The readings for Maundy Thursday take us to the Lord Jesus and his disciples on the evening before he was betrayed, condemned, and killed.
Jesus knows what is coming, so in these final hours he prepares the disciples for what lies ahead. But Jesus does not just teach the disciples; he does not just offer verbal instruction. He also performs actions – he does concrete, physical things – to enable the disciples to remember him and to live in the light of what he means for them.
Our readings describe two different actions performed by Jesus in these last hours with the disciples. John's Gospel tells of how Jesus washed their feet. Rather than just telling them that the fundamental principle of their life together as his followers is to love one another, Jesus does something extraordinary that forever imprints this truth on their hearts and imaginations. He, their Lord and Master, washes their dirty feet. They will never forget the sight of Jesus bowed down in front of them, the touch of his hands on their feet. They will always remember this enacted expression of loving service: the love of Jesus for them as the example to follow in loving each other.
Our reading from 1 Corinthians describes the other memorable action performed by Jesus on that last evening with the disciples:
... the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.' (11:23-25)
We hear these words in nearly the same form every time we celebrate the Eucharist. What is Jesus doing and saying in these actions and words that are so familiar to us?
We must remember that the last supper was a Passover meal. Passover was one of the great festivals the Jews had celebrated for centuries before Jesus, and of course they still do. Passover recalls the event that really established the children of Abraham as the people of Israel, when God brought them out of slavery in Egypt and they began the long journey to the promised land where they would live as God's redeemed, holy people. Our reading from Exodus gives God's instructions for Passover, which involved slaughtering, roasting and eating unblemished lambs, and putting some of their blood on the doorposts and lintel of every Israelite house. (12:1-14)
It was not a random coincidence that Jesus died at Passover. He knew about the murderous opposition to him, and he knew that going to Jerusalem would bring this to a head. He did not die by accident; he laid his life down, and he chose when to do so. He chose to die at Passover, when many thousands of pilgrims would have come to Jerusalem and everyone was preoccupied with this commemoration of how God brought his people out of oppression and into a new covenant relationship with him. As the Jewish people of that day thought, hoped, wondered and prayed about how the God of Passover and Exodus would act in the present in faithfulness to his covenant love for his people, Jesus deliberately comes to Jerusalem at Passover to complete his mission by laying down his life as a sacrifice, a ransom for many (Mark 10:45).
In his last hours with his disciples, how does Jesus teach them, how does he prepare them for the time ahead when he will no longer be physically present with them? Well, Jesus does not say 'By the way, guys, I am the true Passover lamb. Got that? Please minute that to make sure this important theological truth is securely recorded for posterity.' The truth about who Jesus is and what he does comes out gradually, obliquely, often through actions rather than explicit verbal statements. We may wonder why Jesus does not go around saying: 'Hi everyone, I am the Messiah, the second person of the Holy Trinity, oh yes, and also the true Passover lamb.' That, however, is not how the truth of God made flesh in Jesus emerged. But, guided by the Spirit, and maybe also by conversations with the risen Jesus, the disciples got the point. Often the New Testament describes Jesus as the Passover lamb sacrificed for our salvation. In his same letter to the Corinthians, Paul says 'Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed'. (1 Corinthians 5:7; see also 'the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish' (1 Peter 1:19), John 1:29, Revelation 5 and 13:8.)
So what does Jesus do? Just as the Passover instructions aimed at helping Jews down the generations to remember what God had done for them, so Jesus is concerned at this Passover meal to give his people a way to remember him. Twice he says: 'Do this in remembrance of me' – do this to remember me. He knows how forgetful we are, not just in the trivial sense of not remembering where I put the keys, but in the deeper sense of not remembering and living by the most important truths that should shape our lives, the truths of the relationships of covenant love and faithfulness in which we stand with God and with one another. We forget these life-giving truths, we forget who God is and who we truly are in the light of God, and we foolishly, forgetfully drift away. But Jesus wants us to remember: to remember who he is and what he has done, and who we are in relationship to him.
He helps us to remember not by giving us a theological lecture. Instead, he gives us bread and wine. Bread and wine were also part of the Passover meal, and these, rather than the lamb, come to the centre in the redefined Passover meal that Jesus leaves us with. He takes bread, breaks it, gives it to the disciples and says: 'This is my body. Do this to remember me.' Then he takes a cup of wine and says 'This is the new covenant in my blood. Do this to remember me.' Jesus does not here tell his disciples to remember him by memorizing his words – though they did of course remember his words and pass them on – but by eating bread and drinking wine together 'in remembrance of me'. Paul goes on to add that when we eat the bread and drink the cup, 'we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes' (1 Corinthians 11:26). Jesus himself instituted this simple, domestic action of eating and drinking so that we would constantly remember and be drawn back to his Cross, and through us the Cross would be proclaimed, made more widely known in the world.
As we come to the breaking of the bread this evening, let us be grateful that Jesus did not just use words to communicate the meaning of the Cross to his disciples, but gave them, gave us, bread and wine. We are not disembodied spirits, living only through our minds. We express ourselves and come to know each other through our bodies, and in Jesus God has addressed his supreme word to us in the form of flesh and blood, a human body. It's no surprise, then, that the God we know through the Incarnation also gives us the physical, sacramental means of the Eucharistic bread and wine to remember Jesus and remain connected to him and the meaning of the Cross.
One final, and vital, point. When Jesus told us to remember him and his dying for us by eating bread and drinking wine, he gave us a sacrament that certainly speaks to us and nourishes us as individuals; but it only does so as we share in the life of a community. Just before we receive the sacrament, the president says: 'We break this bread to share in the body of Christ' and we all respond, again quoting Paul's words to the Corinthians, 'Though we are many, we are one body, because we all share in one bread.' (1 Corinthians 10:17)
As Jesus approached the Cross he looked beyond the suffering and shame to the purpose for which he was laying his life down: he was calling into being a people reconciled to God and reconciled to one another. We call this people 'the Church', and the Church, the Body of Christ, is a community in which everyone, the whole world, is welcome, because Christ died and rose again to reconcile all people to God and to one another.
Every time we celebrate the Eucharist, and especially this evening as we remember the Last Supper, the Lord gives us bread and wine to remember him and his dying for us, and to bind us together in the Body of Christ, the community that exists to make his love known to the whole world.
'When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your death, Lord Jesus, until you come in glory.'
David Marshall