Maundy Thursday: A Night to Remember

This sermon was originally preached at Ascension Lutheran Church, Columbus Ohio, April 21, 2011

This is a night of remembering.

Actually, the next three days are days of remembering.  Tonight’s service contains no blessing and dismissal, neither will tomorrow night’s service.  We leave in silence, to ponder the events of the day.  Thursday blends into Friday, blends into Saturday, and bursts into Sunday as we remember Jesus’ last few pre-resurrection days on earth.

It is fitting that this is a night of remembering.  The events of these holy days are firmly placed in the time of Passover - and if there is one thing Passover is about, it’s remembering. 

Once again, we read in Exodus how God rescued the Hebrew children from slavery. We heard God describe to Moses the final, definitive plague, the closing salvo in the battle between God and Pharaoh and his gods.  We listened as God directs Moses to have the whole of Israel put the blood of a lamb on their doorposts to keep the angel of death from their homes.  And we heard God institute the Passover feast so that all of Israel will remember this night forever.

Passover is all about remembering.  The foods eaten, the prayers said, the stories told all remind the children of Israel of how God reached out with a mighty arm and rescued them from slavery in Egypt, from oppression under Pharaoh. 

How God sent plagues, and divided the sea to bring the Hebrews safely out of Egypt. 

How God made them a people and provided for them in the wilderness.

How God brought them to a land of their own. 

That night, that first Passover evening, certainly was a night to remember. 

But Passover is about more than remembering – at least more than what we, speakers of English, mean when we say “we remember.” As so often happens, something got lost in translation.  That part where God says, “This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord;” – we don’t get that part quite right. We think we know what “remember” means: to think of, to recall, to reminisce, to keep in mind.   The Hebrew verb “zakar,” which we translate as remember, actually means something more.  It means to call something to mind and to actively participate in it.

When our Jewish cousins celebrate the Passover feast, they are not simply re-telling a story that happened to their ancestors long ago.  When they tell the Passover story, they are telling a story in which they have participated and are participating in.  They celebrate how God has liberated and is liberating them from their own version of Pharaoh’s oppression. 

Passover is not a celebration of events that occurred long ago. 

Passover is a celebration of God breaking in to the brokenness and oppression that each one experiences today,

     a celebration of God’s saving actions here and now,

         a celebration of God’s provision and care today,

            a celebration of God bringing them together as a community and claiming them as God’s own.

It’s a night of remembering, but it’s so much more.  It’s a present memory; it’s a living history; it’s sacred participation in and with God.

Jesus’ disciples understood Passover. They were good Jews, taught from infancy that each Passover, they themselves were the slaves, that Passover was God acting for them here and now. 

So, when the disciples at the table in the upper room, heard Jesus say,

“This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me…This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me,”

they knew what Jesus meant by “remember.”  They may not have understood what Jesus meant by the bread being his body and the cup being a new covenant in his blood, but when Jesus said “remember,” they knew exactly what he meant.  They understood that remembering included participation.

This active remembering is what Paul has in mind when he “passed on what he had received” to the Corinthians.  The Corinthians understood “remember” in much the same way Paul did.  The word Paul uses for ‘remembrance’ is based on the Greek verb “anamnesis.”  We translate it as “remember.”  But it means so much more:  to call something to mind and to actively participate in it. It was used as a religious term in Greek – to call to mind the covenant made when offering a sacrifice to the gods and act to fill it.

Paul was telling the Corinthians that each and every time they celebrated the Lord’s Supper, they were affirming and renewing the new covenant God had made with them through Jesus.  They were participating in Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Dying and rising with Christ, empowered them to live as Jesus lived, and love as Jesus loved.

This is indeed a night of remembering – of “zakar,” of “anamnesis.” 

If we simply “remember” Jesus, we miss out. 

If we just remember, the morsel of bread and sip of wine are just that – bread and wine. 

If we just remember, we can go through the motions and miss out on the gift.

If we just remember, we may have a nice experience here tonight, but leave without encountering God.

If we just remember, we can leave here and go back to our daily life unchanged by the touch of God.

We need to move beyond “remember” to

“experience here and now, fresh and new, God’s grace.” 

We need to move beyond “remember” to

“call to mind and actively participate in Jesus’ death,

to participate in Jesus’ resurrection,

to participate in Jesus’ life.”

Tonight is not simply a celebration of events that occurred long ago.

 

Tonight, these three days, and every single time we gather at the Lord’s Table is a celebration of God breaking in to the brokenness and oppression that each of us experiences today,

a celebration of God’s saving actions here and now,

   a celebration of God’s provision and care today,

      a celebration of God bringing us together as a community and claiming us as God’s own.

It’s a night of remembering, but it’s so much more.  It’s a present memory, living history, sacred participation in and with and under and through God in God’s creative, redeeming actions in the world.

Tonight is a night of “zakar,” of “anamnesis.”  We sit at the table with Jesus.  Jesus washes our feet.  Jesus shares his meal with us.  Jesus commands us to love as he as loved. Jesus suffers for us and God works through Jesus to liberate us once and for all from our brokenness and chains, so that we can love as he loves us. 

“This is my body that is given for you.

“This cup is the new covenant in my blood, shed for you and for all people for the forgiveness of sin.

Do this, in remembrance of me.”