exact “an eye for an eye.”
▪
Jesus exposed as a lie the idea that the state wielded the
ultimate power by being able
to execute any who dared to challenge Rome’s ways.
All of those lies, and many others, Jesus disproved and discredited. Our
task is to identify the lies that are told today, lies that we sometimes
accept without question, which Jesus still exposes.
In the former Eastern European Communist bloc nations, it was common for
grocers or other shopkeepers to be asked by government officials to place
signs in their windows declaring, “Workers of the world unite!” Signs like
that appeared everywhere in those nations. One day, though, a grocer decided
that he no longer believed that lie, and he refused to put the sign in his
window. When that grocer, and others like him, began to take their stand,
the Communist rulers knew that the end was near. They knew that the only way
to enforce their ideology on the people was for signs like that to be
present everywhere the people went. Vaclav Havel observed, “the big lie of
Communism could be maintained only by the millions of small lies elicited
from greengrocers.”
All the big lies, the big lies of Communism and Capitalism, of Militarism
and Isolationism, the lies of Racism, Ageism and Sexism, the lies of
Nationalism and Classism – all of these lies are exposed by the Jesus who
went to the cross and welcomes all to this table of radical welcome.
Tonight is then all about the radical, unconditional welcome that God offers
us in this feast which we celebrate remembering and in the very presence of
Jesus Christ, the Jesus who went to His death rather than deny us.
Tonight is also about the challenge that Jesus offered his first disciples
at that first table when he laid his hands on what happened to be there,
blessed it, and gave it to everyone who was gathered – including the one who
was about to betray him, the one who was about to deny him, and the ones who
would run away.
Jesus said,
“Do this in remembrance of me.”
This is what we do on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, this is in fact,
about all we can do this entire week, remembering Jesus. We remember, we
recite, we wrestle with the final hours of Jesus’ life. The triumphal shouts
of “hosanna” have died down. The palms are gone. The sanctuary will soon be
draped in black. We are drawn together in this renewal of the Last Supper.
Here at this Table of radical welcome, Jesus meets you, Jesus meets
us, Jesus claims you, Jesus embraces us, Jesus wraps loving arms around the
world and all its people. This Table of radical welcome and the one
whose welcome we accept tonight can remake us and renew us, having feasted
we can restart our faith and re-fire our holy imagination as we live and
share the radical welcome that our loving God has for the world and its
people. This is the welcome Jesus is talking about,
“Do this in remembrance of
me.” Amen. |
