Maundy Thursday

They had done this before. Some of their earliest memories were of their families celebrating the Passover Seder. It was a high point of the year. It was also a celebration that involved every member of the family, from youngest to eldest. They all played a role.

The adults would read the important lines of the ritual, the younger would take turns asking the required questions, and the youngest would join in the search for the hidden matzah. As they joined around the table tonight, their thoughts were a mix of what had been happening this week, over the past three years together, and all of those memories of seders gone by.

They knew the parts of the seder and what they represented. They remembered the laughter from the adults that first time they had gulped down that mouthful of horseradish that represented the suffering and tears their ancestors had experienced. They remembered how it felt like ages before the ritual allowed them to take another drink to wash the burning away.

They remembered the vegetables, the shank bone, and the stew that came from it. They remembered the bread that had been made so quickly it was more like a dry cracker than the bread they usually ate. They remembered the cup that sat in front of the person leading the seder, the cup that was put there for Elijah.

They knew the story behind it all. They remembered how their ancestors had been slaves in Egypt until God sent Moses to set them free. They could recite the list of plagues that Moses performed, ending with the tenth, the one that was the reason they were at the table. The plague that finally caused the Pharaoh to let God’s people go free. The plague that sent God himself down that night to travel through the streets of Egypt killing every firstborn son in Egypt except in those houses who followed the instructions.

Those families gathered around their tables and ate the meal to celebrate the fact that God had passed over their house and spared them from the final plague. That is how they survived, escaped, and became the people they were today. Tonight, as they ate the food and drank the wine, they remembered it all.

For the disciples, meeting around the tables for the seder that night was a welcome break from the stress. The past few years had been difficult as they followed Jesus around, but they now looked like a vacation compared to what had been happening since they came to Jerusalem four days ago. No matter where they went now, people were shouting at them; some cheering them on and some demanding they be arrested. This room they sat in tonight felt so quiet, so safe, it allowed them to relax. The seder was familiar. The seder was something that gave them a sense of comfort, a sense of being a part of God’s people.

Until Jesus came to the part of the seder called the Yachatz, the breaking of the bread. The person leading the ritual had a plate in front of them, holding three flat pieces of matzah. The middle matzah would be picked up and torn in half. It was called the “bread of poverty” and in a few minutes would be shared and eaten as they retold the story of the Exodus. This broken matzah reminded them of how broken they had been, and how God had divided the sea to help them get to freedom and make them whole once again.

The disciples seemed a bit confused when Jesus changed the words. As he passed the broken matzah around the table, he told them from now on whenever they ate it, they should think about him and how it now represented what was going to happen to his body very soon. Suddenly, the quiet room no longer felt as safe as it had before.

Things may have settled down again for a while, until the end of the seder when Jesus picked up the fifth cup. The room went quiet. The seder included drinking four glasses of wine as part of the ritual, but there was a fifth glass on the table, the Elijah cup. It was filled and placed in front of the seder leader, but it was left untouched.

The tradition was clear that one of these nights during a seder, the prophet Elijah would appear to announce that the Messiah was about to appear. Near the end of the seder, the door to the room would be opened briefly and everyone would hold their breath and watch to see if this was the year Elijah would enter and drink his cup of wine. The Elijah cup would remain untouched until that night came.

Jesus picked up the fifth cup. He not only picked it up, but he drank from it. He not only drank from it, but he passed it around the table and told them all to drink. As they drank from the cup, instead of thinking about Elijah, they were asked to think about Jesus’ own blood that was about to be shed. Can you imagine seeing their faces as the cup was passed to them? Can you imagine their faces as they held that cup that had been untouchable for so many years? Can you imagine what they were feeling?

It wasn’t about just remembering the broken past and setting out a cup in the hope that, one of these days, somebody might show up at that open door and tell us there was hope. We come to the communion rail remembering that hope has become reality; we break the bread to remember that Jesus could have kept his body from being broken, but he did not; we drink from the cup to remember that Jesus could have kept his blood from dripping down that cross, but he did not.

We gather here now to celebrate that we have been invited to God’s table. We didn’t earn the invitation. We are here because of Jesus’ body and blood. We are here because we were given a seat at this table. We are welcome here, equal here, and we have hope here. When we let ourselves think about it, it still feels kind of magical, and perhaps for just a few, brief minutes, we feel what the disciples felt that night it happened for the first time; what it feels like to be the people of God.

Church of England Bishop N.T. Wright reminds us, when Jesus wanted us to understand the cross, he didn’t give us a theory or a theology, he gave us a meal. “We break bread and drink wine together, telling the story of Jesus and his death, because Jesus knew that this set of actions would explain the meaning of his death in a way that nothing else—no theories, no clever ideas—could ever do.”

No wonder the church has for so long celebrated this sacred night. This is the one night we can see as well as touch the meaning of Christ’s death.

Dr. Leslie Weatherhead, the great British preacher, once told of talking with a member of his church about the meaning of communion. The man confessed, “Oh, I cannot follow all that goes on. I just sit and think quietly about Jesus. I think of that last week with his friends, and the Last Supper, and how he knelt in agony in Gethsemane, how they arrested him and all night tortured him, and how he died. I get very near to Jesus then, Sir, and when I go home, he comes with me.”

When we leave this church and return to our homes tonight, I pray we will each take Jesus with us.