Becoming What We Receive
Maundy Thursday, April 8, 2023
There are tables we come to out of obligation. There are tables we sit down at in a state of absolute hunger. There are tables we gather at which are so everyday that we hardly notice them. On each table is spread a collection of sighs and laughter, memories and dreams, tears and debts, betrayals and promises, miles of travel, patterns of human culture, blood and sweat. Perhaps in your heart beats memories of glorious meals and also those that were strained and awkward, the ones you might erase if you could.
What we share in the Eucharist is not just a reenactment of the simple supper before his crucifixion. At this table is history. It is the hands that first domesticated grain and fermented fruit in our primordial communities. It is a picnic with Abraham and Sarah welcoming the three strangers. It is flawed, newly free people receiving manna and quail in the wilderness. At this table are the multitudes encountering the wonders of loaves and fish, every teaching about grain and vineyards, and shepherding and even our own baptism. All of this makes its way to Jesus’ table and ours.
Here rest the people Jesus was not supposed to be eating with, the work and worry of Mary and Martha, the scent of the woman insisting that even dogs eat the crumbs. At this table is every resurrection nosh – the walk to Emmaus, the breakfast at the beach. And at this table is the context of a Passover, a liberation from cruelty and violence – a call toward an eternal Zion. It is in the context of the ancient passover celebrations, but we know very little about what that means. The gospel sacred storytellers are ambiguous and divided about whether or not this was at the Passover meal or before it; But the association is never edited out. This year is one of the occasional times when Ramadan, Passover and Holy Week in the Western Church line up. But what our Jewish friends practice in a modern Seder this week, most likely isn’t what Jesus and his companions were doing. Our neighbors holy meal ritual is a development of rabbinical Judaism over centuries following the destruction of the second Temple around the year 70. It is a home practice intended to educate, shape and unify dispersed Jews across time and space. The oldest Haggadah we know of is from the 7th century (CE), well after Augustine wrote down every thought he ever had. The Benedictine monastic rule is older. Nearly all we know about what celebrating the Passover meant in Jesus’ era is in the New Testament. What we do know is that THEN it is a celebration focused on the lamb, on the sacrificial lamb that must come from the rituals of the temple. So it was expected that every practicing Jewish person would go to Jerusalem on this moon, or if they couldn’t go then, there was a back up date as well. Everyone was commanded to go to Jerusalem to offer and get back the meat from the Temple. It would be like if at Thanksgiving every American had to go to the nearest major city, and go to one specific location with a turkey, where it had to be ritualistically butchered, and then you take it back to the room you have rented where it would be cooked and eaten. Even if only half of the Jewish people made it, that would be like 4th of July at the shore times four. It was dense and chaotic – a meal on the road, at a festival – not all the trimmings with the fine china.
The focus of Passover in Jesus’ era is the roast beast. Everything else on the table was there because it was what they ate when they ate. There could have been some sort of ‘eat this become these people’ ritual with these – but we don’t know. There is bread because there is almost always a grain staple on human tables, There is wine because it was health and wellness before there was water treatment. By putting his life at the center of the basics of this table, by centering Jesus’ presence and mission and memory in the everyday servings at table – he recreates what and where and how reconciliation happens. Augustine of Hippo says of this table: Behold who you are, become what you receive.
So he says and shows – come to this table, all, all, all, Strangers in a crowd and friends by the roadside. A community wandering in the desert, and friends gathered in an upper room at a confusing time. Come to this table of reconciliation, crowd into the room, on every table is the wonder of creation, the ages of ages making its way through tears and delights toward liberation from evil. Tonight after dinner, it will be empty. No delight, only betrayal. This is a recreation of the world. It starts from emptiness. And on Easter Night it shall be refilled with the outward and visible sign of Jesus’ presence with us anywhere his people gather – so that we become what we behold – the body of Christ.