Remember

A sermon for Maundy Thursday, 2009

How much we owe to this night. This lovely and sad night in which Jesus gave us the way to remember him and to find him in the simplest of gestures. “Break bread and remember me.” This gift of the Eucharist is a special kind of remembering – the Greek word is anamnesis and it refers to the specific part of the Eucharistic prayer in which we proclaim the mystery of faith “We remember his death, We proclaim his resurrection, We await his coming in glory.” This anamnesis is like the tenses of verbs in Hebrew. When God tells Moses that his name is I AM THAT I AM, it’s not that simple. The Hebrews words could be translated any number of ways – I WILL BE THAT I WILL BE, I AM THAT I WILL BE. You can find any number of ways to say it; the tenses are maddeningly and richly vague. Eternity is found in God’s name. That same power is in the Eucharist. As we remember we become a part of that night at the Passover supper. Every Eucharist that has ever taken place is happening whenever we do this for the remembrance of him. That’s the mystical part of the mystical Body of Christ.
One of the members of our Altar Guild shared with me a moment that she had as she washed up the chalice after church one Sunday morning. She became acutely aware the she was repeating the same motions of every woman who had ever taken care of the altar vessels from that very first night. Somebody washed the dishes that night and here in our little sacristy, it was ancient and brand new all at once.
Jesus created this rite from within the context of the Passover Supper, the Seder. It is the central Jewish ritual of remembering – remembering when they were slaves, remembering their deliverance, remembering how God was and is present for them. A line from the Haggadah, the text for the Seder, says “In every generation, a person is obligated to feel as if he or she personally had gone forth from Egypt.” This ritual of remembering keeps this awareness current within the Jewish community. It is tradition that is often updated. Some people prepare their traditional Seder plate, with its symbolic foods, with the addition of an orange. Oranges are no where in the Passover story but as women were first being ordained as rabbis one disgruntled man opined that a woman had as much business being a rabbi as an orange had being on a Seder plate. Now an orange serves as a reminder of a time when women were enslaved to patriarchy. The orange becomes a symbol of liberation. Traditionally the seven plagues are recited as drops of wine are put on one’s plate. Now along with blood, frogs, lice, locusts and the death of the Firstborn, some Seders include war, hatred and violence, ruining the earth, injustice and corrupt government. The Seder’s traditions are maintained while they embrace the current condition. A valid tradition is elastic enough to maintain its power and integrity while being adapted to new times.
When Peter and I were in Lebanon in 2007, I had a long and surprisingly heated conversation with some of his Lebanese family. They are members of Maronite Church, a branch of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. When I told them that I gave the sacraments on occasion to people who were not baptized they were outraged. Somehow I was not protecting the sacraments of bread and wine from those who had not earned them. Try as I might, I cannot imagine Jesus denying himself to anyone who truly seeks him. He spread God’s blessing of healing to those who knew the God of Israel and to those who did not. He offered living water to a woman of questionable character at the well in Samaria. He accepted the ministrations of a woman of questionable reputation when she sought his presence. He allowed her to give of herself and he didn’t check her credentials by asking her what she believed. He allowed her offering to be sufficient. Her desire to belong to the kingdom about which he preached was enough.
As revolutionary as the new formula of “belong, behave, believe” seems to us, it is really a return to Jesus’ open table fellowship. Jesus scholar Dominic Crossan claims that Jesus announced a “brokerless kingdom” – a kingdom which has no gate keepers. Jesus freed people from the idea that paying the priests in the Temple to sacrifice an animal was necessary to be in right relationship with God. Jesus said, come and just be a part of it. All you need to belong to this kingdom is your desire to give yourself to the vision and to be changed by it.
For a long time the church has jealously guarded access to the sacrament of Holy Eucharist, the bread and wine in which Jesus said we would find him. But he said “whenever you do this, do it for the remembrance of me.” It seems to me that any meal we share then becomes a meal of communion if we remember Jesus when we do it. Why should a church doctrine stand between a seeker of God and God.
The openness with which we offer the sacrament of belonging here at Faith is done because of what Jesus said, not in an attempt to protect it. We owe so much to this night. Not only the gift and the means to have the presence of Christ alive in our midst but also the remembering that he gave his life for our good. Tonight we remember his servant leadership in the washing of one another’s feet; we remember his commandment to love one another as he loved us; we remember his gift of the Eucharist; we remember his arrest. All of this remembering prepares us for his death on the cross tomorrow. The anemnesis of the Good Friday brings his sacrificial death into our time, as it takes us to the foot of the cross. Remember.