Maundy Thursday Exodus 12:1-14
John 13:1-7; 31b-3
April 5, 2007 5

The Threat From Within

As any wedding consultant will tell you, careful planning is essential when it comes to pulling off the perfect meal. Care must be taken not to seat Uncle Andrew at the same table as cousin Arnold. Remember what happened at the family reunion last year? And Aunt Jennie, remember, is deaf in one ear. Don’t seat her by that fellow from Seattle, who speaks in a whisper. And for heaven’s sake, don’t serve more than one glass of wine to cousin Geoffrey. Once he gets going, he’s sure to end up reciting those terrible bawdy limericks. One must have a plan.

Recently I watched one of those understated British comedies on TV. The mother of the bride was planning her daughter’s wedding reception.

"What are you writing now?" her husband asked.

"A seating chart," she replied.

"It’s a buffet!"

"All right, then. A standing chart."

When perfection is your goal, leave no detail to chance.

The instructions given in the Book of Genesis for the eating of the Passover meal are extremely detailed, but not for the sake of perfection.

When? On the 14^th of Nisan, the beginning of months.

How? "With your loins girded, you sandals on your feet,

And one last instruction: "You shall eat it hurriedly." Not leisurely. Not a banquet but a drive-through, a meal for people on the move.

These detailed instructions are, of course, reminders to Israel of the origins of Passover. The seder meal arises from crisis, from the days when Israel was in slavery and on the verge of either liberation or extinction. It is the meal of the close call, the near miss, the passing over by the angel of death. The cruise missile whistles past your house and lands on the house of your oppressor. Your future is entirely and utterly in the hands of God.

Smear the blood of the lamb upon your doorpost and pray the angel of death has good eyesight. "When I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall embrace it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance."

Threat. Crisis. The promise of liberation and the very real possibility of disaster. These are the bitter herbs that season the Seder meal of Passover.

The meal we remember tonight is, of course, is rooted in the Passover Seder, but it is not a Seder. Neither is it a simple re-enactment of the meal Jesus celebrated with his disciples in the upper room. Most Christians call it by its Greek name: the "Eucharist," a word which means "thanksgiving." But even that term needs unpacking. Thanksgiving for what? For a memory? For a symbol? For a crumb of bread and a thimbleful of grape juice?

The German theologian Michael Welker helped me to see a dimension of this meal I had not full appreciated before I read his book. Look again at the origins of this meal in the life of Jesus and the church, he suggests. This meal forever bears the imprint of threat, he says. Not just the obvious threat from the outside – the threat of Roman soldiers patrolling the streets and religious authorities determined to do Jesus in. There’s another dimension of threat in this meal – the threat from the inside.

Jesus presides at the table "on the night when he was betrayed." With Jesus at the table are 12 disciples, every one of whom is a serious security risk. We think especially of Judas and his kiss and of Peter and his three-fold disavowal, but all the disciples will betray Jesus before the night is over. (At least all the male disciples.) Jesus serves the bread and wine to men he loves, knowing that these are the very men who will scatter like frightened sheep when he needs them most.

We think of the meal in the upper room as the establishment of a sacrament – which it is – but a sacrament of what? Of Jesus’ suffering and death, certainly. Of his resurrection, to be sure. But also of the threat from within, from the church itself. Even as we gather at the table we face the very real possibility that we will betray our Savior. When the going gets rough, we might very well fall away. When the question is asked, "Are you not one of his followers?" we are just the kind of folk who might reply, "I do not know the man."

Speaking for myself, I have been feeling this internal threat very keenly in the past four years. The line between church and state, which has never been very clear, seems to me to have grown fainter and fainter in the course of the war in Iraq.

Have you noticed? The President regularly calls us to pray for our troops, but never for the people of Iraq. Does that not strike you as strange, coming from a Christian? When did the Commander-in-Chief become the Pontifex Maximus? Whose God is being invoked to bless Americans, but no one else? Is this the God who is Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, or is it some other?

These thoughts trouble me on this Maundy Thursday. I pray every day for our troops. How could I neglect to pray for brave brothers and sisters in harm’s way? But even in my prayers, I have the niggling feeling that I am praying more as an American than as a Christian. Isn’t there a difference, and shouldn’t my life show it? Even to this table I bring my divided loyalties. This table of promise. This table of threat.

John’s Gospel has no account of the sharing of bread and wine in the upper room. In the place of what we call Communion, John has footwashing – which in John’s Gospel functions as a kind of commentary on the Eucharist, if not a sacrament in its own rite. References to the Eucharist permeate the whole of John’s Gospel. It pops up all over. For instance, in chapter six, Jesus says "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you" (John 6:60).

"This teaching is hard," the disciples respond. "Who can accept it?" No one, John seems to be saying tonight. No one, that is, who is not willing to become a servant of this man who has stripped down to his tunic, tied a towel around his waist, and knelt to perform a task usually assigned to women, children, and slaves.

And it all happens tonight, the night of his betrayal.

On the night when he was betrayed, he took a loaf of bread and a cup. On the night that he was betrayed, he took a towel and a basin. He fed the mouths that disavowed him and washed the feet that ran away.

This meal has changed somewhat over the centuries, but the threat from within remains. The living Christ is ever at risk of betrayal by the ones who claim to love him most. The marvel of this night is that he still invites us to his table, still kneels to wash our feet, still offers his cheek for us to kiss. This meal, the sacrament of hope, also signifies the threat that you and I bring to it.

And still he says, "Take, eat, drink. This is for you."