Sermon: Remember Me

First Presbyterian Church

April 2, 2026, Maundy Thursday A

Matthew 26:26-30; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26

 

Remember Me

 

 

I have very distinct memories of the Lord’s Supper, when I was a child, looking for all the world like a funeral service. Table (and all the elements on it) covered in a shroud, the church’s deacons (no elders in that denomination), all male, dressed in black and looking exactly like pallbearers at a funeral…the only reason I didn’t immediately think of it this way was because, at that young an age, I hadn’t been to enough funerals to know. When I finally did see a couple of funerals and then saw the Lord’s Supper in church on a Sunday looking pretty much the same, I honestly think I was scarred just a little bit. It might have been worse if we’d had it more than four times a year.

Since then I have studied enough history to know that such presentation of the Lord’s Supper was not only common, it even came with official backing in at least one of the ancestor denominations to the PC(USA); its Book of Order described and prescribed exactly that kind of setup for the table, even to the point of how the shroud was to be folded when removed, and how it was to be replaced over the elements when the Supper was done. This was as far back, if I remember correctly, as 1796. There is a long history of treating the Lord’s Supper primarily as a memorial.

At this point in my life and ministry I can no longer believe that’s precisely what Jesus was going for here, as recounted by Paul in what we now know as the Words of Institution.

As Paul describes the scene (in what is our earliest written account of it), Jesus performs the acts we know – breaking the bread, filling the cup – and marks each one with the appropriate theological significance – “my body that is for you,” “the new covenant in my blood.” But then what does he say? “Do this in remembrance of my sacrifice”? “Do this in remembrance of my death”? “Do this in remembrance of what’s going to happen tomorrow?”

No. “Do this in remembrance of me.”

“Do this in remembrance of me.” Remember me. Remember the one who journeyed with you all around Galilee and Judea. Remember the one who taught you, who sent you out to preach and teach and heal. Remember me, the one with whom you shared so many meals at so many tables. The one who lived with you all these years.

Later in this same letter Paul will take issue with some in the Corinthian church who somehow doubt that Christ was ever raised from the dead.  It is one of the most impassioned parts of this epistle, and in the end Paul finally goes so far as to declare that “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (15:17), and even further, “if for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied” (15:19).  But then the good news: “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died” (15:20).

Even back in our words of institution, Jesus instructs his disciples that in the sharing of this bread and cup, we do “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (11:26). If all we have to show here is Jesus’s funeral, if what happened in this meal and then in the garden and finally on Golgotha is all there is to the story, then we really are kinda hopeless, aren’t we?

Do this in remembrance of me. Remember me.

The animated film Coco understands what power memory has. The young boy at the center of the story, who accidentally journeys into the Land of the Dead of Mexican folklore, is in the end rushing back from that land to be at the side of his "mama Coco"; as she is slowly fading, her memories slipping away, the boy sings to her a song that her own father had sung to her as a young child, before leaving the family to try to provide for them as a musician - a journey on which he ends up being murdered, unbeknownst to his family. That song had been made famous by the man who murdered her father and stole the song, presenting it as his own and becoming famous. But in these final moments, as the boy sings her father’s song haltingly to his mama Coco, the first sparks of life come to her face. (Any good music therapist will tell you that music can sometimes do this.) Her fingers begin to move, almost imperceptibly; her eyes open, ever so slowly; in the end, her own halting voice joins with the boy’s to finish the song, as she smiles for possibly the first time in years:

Remember me, though I have to travel far
Remember me, each time you hear a sad guitar
Know that I’m with you the only way that I can be
Until you’re in my arms again
Remember me

 

In this supper, in this bread and this cup passed among us, broken however imperfectly and maybe spilled a little bit, we remember Jesus, the whole life, the whole word, and in that remembering we are brought to new life, given a song to sing, a smile amid the tears of the everyday; we live in this testimony of the Christ who is coming again, and in whose life is our life.

Do this and remember.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

Notes on the Services for Holy Week

A few notes on the services for Holy Week at First Presbyterian Church of East Moline:

 

Thursday, April 2, 6:00 p.m.: Agape meal with communion, FPC East Moline library/meeting room

The early Christians gathered for services of worship and instruction which also included a community meal. While Christian converts from Judaism might have remembered the observance of Passover, Gentile converts were more likely to be familiar with the symposium, or banquet, and as the church spread out and became more far-flung and less focused on Jerusalem and Judea, this model was quickly adapted and fitted to Christian practice and tradition.

In addition to the meal itself, one or more teachers or evangelists would speak at such events. The remembrance of Jesus's last supper with his disciples was quickly adapted to all such gatherings, not only those for commemoration of an event like Maundy Thursday.

This meal will seek to capture the spirit, if not the actual form of such meals, with the message reminding us of Jesus's time with his disciples and how we best put into practice Jesus's instruction to "do this in remembrance of me."

 

Friday, April 3, 12:00 noon, Good Friday service, First Presbyterian Church, Milan

We are invited to join our siblings in the faith for observance of this holy day of the church year.

 

Saturday, April 4, 12:00 noon, Holy Saturday observance, the labyrinth at FPC East Moline

Weather permitting, we will commemorate the day Christ was in the tomb. Scripture, song, and a brief spoken meditation will be includedm as well as time for silent meditation and prayer. Those who are present will be invited to walk the labyrinth as part of your time here. (If weather does not permit we will gather in the sanctuary.

This is not an Easter Vigil. On this occasion we mark the fact that was indeed dead and buried, something that can often feel glossed over or rushed through to get to Easter Sunday. Participants are invited to take the time to consider the depths to which our Savior descended to reach us.

 

Sunday, April 5, 10:00 a.m., Easter Sunday service 

Traditional Sunday service for Easter Sunday, including communion. Also this year, the church's confirmation class will be presented as they begin their confirmation studies. 

 

We hope to see you at one or more or even all of these services.

 

Rev. Freeman

 

 

 

Sermon: In the Presence of the Betrayer(s)

First Presbyterian Church

April 17, 2025, Maundy Thursday C

1 Corinthians 11:23-26; Luke 22:17-34

 

In the Presence of the Betrayer(s)

 

 

In hearing the reading from Paul's letter to Corinth, we are reminded of those words we typically hear as part of what is liturgically called the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving, words that typically precede the breaking of the bread in the sacrament of communion. Paul felt it necessary to write those words to the Corinthians because their practices at the meal had degenerated badly, more closely resembling the reckless practices of the Greco-Roman world around them than Jesus's last meal with his disciples, the one which church's meal was meant to remember.

Paul's letter was written well before Luke's gospel (Paul was dead by the time Luke wrote it), and his bare essentials account differs dramatically from Luke's fraught description of Jesus's meal with his disciples. While not quite to the degree that the Corinthians' meal went far off track, it seems that the disciples weren't on their best behavior as they shared this final meal before his crucifixion. Indeed, one can spot three distinct hints of betrayal.

We do hear in Luke's storythe familiar words we continue to associate with the Lord's Supper - "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." He starts to speak the words about the cup but can't even get to the "do this in remembrance of me" part before he breaks down, with the chilling announcement that "the one who betrays me is with me, and his hand is on the table." After another moment he again sounds like someone who knows what is coming but concludes with "woe to that one by whom he is betrayed!" 

No surprise that the disciples are alarmed by this and start wondering who among themselves could do such a thing. But if we read only within the framework of this passage, we share their uncertainty. Who could do such a thing, indeed?

So who at this table with Jesus - one of whom Jesus says "his hand is on the table" - is the betrayer? This is where we have to both look backward and forward, and when we do that, we are almost compelled to ask "who is not the betrayer?"

Let's take the obvious answer first. Back in verse 3 of this chapter we are told that "Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot" and that he sought out the authorities who had wanted Jesus dead. All he needs now is the opportunity to give Jesus up to them. The betrayal is already set in motion. That's the technically correct answer, but maybe not the only answer.

By verse 31 we know something is up with Simon Peter. Jesus calls him out seemingly without provocation, as if to charge Peter with encouraging his colleagues when all this is over. Peter has glorious martyrdom on his mind, though, saying (probably quite loudly) "Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death!" Jesus's response is almost cutting, telling Peter that he'll swear he doesn't even know Jesus - not just once, but three times before sunrise. Of course, as we continue to read Luke's account, it really does happen just as Jesus describes, even before we move on to chapter 23. Peter is left weeping at his own failure.

But is that all? Right there in verse 24 we read: "A dispute also arose among them as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest." Really, right after Jesus has announced that someone would betray him, after Jesus has been talking about how he's never going to eat or drink of these things again "until the kingdom of God comes," you start arguing about who is greatest among you? Has anybody been paying attention to Jesus? Has anybody really been faithful at this point? 

That table was not the place for the disciples to try to show off their greatness or their superior faithfulness. It isn't that place for us either. At this table Jesus calls on his disciples to take on the humility of servants. And Jesus makes this call in the very presence of the one who would betray him (or should that be the ones who would betray him?). We don't come here to show off how righteous we are, how much more faithful than someone else we are, anything like that. We come as servants, as Jesus came to the table as a servant; we are served so that we might serve. We come to follow only Jesus, and only to follow Jesus, no matter what others at the table or other tables around the world on this night might do. We come knowing our own weaknesses, our own faults, and our own small betrayals, and Christ serves us, and we go serve.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Maundy Thursday sermon: Making ready

Grace Presbyterian Church

March 24, 2016, Maundy Thursday C

Exodus 11:1-4, 11-14; Luke 22:7-23

Making Ready

Jesus knew what was coming. Again I say, you didn’t have to be the Son of God to know that between the religious authorities and the Romans, Jesus’s time was short on this earth.

And as one of his last acts, Jesus was bound and determined to host a really good Passover meal.

While Judas is out conspiring with the chief priests and scribes (and with Satan, as Luke tells it in the first six verses of this chapter), our scripture for this evening begins with Jesus giving Peter and John an assignment to go and make preparations for a meal for the first night of Passover, a meal which Jesus says in verse 15 he had “earnestly desired” to have with his disciples. Apparently it was important enough to Jesus to go out of his way to make advance arrangements for a room for observing Passover, and to send the two disciples who had been his right-hand men for so much of his ministry.

Peter and John are sent to look for a sign that doesn’t sound like much, but in context would have been hard to miss. A man carrying a water jar was not typical – women were the ones more likely to be performing that task – so Jesus was giving them a clue that was hard to miss. They indeed follow the carrier and he indeed leads them to the place where a room has already been prepared.

The story is not dissimilar to the one we heard on Sunday, in which Jesus sent two disciples to fetch a colt for the ride into Jerusalem. Jesus, it seems, has been going to great pains for his disciples in this week in Jerusalem.

And so the disciples find the room, and presumably make the preparations for the Passover. This wouldn’t be unfamiliar to them; any good Jewish adult would have been familiar with the instructions for this festival, a portion of which we heard in the reading from Exodus earlier. They would have experienced it numerous times in their lives by now. This would be the one that would stay with them, though, for the rest of their lives.

If Jesus knew what was coming, his disciples might not have been so clear on it, or so willing to admit to it. Thus the meal being shared that evening, one last meal together, became Jesus’s one last chance to tell them, to leave them with an act that would bind them together, and bind them to him, and indeed bind all of the church together.

But perhaps the most striking thing about this meal, as Luke portrays it, is found in verse 21. Jesus’s betrayer is at the table with them. In case there was any doubt that Jesus knew what was going on, he dispels it right in the middle of this most dramatic moment of sharing, leaving the bread and the cup as his bond to them as they had shared so many meals across their time together, leaving them new meaning for the ordinary stuff of bread and wine; in the midst of this he names his betrayal.

Not his betrayer, though. Let’s be honest: Jesus could have identified Judas by name and his disciples might well have torn him limb from limb. Instead, the meal and the meaning are shared, with Judas’s identity as the betrayer not revealed until later that night, in the garden.

Peter and John could not know this as they followed Jesus’s instructions, making ready for the observance of Passover. They were simply doing as Jesus told them to do, getting everything together for a meal with Jesus and the disciples. While that preparation might have been a little odd, it certainly couldn’t prepare them for what was to come.

They weren’t given the latitude to decide who was in and who was out for the meal. Peter and John may have made many of the preparations, but Jesus was still the host.

Jesus didn’t tip them off as to what Judas was up to at the same time. They couldn’t know that one of their own was going to collude with those religious authorities to betray Jesus to the Romans. For that matter, Peter didn’t get tipped off to his own denial to come later, deep into the night, when three times he would deny even knowing Jesus, much less being a disciple.

If you want to look at this one way, neither Peter nor Judas had any business being at that table. If you go by our way of defining who is “worthy” or who “deserves” to be seated at Jesus’s culminating meal, both of them would have been barred, told to go away.

And yet Jesus served them, shared the cup and the bread with them, even knowing that Peter would deny him, even knowing the woeful end to which Judas would come after committing his act of betrayal. This final message was entrusted to them nonetheless. This final bond did not exclude them.

Coming to this table is a good time for self-examination and repentance; this much is true. However, we need to lose the idea that we can ever be “worthy” at this table. This side of our eternal reunion with Christ, we will never be “worthy” to be at this table. Our rebelliousness, our disobedience, our unwillingness to follow where Christ leads clings to us. We do not ever make ourselves worthy. We can’t. Only in the loving graciousness of Jesus Christ do we ever have any business coming to this table. And the  Christ who did not turn away the conspirator who was even then hastening his own death, nor the bumbler who would deny his very presence in Jesus’s life, is not turning us away.

And so, here is the table, unguarded, no gates or walls around it. Christ simply bids us to make ready, to share the bread and the cup, to know that it is Christ who bids us come and eat. We may yet end up in Peter’s shoes. We may yet end up in our own denial or betrayal of the Christ we love and serve. But Christ does not send us away from the table, no matter how unworthy we know ourselves to be, or how unworthy Christ knows us to be.

Christ bids us come and eat. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (PH ’90): “An Upper Room Did Our Lord Prepare” (94); “Now To Your Table Spread” (515), “For the Bread Which You Have Broken” (508)

Sermon: Betrayal At the Table

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)