17 On the first day of the Festival of
Unleavened Bread, the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Where do you want us
to prepare for you to eat the Passover meal?”
18 He replied, “Go into the city, to a
certain man, and say, ‘The teacher says, “My time is near. I’m going to
celebrate the Passover with my disciples at your house.” ’” 19 The
disciples did just as Jesus instructed them. They prepared the Passover.
20 That evening he took his place at the
table with the twelve disciples. 21 As they were eating he
said, “I assure you that one of you will betray me.”
22 Deeply saddened, each one said to him,
“I’m not the one, am I, Lord?”
23 He replied, “The one who will betray
me is the one who dips his hand with me into this bowl. 24 The
Human One goes to his death just as it is written about him. But how terrible
it is for that person who betrays the Human One! It would have been better for
him if he had never been born.”
25 Now Judas, who would betray him,
replied, “It’s not me, is it, Rabbi?”
Jesus answered, “You said it.”
26 While they were eating, Jesus took
bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, “Take and
eat. This is my body.” 27 He took a cup, gave thanks, and gave
it to them, saying, “Drink from this, all of you. 28 This is
my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many so that their sins may
be forgiven. 29 I tell you, I won’t drink wine again until
that day when I drink it in a new way with you in my Father’s kingdom.” 30 Then,
after singing songs of praise, they went to the Mount of Olives.
After
my parents died, one of the things I ended up inheriting was the family dining room table. It’s a piece that means a lot to me, not
because it has any great monetary value, but because of what it
represents. That table represents years
of family birthdays and Sunday dinners.
It represents Thanksgivings and Christmases and Easters. It represents parties and open houses with
friends from church. It represents
family and friends coming over for a meal.
I think
of the times we would put all the leaves in this table and open it up to its
full length so that everyone would have a place. One of those times was during the week between
Christmas and New Year, when friends of ours who were originally from the
Dominican Republic, living in the US, planting a Spanish/English church came
over. Mom and Dad had invited them to
come over, and then, unexpectedly, some friends of theirs from out-of-town
showed up the same day. Our friends
called Mom and Dad to reschedule, and I remember Mom on our end of the phone
call saying, “Oh, just bring them along!”
My grandparents were also in town for the holiday, and we ended up with
24 people squeezed in around the table that night – 8 of whom spoke only
English, 8 of whom spoke only Spanish, and 8 of whom spoke some combination of
the two. We had a blast.
I think
about the lessons I learned around that table.
Sure, there were the usual nuggets of etiquette about how to use my
napkin, not chewing with my mouth open, not speaking with food in my mouth,
waiting until everyone at the table had been served before I began to eat. More importantly, I learned lessons about who
I am, and to whom I belonged. Lessons of
nurture and love. Lessons of hospitality
and grace and abundance. One thing about
our table is that it was an open table – there was always room for one
more. And it didn’t matter how many
crowded around that table, there was always plenty to go around.
What we
learn and experience around the family table make us very much who we are
today. And for Christians, we find out
very much who we are around God’s family table, in the meal we celebrate as
Holy Communion.
In the
Scripture we’ve read today, Jesus has gathered with his disciples for what we
refer to as “The Last Supper.” We call it that because it was the last meal
he ate before death and resurrection.
Many of
the same lessons I learned around my own family’s table are on display around
this table with Jesus. We see evidence
of nurture and love. Hospitality and
grace and abundance.
As you
look around the table of those first disciples, realize that none of them was
worthy of their place at the table with Jesus.
Judas, of course, is the one we single out. Judas, the betrayer, the one who sold Jesus
out for a few measly coins, Judas, the bad apple in an otherwise good bunch.
But
friends, there was plenty of sin to go around the table that night. The disciples had argued about who would get
the most important, honorable place.
They had all refused to serve each other. They had false expectations about him, even
at that late hour. They would fall
asleep when Jesus told them to pray.
Peter would deny ever knowing him.
The others would abandon him and run for their own lives. None of the disciples is any prize. Not just Judas, but there is enough sin to go
all the way around the table.
If the
places at God’s family table were awarded based on who is worthy, then Jesus
would have eaten that meal alone. Jesus
took his place at the table among those who would betray, deny, and desert him. Even those closest to Jesus would let him
down and disappoint him, and yet he expressed how much he wanted to eat that
meal with them.
The
saying goes, “You’re known by the company you keep.” Throughout the Gospels, you’ll find all
manner of unsavory people around the dinner table with Jesus. You’ll find Jesus
eating with tax collectors and prostitutes and every manner of sinner, every
outcast, every social misfit, every disreputable character you could imagine.
It was
his table company that seemed to upset the religious leaders the most. Because, as Jesus ate with these people, he
was giving them honor and recognition, worth and value as human beings created
in the image of a good and loving God.
He was saying, “The world doesn’t think you matter, but I do. The world doesn’t see you, but I do. The world doesn’t think you have any value,
but I do. The world calls you garbage,
but I invite you to sit here at the table with me.”
This
ticked off the religious leaders something fierce, because it called into
question an entire society and culture that was based on hierarchy and status
and privilege. The world worked just
fine when “we” were up here, and “they” were down there, when the world was
neatly divided into “us” on the inside of the party and “them” on the
outside.
Then
along comes Jesus, and he starts inviting “them” to become part of “us,” he
blurs the line between “we” and “they,” and if you are someone who has built
your life and worth around considering yourself better than other people and
someone comes along who threatens to undo that whole system, yeah, you’d be
pretty ticked off, too. You might just
conspire to have such a person removed from power or even killed.
Jesus
understood that cost. Jesus knew what he
was doing around the table. He doesn’t
end up sitting with tax collectors and prostitutes and sinners by accident; he
invites them to his table, he invites himself to their tables, even up to the
last, he desires to eat a meal with people who would let him down in the
biggest ways imaginable.
Jesus
invites to his table sinners and deniers and betrayers and those who disappoint
him at every turn. When it comes down to
it, Jesus invites to his table all manner of unsavory, inscrutable,
undesirable, undeserving rabble – people like you and me, who are not worthy of
a place at the table, but are only here because of God’s amazing love and
abundant grace.
Thanks
be to God.
The
challenge, as we come to the table of our Lord, is to adopt the same attitude
that was in Christ Jesus. I ran across
this some time ago, and it seems appropriate: “Be
like Jesus: spend enough time with sinners to ruin your reputation with
religious people.”
It was
Jesus who said he came not to save righteous people, but sinners. It was Jesus who said he would leave behind
the 99 sheep already in the fold in order to go after the one lost sheep. The hard part for the religious people of
Jesus’ day was that they considered themselves so holy already that they didn’t
see their own need for grace. They
didn’t see their own need for repentance.
They were so comfortable with the life they had built for themselves,
they didn’t desire the new life Jesus was offering them. They didn’t see themselves as sinners or lost
sheep, which is too bad, because sinners get a place at the table.
That’s
some real food for thought. The
challenge, as we come to the table, is to adopt the same attitude that was in
Christ Jesus. As Jesus has offered grace
and love and hospitality and hope and abundance to us, to in turn, offer them
to those around us.
I have
a friend who is a single mom who worked her way through college 4: waiting tables in a restaurant. Anyone here ever wait tables? It’s a hard way to make a living.
She
told me about the shift she dreaded working the most each week – can you guess
what it was? It was mid-day Sunday, the
after church lunch crowd. She came to
dread seeing a nicely-dressed group of people who had obviously just come from
church being seated in her section, because they proved to be some of her worst
customers. One of the more memorable was
the party of 8 who stayed an hour and a half, had her running back and forth to
the kitchen constantly, ran up a bill of $120, and left her a $4 tip. She was amused at part of their conversation,
in which they were talking loudly, about what an awful sin it is to work on Sunday, and yet they didn’t bat an eye at
going out to eat and making someone else work on Sunday.
From
her interactions with Christians, she had seen enough to know that she didn’t
want to become one. Whereas Jesus
demonstrated amazing love and abundant grace at the table, her experience was
that when his followers got to the table, they were rude, demanding,
inconsiderate, and cheap.
Friends, we worship a loving,
gracious, and generous God. God is a
giver, and we are created in God's image. We are created to be generous as
God is generous. That’s something we
learn and experience around God’s family table.
God’s
grace is abundant and there’s always plenty to go around. That’s part of the reason I give you such big
hunks of bread when you receive Communion.
I want you to have a big reminder of how big and generous and abundant God’s
grace is! That’s something I want you to
remember and why – that I gave you big pieces of bread because God is generous
when it comes to giving out grace.
God
gives grace in abundance; who are we to be stingy with what God has given
abundantly? When someone complains about
the bread being too big, too much, you just look them right in the eye and say,
“And how much of God’s grace is too much?”
How
much grace is too much? I’m 36 years in,
and I haven’t had my fill yet.
Friends,
taste and see, the Lord is good.
Exceedingly, abundantly good.
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