After Supper Prayer

“After Supper Prayer”

Matthew 26:26 -45

First Presbyterian Church

The Reverend Donald E. Ray

April 21, 2011

Maundy Thursday

I have been invited to the WCA Hospital annual Employee Recognition dinner again this year to offer the invocation prayer before the meal. It’s a common practice at public functions and many family meal times, to offer a short prayer of thanks, grace, or blessing for the food and the gathering.

The Gospel records of the supper we remember tonight report that Jesus gave thanks before he broke the bread and shared it; again offering thanks, he passed the cup. In the Passover Seder, it would be common to offer a blessing over the matzoh and the maror - the bitter vegetable or herb symbolizing the bitterness of slavery; and for each of the four cups of wine at the beginning, during and at the end of the meal. While the Passover is a somber remembrance of bitter times in the life of Israel , and the frightening, arduous journey out of Egypt , centuries later, the Seder is a festive meal - a celebration of their exodus from slavery.

As Jesus led his disciples through the Passover observance, it would appear all was in order. The blessings were said and the matzah, the unleavened bread symbolic of the haste with which the people ate to be ready to leave Egypt , was served. The blessing was said for the cup and it was passed. But the festive celebration took a different note when Jesus that night identified the bread as his body, the cup as his blood.

Many times that communion is part of our worship; we celebrate a joyful feast. This night, in Holy Week, begun with Palm/Passion Sunday, remembering the passion - the suffering death of Jesus, our communion remains somber. Sometimes much is made of Judas’ betrayal, Peter’s denial, assigning blame for the agony of torture and the crucifixion of Jesus, somehow expecting that guilt and remorse will impress upon us the seriousness of what this night represents.

The Gospels provide for us something of a narrative of the life of Jesus, highlighting poignant stories as John’s Gospel claims, that the reader may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing may have life in his name. (John 20:31) Perhaps the significance of this night is in seeing it as part of that story of Jesus’ life.

As it was the time of the Passover, Jesus had his disciples arrange for him to share the festive feast with them. To use an old cliché, the handwriting was on the wall. The fierce opposition from the Pharisees and other religious-political or political-religious faction was obvious. They had evidently tried to kill him before. The narrative clearly indicates that Jesus knew one of his twelve had betrayed him. Was this to be a last festive celebration with this group of disciples and their teacher? As it was likely Jesus would die before the day was done, would the Passover for them be ever after tainted in their grieving memories?

Jesus evidently chose to make it otherwise. It was time for a new celebration. If he was to be beaten and bloodied, then the bread they shared would be his body broken, the cup his blood shed. And as the Passover meal bore the marks of Israel ’s enslavement but also the hand of God in their exodus, so in the new Supper the bread and the cup would be sign of the new covenant of God’s love with all. By the writing of the latest of the four Gospels, John separates the Lord’s Supper from the Passover. It has become its own joyful feast celebrating the new freedom for those whose bread of life is Jesus, the Christ.

On Maundy Thursday, we celebrate the Sacrament of Holy Communion with prayers and bread and cup. But the three Gospels, that tell us of the Supper this night is meant to observe, add another part to the narrative. After the supper, Jesus led his disciples to the garden Gethsemane where Jesus prayed. The prayer the Gospel authors describe was one of Jesus’ very human struggling with the fate it was painfully obvious awaited him, indeed any moment. . . .he threw himself on the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.” After discovering Peter, James, and John sleeping and urging them to keep awake and to pray, again Jesus prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” (Matthew 26:39-42)

In the 2004 Mel Gibson film, The Passion of the Christ, the opening scene is set in Gethsemane . Controversial as the film may be for its graphic violence and image of the Christ, I found a message from its beginning in the garden. As Jesus is there after the Supper, in grave distress, praying, the close up of his face shows a change from fear and anger to resolution and calming as he prays, “But let your will be done not mine.” As Jesus struggles with what he knows he faces, the film’s personification of evil appears with the serpent, tempting Jesus to abandon his resolve that no man can possibly bear alone, never. As that insidious symbol of evil temptation from the beginning of time in Eden , slithers, over Jesus hand, he stands, stamps his sandal on the snake and grinding it into the dirt, turns and walks toward his approaching captors.

There is a parallel with the two Sacraments observed by most Christian communities, perhaps not in the sacrament itself but in the progression that follows. Jesus, baptized by John, is led by the Spirit into the wilderness. There, wrestling and in faith rising above temptation, his life turns from that of a carpenter/builder in Nazareth to becoming an itinerant prophet/teacher delivering good news to the least and the forgotten.

After sharing Supper with his disciples, Jesus leads them to Gethsemane , there wrestling with temptation he finds in the Spirit, strength for the resolve to practice what he preached. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. Matthew 16:25)

We share in the Supper this night. Serious, intense as it may be this passion week, it is a joyful feast in its spirit nourishment. It is Maundy, for we receive from the one who though Lord, took the role of the lowliest servant washing the feet of his disciples and said, I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you ,you also should love one another. (John 13:34)

The invocation, grace prayer, blessings for the matzah, maror, and cups; all is in order. With the Supper we share, they are spirit nourishment in our faith journey. The wilderness, Gethsemane, the after Supper prayer where we wrestle with the challenging, frightening realities of life tempting us to be less than we might be, there we find who we are and the fullness of our life in God.

Amen.

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