Maundy Thursday, Year A

“IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME”
Exodus 12: 1 – 14a; Psalm 78: 14 – 20, 23 – 25; I Corinthians 11: 23 – 32; Luke 22: 14 – 30
A homily by The Rev. Gene Tucker given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, IL on Thursday, March 20th, 2008

“Do this in remembrance of me,” we read in tonight’s Gospel, Luke 22: 19.

“Remembrance”…. “Remember”…..

If we take a look at our dictionaries, nearly all of them define “remember” as being able to recall or recollect a memory in our minds, a memory of some past event.

But the ancient Jews had a far different understanding….to them, “remember” meant to “re-member” or to “put together again”, as if to bring into the present the very person and power of an event that had happened in the past.

You see, we Westerners are the ones who separate mind from body, spiritual from physical, present and past. The ancient peoples didn’t do that….they had a far more holistic understanding of life, seeing it as an interwoven fabric of mind, body, spirit and soul, which were all bound together by the great events of God’s acting in His people’s lives, events which happened all over again, in a sense, every time an event was recreated or re-enacted.

In their holistic sense of all these things, they were at a far greater advantage than we 21st century Christians who live in a western culture are.

So, what exactly is it that we “remember” this Maundy Thursday evening, which is the evening of the Last Supper, and the occasion of the giving of one of the two great dominical sacraments?[1]

What is it that we are bringing forward by our re-enactment of it, to re-member (or, as we said above, “put together all over again”) tonight?

The re-enactment of the Holy Communion, the Holy Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, or the Last Supper (to name some of the ways Christians describe this holy meal that we take part in this evening) is an event which combines Good Friday and Easter Sunday themes.

Let me explain:

It is a Good Friday event in that it remembers, brings back together, our Lord Jesus Christ’s suffering and death for our sins, and for the sins of the whole world….Notice the language that is used to describe the Lord’s sacrifice on our behalf, His atonement, His “at-one-ment” for our transgressions….the language of the Communion prayer is filled with re-membrances of Christ’s suffering and death. We use His words as we take the bread and the wine into our hands: “This is my body, this is my blood.” And we recall, that is, to bring forward in actuality into this present moment that past event, Christ’s sacrifice for and His satisfaction of the debt our sins created. We bring it forward, to “re-member” it with all the power of the original event of 2,000 years ago. Our spiritual forebearers, the ancient Jews, would look at it exactly that way.

So the Communion event is a Good Friday event.

But it’s also an Easter event, for it remembers Christ’s victory over death, as we recall “His mighty resurrection and glorious ascension”[2], even as we affirm that we are to continue this memorial “until His coming again.”[3]

And, because Our Lord uses (deliberately, I think) language that indicates His actual presence in the Sacrament, we acknowledge that He is really present with us in the Sacrament of Holy Communion. For He said, “This is my body”, and “This is my blood.”

By the gift of Himself on the cross, we are freed from the power of sin and its debt. And so we recall the heavy price our Lord Jesus Christ paid for the debts our sins created.

And, we recall His victory over death on Easter Sunday morning. For Our Lord’s resurrection is the “first fruits”[4] in the victory over sin and death that will one day – at the great and last day of the General Resurrection – be ours as well.

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[1] A dominical sacrament is a sacrament ordained and given by Christ (the Lord – hence the name) Himself.
[2] Book of Common Prayer, 1979, page 335
[3] Ibid., page 334
[4] See St. Paul’s use of the word “firstfruits” in I Corinthians 15: 20 – 23.