Grace Presbyterian Church
April 2, 2015, Maundy Thursday B
Exodus 12:1-14; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; Mark 14:17-25
Betrayal At the Table
Sometimes the
dinner table is the place to share big news. Julia and I have used it that way before. Once we used a dinner with her mother
and sister down at Disney World to spring on them the news that I had finally
landed my first non-temporary teaching job, and in West Palm Beach to boot –
not quite two hours from her parents.
Springing the surprise and sharing the good news was fun, although perhaps
not for other guests at the restaurant, since the shriek let out by her mother
was such that it probably disrupted radar buoys in the Gulf of Mexico.
Even in this age
of meals on the go or devoured in front of the television or distracted by
other electronic gadgetry, I suspect most of us probably can understand the
idea of a meal shared together as a place for sharing good news, celebrating a
special event, or simply enjoying the company of those with whom we are sharing
the meal. Sharing food and drink
lends itself well to that kind of exchange with one another.
On the other hand,
we may have also known the experience of more difficult or stressful meal
occasions. Perhaps it was a
holiday gathering, in which family that has moved to different places across
the country starts to chafe under the strain of unaccustomed togetherness; or
maybe it’s a gathering that includes an unexpected and unwelcome encounter with
an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend or even ex-spouse; or possibly the somber
meals that follow in the wake of the loss of a loved one.
Although the
gospel of Mark does not describe it as often as other gospels do (he tends to
tell stories about things happening when they were traveling), this kind of
fellowship around a meal was a common part of the life of Jesus and his
disciples. Only a few verses
earlier in this chapter Jesus was “at table” in the home of Simon the leper
when an unknown woman broke open that container and anointed Jesus. And it is the gospel of Mark that
records not one, but two feeding miracles – five thousand are fed in chapter
six, and four thousand in chapter eight.
As early as chapter two Jesus is disparaged by the scribes and Pharisees
for “eating with tax collectors and
sinners” (2:15-17), for dining at the home of the tax
collector-turned-disciple Levi. At least it’s enough of a history to suggest
that things happened at the table.
Nothing like this,
though.
Nothing like this
announcement – “one of you will betray
me”. Nothing like the
frenzied, panicky reaction of the disciples, each one trying to convince
himself the he wasn’t capable of that sort of thing. Nothing like the pall of
gloom that kind of announcement casts over a room, knowing that a traitor is in
their midst and not knowing who it is.
We, the readers of
this gospel, have the advantage.
We know, because Mark told us so back in verse ten of this chapter, that
Judas has already conspired with the religious authorities to betray Jesus to
them. We know, because Mark has
told us that all twelve of the disciples are there, that Judas is among those
around the table, maybe even among those crying out “Surely, not I?” We know what’s going to happen, in a way that the
disciples do not and cannot know, even though Jesus has told them at least
three times over the course of this gospel.
And yet, even with
this weight of uncertainty and fear hanging over the room, the word of betrayal
is not the last word in this last meal together. The last work of Jesus in this place is to bind the
community together, even as one tries to tear it apart.
Amidst the
commotion of the meal, and amidst the observance of the meal associated with
the first night of Unleavened Bread, or Passover, Jesus reached out to the
disciples with one last sign, one last gesture for the disciples to hold on to
in the days and weeks and years to come, one last way to bind these fractious
and sometimes rather dense followers into a family.
The means by which
Jesus does this are pretty ordinary, especially in this context. It’s not as if Jesus has never broken
bread or shared wine with the disciples before; as we’ve already noticed
they’ve seen Jesus do an awful lot of bread-breaking in at least two settings,
and the company of disciples and other followers has probably lost count by now
of the number of meals they’ve shared. Loaves of bread or cups of wine have passed among the
group plenty of times.
It is this
commonplace, even routine gesture that Jesus gives to the disciples, but in
doing so in this place, on this occasion, these ordinary objects are given a
new life, invested with new meaning. They become the markers both of something
they’ve heard before, and of something new.
In one way this is
one last foretelling of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. Jesus has already done this three
times, in chapters eight, nine, and ten of Mark’s gospel. Each time the disciples failed to
understand; once Peter rebuked Jesus for even suggesting such a thing, and got
called ‘Satan’ for his trouble; the second time the disciples fell to arguing
among themselves who was the greatest; and the third, James and John had the
nerve to asked for preferred seating at Jesus’s side in glory. This time, the disciples won’t have a
lot of time to misunderstand; events have already been set in motion that would
bring the crucifixion to pass.
Even so, in verse 25 Jesus also points beyond the crucifixion to a time
“in the kingdom of God” when he
would taste of the fruit of the vine again.
But there is also
something new in Jesus’s words; a “covenant,
which is poured out for many.” The language of “covenant” itself is not
new; it echoes all the way back to Exodus, to the covenant God made with Moses
and the Hebrew people, even to the events that are marked in the observance of
Passover itself. For Jesus to
speak of a “covenant” here points to something new, something different about
the way God would be among and with humanity. It was still not something that the disciples were ready to
understand yet, but it would not be too long before they were living in it.
With time rapidly
sliding away, with the specter of betrayal looming, with the unspeakable agony
of crucifixion drawing ever nearer, Jesus’s last gesture to his followers was
one meant to forge a bond between them, one in which Jesus’s own life and
traveling and teaching with them, meals shared and miles walked, would continue
to be lived out among the disciples and all of Jesus’s followers and those who
would join them in later days and later years, all demonstrated with the
simplest of elements, bread and wine.
And even to this
day, it is in this act that the church in worship is most the church in worship.
For all the other things that happen in a worship service, nothing else
quite captures what it is to be followers of Jesus, the body of Christ, than
this simple act instituted by Jesus among his followers.
And remember,
Judas was there. In a time when so
many calling themselves “Christians” cannot wait to show the world their belief
by refusing to do business with someone, or by harassing persons of different
faiths, or by otherwise pushing people away, we are confronted in this text
with the fact that Jesus extended this covenant, shared this final act of grace
and fellowship and binding together and, yes, love, with his own betrayer
seated at the table. Knowing that
Judas was going to go and betray him, that his disciples would run away from
him in fear, that Peter would deny him, not just once or twice but three times,
Jesus pulled them all together in this act of communion, pulling them back
together even before they had fallen apart.
And it’s not as if
we’re immune. As the novelist and
pastor Frederick Buechner put it, “Judas
is only the first in a procession of betrayers two thousand years long.” We followers have turned to betrayers
too frequently and too easily for those two thousand years, and there are many
followers out there as betrayers even today.
And yet the table
is still spread, and the bread is still broken and the wine still poured, and
all of us, followers and betrayers alike, are still called to come to the
table. All our denials, all our
failure to live in anything like the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy
Spirit cannot and will not ever cause Christ to dis-invite us from this
table. The new covenant poured out
for many will not be defeated by hatred, by jealousy, by anger, by shame, or
even by death itself. No matter
our failures, Jesus bids us come and dine.
And this is, in
short, the good news on this heavy, sorrowful night.
For a table always
spread for us, Thanks be to God. Amen.
Hymns
(PH ’90): “An Upper Room Did Our Lord Prepare” (94), “For the Bread Which You
Have Broken" (508), “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" (101)
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