Why is this night different from all other nights? (sermon)

Why is this night different from all other nights?

The issue this evening is a sermon on Maundy Thursday of Holy Week, that leaves us feeling good, including about ourselves. Which is easier for me to do for you than for myself, because I live inside the creature you are looking at, and even when I see it, it’s reverse, mirror image, some old man I no longer recognize, but whom I know better than I know myself. 

There is an Easter gospel, which we do not read this year, scholars call it a “post-resurrection account,” the afternoon of Easter Day, when two disciples, Cleopas and another, are walking from Jerusalem along the Road to Emmaus, Luke (the gospel writer) says that Jesus joined them on the way; but they did not recognize him until finally they knew him in the breaking of the bread. All my life, my question has been, “They were Jesus’ disciples, Jesus was their Lord, how could they possibly not recognize him?” And there’s got to be a deeper answer than simply that this is the way Luke tells the story. One absurd physical reason is that he’s “mirror image,” in the resurrection his hair parted on the left instead of on the right; he’s godly left-handed again instead of right-handed as he was on earth; he’s reverted to black now, or brown, from the white, blond blue-eyed Jesus we see pictured on the walls of our Sunday School rooms. Or this is what Saint Paul calls the “spiritual body” because he’s no longer in his natural body, and the spiritual body can come and go across time and space, appears when doors are locked and barred, now you see him now you don’t. There’s all that sort of difference that also means you do not know the Father Tom you see up here on my preaching days, I may appear some nice old man; but Jesus and I know better: I’m not Thomas, I’m only called Thomas, in truth, it’s me, Bubba, chief of sinners.

The gospel is a strange thing. The historical facts of what actually happened that night are lost in the mists of time, for one example, because we have more than a dozen gospel accounts of Jesus, four of them canonized into the New Testament of our Holy Bible, and every one of them, including Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, tell the story differently, give facts that don’t match up with each other. What really happened that night at the Last Supper?

The four gospels each have it different, similar but different, and no wonder, the first and oldest of them was written forty years after supper that night; the fourth and last perhaps as much as a century after Supper, Good Friday, Easter and Pentecost; and, after all, we do not have NewsReels, they are faith stories, Heilsgeschichte, Holy History, don’t wander off into that briar patch of literal inerrancy. 

If I’m looking for “True Facts,” the closest possible to “recorded history,” I have to look at Saint Paul, at his authentic writings: and First Corinthians is one of the best. Yet even Saint Paul is dealing in hearsay, because he was not there, but at least he’s writing only a dozen years after the facts, based reliably on what Simon Peter and James the brother of our Lord told him - - 

that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, TOOK Bread (Paul’s NT Greek word and the Greek word in the gospel stories that mention bread say it was ἄρτος, which is a loaf of ordinary bread, not ἀζύμους unleavened passover bread but ordinary table bread, the same bread Jesus took and blessed and broke and gave when he fed the 5,000 - - a theological position and clarification in the Orthodox Church, where they serve not stale crackers, but real bread because that’s what the Bible says Jesus TOOK and BLESSED, and BROKE, and GAVE to his guests, everyone present, including at the Last Supper. Which, by the way, makes GospelJohn’s timing of the meal more credible than the synoptics? 

I am not interested in GospelJohn’s foot washing story, that’s godly humility, and a worthy Maundy Thursday tradition, though I have no intention of washing your feet or of your washing my feet. But I am interested theologically in the Bread and Wine, that this night is different from all other nights because in the night he was betrayed, he took Bread and Wine, and by his creating power as Logos the Word, made them his Body and Blood, and established ((among himself, and us, and Abba Father,)) an everlasting covenant that shall not end, in which we become part of God and God becomes part of us. Because that’s what happened: this night is different from all other nights because as from this night forward, in the Blessed Sacrament of Body and Blood, you and I are made One with Almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

This is Holy Week, thank God that this night is different from all other nights, hold on to it with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, because tomorrow it all plunges into hell in a desolating nightmare of excruciating pain and death. 

For this blest, holy and sacred moment, this night that is different from all other nights, we are one with God, and God with us. And if we can just make it through the horror to Sunday morning, Easter will come, Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia.

++++++++++

Maundy Thursday sermon in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida, March 29, 2018. The Rev. Tom Weller. Scripture: Exodus 12:1-13. 1 Corinthians 11:23-26. John 13:1-17, 31b-35.