Sermon: Not the Last Supper

 Matthew 26:17-30
Not the Last Supper
James Sledge                                                                            March 24, 2024 

When I was a child in the Presbyterian church, we have never heard of anything called Palm/Passion Sunday, which is the proper name of today. It was just Palm Sunday, and it was a day of celebration. Some years we paraded around the church property waving palm branches during the Sunday School hour, and we always processed into the sanctuary for worship, joyfully singing and waving our branches.

As I recall it, the mood never much changed for the rest of the service. The scripture readings were all about Palm Sunday and the sermon was about it, too. And we were still waving our palm branches when the service came to a close.

I don’t remember much about what happened during Holy Week. I don’t recall any sort of Good Friday service, and I only have the vaguest notions of something on Maundy Thursday. Perhaps there was a service and we didn’t regularly attend it. Regardless, for me we went from one parade to the next at Easter. We celebrated on Palm Sunday, and we celebrated even bigger on Easter. I learned the story of Jesus being crucified somewhere along the way, but for me, Holy week was one celebration followed by another.

By contrast, the gospels spend an inordinate about of time going through the details of Holy Week and Jesus’ passion. And indeed, in ancient practice, worship focused on the Passion both on Palm Sunday and the Sunday before.

Thankfully, from my viewpoint, the liturgical calendar tried to recover some of the ancient practices of Lent and began to include the Passion as a part of the readings for Palm Sunday. This had the added benefit of keeping us from rushing from one parade to the next, especially considering the slim turnouts for Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services.

And so here we are. Jesus has entered into Jerusalem in what is almost a parody of the typical royal procession, but that entry marks the beginning of a struggle with authorities and rulers that will eventually lead to his crucifixion and death. With his arrest imminent, we gather with Jesus and the disciples at table.

As we’ve been doing throughout Lent, we are using a scripture passage from the book, Meeting Jesus at the Table: A Lenten Study. Today we are focused on what is often called the Last Supper. I’m not entirely sure why it’s called that considering that Luke’s gospel reports the risen Jesus eating supper with disciples on the evening of the first Easter. And in our scripture Jesus points forward to a day when they shall all once again gather together in God’s kingdom.

The institution of the Lord’s Supper takes place in the midst of failure on the part of the disciples. We heard the prediction of Judas’ betrayal of Jesus, and immediately following our reading Jesus predicts that all the disciples will desert him, and Peter will deny him. The giving of a meal of remembrance is bracketed by the harsh reality that those closest to Jesus will turn on him and desert him and deny him.

The setting for this meal is the Passover, the celebration of God’s saving act that frees the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. The synoptic gospel writers clearly see Jesus’ passion as a sort of new Passover, a new saving act that will also be celebrated at table just as Passover is. And Jesus speaking of blood being poured out seems to reflect both the slaying of the Passover lamb as well as a covenant ceremony like the one Moses performs with the Israelites in the wilderness after God gives the Law at Mt. Sinai.

The first Christians clearly embraced this idea of celebrating at table. Our Lenten study book says in the chapter on today’s verses, “It is not too much to say that Christian identity was formed around the table, in the breaking and sharing of bread, all the while telling the stories of Jesus.”[1] Early Christian worship was not unlike a covered dish supper, with the participants bringing items for a meal at which the Lord’s Supper would be celebrated.

Presumably this covered dish supper looked a little like a Passover meal. That meal is a meal of remembrance, recalling Israel’s time as slaves and Egypt and their miraculous rescue by God. But even though the Passover looks back and remembers, it also looks forward. The liturgy for the service typically ends with messianic hope as the people say, “Next year in Jerusalem.”

Part of the traditional liturgy for the Lord’s Supper contains something similar. The celebrant says, “Great is the mystery of faith,” and the congregation joins in singing or saying, “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.”

But even though the Lord’s Supper is called the “joyful feast of the people of God,” very often there is not much joy in it. Despite the fact that my childhood worship experience mostly avoided Jesus’ passion, rushing from one parade to the next, the Lord’s Supper seemed to be the one time that we did focus on the passion. In fact, the tone during communion was somber, melancholy, even gloomy. It almost seemed to say that this was indeed Jesus’ last supper. There was no anticipation of Easter, no joy at all.

In the North Carolina presbytery where I was ordained as a pastor, it was standard practice to examine all pastors coming into the presbytery during a presbytery meeting. Even if you were retired and just moving your membership there from where you previously lived, you had to stand up front and answer any questions that the members directed your way.

Often the questions were few and rather perfunctory, but we did have a pastor or two who thought that if it was an examination someone should ask real questions. And they were happy to oblige.

One of the questions they sometimes asked was this. “Do you understand the Lord’s Supper as joyful feast or somber reflection?” There were clear generational differences among pastors. Younger ones were likely to lean toward a joyful feast, but older ministers almost always said it was a somber reflection. It was Maundy Thursday reenacted.

The line, “Do this in remembrance of me” is not in Matthew’s gospel account of Maundy Thursday, but I think it likely that Matthew’s community was familiar with those words. The Supper was a meal of remembrance, a meal in which Jesus was recalled. So how was it that the church of my youth seemed only to recall Maundy Thursday? Why did we not recall other things about Jesus when we gathered for the Supper? Why were our memories only somber and gloomy?

Perhaps such somberness is appropriate for today, as we recall the dark events of Holy Week, but for every time we celebrate communion? When the bread and cup evoke memories, why do we not recall other times Jesus broke bread, from the feeding of the 5000 to the risen Jesus’ meal with disciples at Emmaus? Why do we not recall all those times when Jesus broke bread with tax collectors and sinners?

And why do we not make the connection to Passover, to God’s saving act? Why do we not see this as the beginning of a story of liberation, not unlike the Israelites’ preparations for leaving slavery in Egypt?

I think that one of the problems with preaching, especially in an age when many people only encounter scripture when they attend church, is that it trains us to focus on short little snippets of the Bible. As a result, we’re like people who go to an art museum and inspect one corner of a painting, observing all the details and brushstrokes, but rarely stepping back to view the entire painting.

Including the Passion with Palm Sunday helps ensure that we realize where the triumphal entry into Jerusalem leads. It reminds us that the way of Jesus is the way of the cross, of giving oneself for others. It reminds us that there is no Easter without the cross and the grave.

But the Passion is a part of a much larger story, and so when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, it is much bigger than a reenactment of Maundy Thursday, than a reminder of Jesus’ suffering. It is a remembrance of Jesus, and when we remember someone, we don’t focus on their death. When we gather together when a friend or loved one has died, a lot of remembering goes on, and most of that is not about the events of the death itself.

So even as he goes to his death, Jesus calls us to gather at table and remember. Remember that time Jesus ticked off the Pharisees because he dined with tax collectors and sinners? Remember that time Jesus fed thousands? Remember those stories Jesus told? Remember the cross and the tomb? Remember the empty tomb?

Jesus broke bread and called us to remember. Remember it all.

---

[1] Campbell, Cynthia M.; Coy Fohr, Christine. Meeting Jesus at the Table: A Lenten Study, Kindle Edition (Louisville: Presbyterian Publishing, 2023) 74.

Sermon: Who Gets Invited?

 Luke 14:15-24
Who Gets Invited?
James Sledge                                                                            March 17, 2023 

Imagine for a moment that you have planned a big swanky event, perhaps a big wedding with an elaborate reception at a gorgeous venue. (Some of you likely don’t need to imagine because you’ve had the experience.) You’ve sent out save the date cards well in advance, and then you’ve sent out lovely invitations which included pre-stamped RSVP cards where guests could make their dinner selections.

The RSVPs have come in and it looks like it will be a good turnout. Most all the people you hoped would be there have said they’re coming. It’s going to be a splendid occasion.

Once you get a good handle on the numbers, you let the venue and caterer know how many to prepare for. Everything is coming together splendidly. Sure, it’s going to be a little expensive, but it will be worth it. You can’t wait to gather with everyone to celebrate and have a great time.

But just a few days before the wedding, you start to get phone calls. “We’re so sorry,” the voice says, “but our son’s team has advanced to the next round and we have to go.”

“My mother is in the hospital, and I have to be there,” says another voice. Yet another says something about relatives arriving unexpectedly from out of town.

Some of the excuses seem reasonable. Others are pretty lame, but regardless, the number of guests who will attend dwindles rapidly. Pretty soon less than half of the people you were expecting plan to attend, but it’s way too late to change the catering order. You’re on the hook for all that food and for a venue far bigger than is now needed.

Hopefully nothing like this has ever happened or will ever happen to you. Oh sure, there’s always someone who cancels last minute, but not so many that the reception hall is now going to look empty.

But if this did happen to you, what would you do? What could you do?

Jesus tells a story of something similar in our scripture reading today. Jesus has just advised his host not to invite friends, family, or wealthy neighbors when he holds a dinner but to invite “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind,” saying that the host will be rewarded at the resurrection.

This is hardly the sort of friendly banter one might expect at a dinner party which perhaps explains why one of the guests tries to change the subject by saying, "Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!" Whatever the reason for the guest’s remark, it prompts Jesus to tell his story about a great banquet.

The story starts out not so differently from the planning for that big wedding we imagined a moment ago. We’re not told what the occasion is, but Jesus says, "Someone gave a great dinner and invited many.” Most of us aren’t familiar with first century, Middle Eastern party etiquette, so we may not realize exactly what Jesus is describing here. Standard practice would be to invite the guests ahead of time and get their RSVP. Then, when the banquet was ready, a servant would go to everyone and tell them the feast was prepared.

That is what is going on in the story Jesus tells. This well-to-do host sends for the guests, guests who have already said they will attend, only to have people cancel. According to Jesus, all of them made excuses.

I read various commentaries on this passage, and they disagreed about whether the excuses were valid ones. A majority said they were not, and considering that these guests had already said they would attend, their poor planning certainly suggests that this party was not all that high on their priority list.

This would have been a major embarrassment for the host, having everyone cancel on him, leaving him with all that food and drink and no one to enjoy it with him. Under such circumstances, the best way to save face would be to quickly come up with a new guest list, presumably more people from the upper crust of society like the host. But the host does something much more surprising and dramatic.

Instead of the sort of people we might expect, he ushers in “the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame,” the very same list Jesus had recommended inviting to dinner parties just moments earlier. He even goes so far as to go outside the town itself and compel the people there to attend so that his grand party can be filled.

Jesus often tell stories that are thought provoking, that invite people to think differently about things. Here it’s hard to avoid concluding that Jesus is metaphorically speaking about aspects of God’s coming day, the Kingdom of God as Jesus referred to it. Jesus, like prophets before him, often used a great banquet as an image for the Kingdom, so presumably he wants to provoke his listeners into thinking differently about it.

But by the time the gospel writers retell Jesus’ stories and parables, they are addressing a particular audience, not at all the one Jesus originally spoke to. The author of Luke is writing to a Christian congregation, a community that is largely Gentile. They are outsiders who have been welcomed in late in the game, well after the Jewish people who originally founded the Christian movement, and I wonder how Luke expects them to hear this parable. Perhaps he even expects different members of the congregation to hear it differently.

Given that Luke’s congregation has come into the Church after the original invitations to the people of Israel, perhaps they see themselves as those brought in from the “roads and the lanes,” from outside the boundaries of the original guest list. Perhaps this makes them realize how fortunate they are, how they are the recipients of the host’s surprising grace. Perhaps for them the parable evokes a profound sense of gratitude.

However, there are no doubt some members of Luke’s congregation who are many years removed from their conversion experience. Their original excitement about following Jesus has begun to wane, and their faith has become just one more element of their often-busy lives. Perhaps faith has even dropped low on their priority list, and they hear the parable and wonder if they might give an excuse should Jesus call them. Might they be more like the original guests in the parable, and hearing it feels more like a warning?

Or perhaps some of those who hear this parable are quite wealthy, and they hear the parable as an invitation to use their wealth differently.

One thing that is clear in the parable, this is yet one more place in Luke’s gospel where Jesus’ ministry speaks of a momentous reversal. Over and over in Luke we hear of the lowly lifted up and the powerful brought low. In Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, Jesus says, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God… But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” Perhaps some of the wealthy members of Luke’s congregation hear the parable and wonder if they are on the right side of things.

And what about us? We’re a very different audience that than those the gospel was originally written for, but surely this parable can speak to us, too. So where do we see ourselves in this story?

Do we think of ourselves as those fortunate enough to receive unexpected invitations? Perhaps there are things about us that we’re not proud of, that we’d just as soon not share, that we expect would make God think less of us. Perhaps we’ve spent much of our lives far away from God and God’s ways and imagine that we are not A-listers for the big party. Yet we’ve been invited anyway.

Perhaps we’re very cozy in our religiousness. We’ve attended church all our lives and kept our noses clean, walked the straight and narrow. Perhaps we’re those who have always assumed we’ll be on the guest list, but then comes this story where the expected guests end up missing the party.

Or perhaps we’re those who have a lot invested in the status quo, people for whom Jesus’ words of reversal don’t necessarily sound like good news. Perhaps this story makes us wonder if we’re on the right side of things.

Maybe Jesus’ parable strikes you in some other way, but however it hits you, there are some things that seem clear to me. The great banquet is filled with people I might not have invited to my party, and the only people who miss out are those who choose not to come. I wonder. Would I have been there?

Sermon: Radical Hospitality

 Matthew 9:9-13
Radical Hospitality
James Sledge                                                                            March 10, 2024 

I was a very young boy when it happened, so I don’t remember it, but in 1960, not too far from my hometown of Charlotte, a group of Black college students began a sit-in at the whites only lunch counter in a Greensboro, NC Woolworths, a store that is now the International Civil Rights Center and Museum. The lunch counter is on display there, although a portion of the counter is in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, and some of the seats are in the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Even though this was the segregated south, Blacks were free to shop at Woolworths, and so they frequented the store, but the lunch counter was for whites only. Apparently it was okay for Blacks and whites to be together in the checkout line, but sitting together while eating was problematic.

There is something more intimate about eating with someone as compared to simply being in the vicinity of each other. In fact it was quite permissible for there to be Black servers, but not Black diners. That encroached too much on the intimacy of eating.

By the time I was middle school aged, the schools had been desegregated, but the cafeteria still displayed a form a segregation. Blacks sat at some tables and whites at others, and only rarely did anyone cross over that boundary.

That boundary was even less permeable when it came to inviting people over to one another’s homes for dinner. Despite its loss of legal standing, segregation remained in force socially at my home and the homes of most people I knew, in large part because friendships continued to be segregated.

The legacy of those days is still very much with us. Our largely white congregation is a testament to the resilience of segregation, of the difficulty of crossing over long established social and cultural boundaries. There often is no intent to maintain such boundaries, and yet they persist.

Jesus’ day was not so different from ours when it came to social boundaries and barriers. Good Jews typically didn’t socialize with Gentiles or Samaritans. Religious boundaries were much more prevalent than they are in our day. Certain illnesses made a person “unclean” and so off limits, although in the verses on either side of reading this morning Jesus touches a leper to heal him, touches and heals a woman with a continuous menstrual flow, and touches a corpse, all of which would have rendered Jesus “unclean.”

In our scripture verses, Jesus does some boundary crosses of another sort. To start off, Jesus calls Matthew as a disciple, and Matthew is a tax collector. This story is not all that unlike the calling of Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John, except for Matthew’s profession.

I think I’ve mentioned before that tax collectors were generally regarded as traitors. They were Jewish but they collected tariffs and taxes for the Romans, sometimes using intimidation by Roman soldiers as an incentive. Tax collecting was a franchise operation. The Romans doled out the positions for a price, and the tax collectors had to bring in a certain amount of cash to the Romans in return, but they could keep any money they collected over that amount. It was a system designed to be corrupt, and tax collectors often got rich. They were despised by religious people and ordinary folks alike.

We’re told nothing about Matthew other than he is at work as a tax collector when Jesus calls him. Matthew immediately gets up and goes with Jesus, just as Simon Peter and his fellow fisherman had gotten up and left their nets and boats.

But here’s where the story gets really interesting. In the gospels of Mark and Luke, what seem to be different versions of this story are told, although the tax collector is there called Levi. Matthew’s gospel (the author is anonymous) uses Mark as his primary source material, but he makes an interesting change when he retells this story. Not only does he change Levi’s name to Matthew, but he seems to change the setting for the second part of our reading.

In Mark and Luke, we are told explicitly that Levi hosts a dinner where Jesus is in attendance, but Matthew completely leaves this detail out. Instead he says, And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. A lot of people simply assume that this is at Matthew’s house, perhaps borrowing from the similar stories in Mark and Luke, but if we don’t know those stories, Matthew’s telling and the grammar of the sentence both suggest that this is the house where Jesus stays in Capernaum.

I can’t help but think that the gospel writer decides to emphasize Jesus’ habit of socializing with tax collectors and sinners by having him invite them to his own house. This accentuates his conflict with the Pharisees. They are upset with him because he is actively cultivating relationships with people they think must be avoided, people they would never sit down to dinner with.

Many years ago, I visited a historic Presbyterian church, though I’ve forgotten its name and location. What I do recall was that they had a curio type cabinet that prominently displayed artifacts from the church’s history. There was an old pulpit Bible, old photos that showed the buildings at various times, old offering collection baskets, and a small number of what I later learned were communion tokens.

The idea of communion tokens goes all the way back to John Calvin who suggested them as a way of making sure nothing profaned the Lord’s table. During their use in American Presbyterian churches, communion was celebrated quite rarely, sometimes only a couple of times a year. Prior to such services, clergy and elders would visit the church members and question them on their understanding of church doctrine as well as determining if they were living good and upright lives. If they passed their examination, they were given tokens which had to be presented in order to receive communion.

I’ve never heard of a Presbyterian church that still uses such tokens, or that examines members in preparation for communion. In fact, our practices at the table have changed considerably during my lifetime. When I was growing up, only confirmed members could receive communion. When my children were young, that changed to say that baptized children who had received instruction in the meaning or communion were welcomed at the table. And in recent years the table has been opened to all.

The use of tokens and restrictions on who was allowed at the table were well intended. People wanted to make sure that the meaning of the Lord’s Supper didn’t get perverted or understood in a superstitious sort of way, but inevitably such restrictions made it seem like the table was open only to the worthy, which seems quite at odds with who Jesus invited to the table.

At the end of our scripture passage Jesus says, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” Jesus quotes the prophet Hosea. I don’t know that Hosea is speaking against sacrifice per se or any of the other rituals connected to worship or faith, but he and Jesus seem to think that mercy is the most important element.

The book we’re using for our Lenten study makes the point that “Jesus is the mercy of God in human form, never more so than when he eats with outcasts and welcomes all of us in our brokenness.”[1]

Worship is important, and how we worship matters. But what matters even more is that we radiate the mercy of God that in Jesus invites tax collectors and sinner to the table, that in Jesus practices a radical sort of hospitality that completely ignores the boundaries and barriers that we humans and our societies devise.

Whoever you are, however good or bad your story, Jesus calls you to follow, to go with him as a disciple. And he calls you, calls us as a church, to model his radical hospitality that continues to break down barriers and boundaries and to share God’s mercy with the world.

---

[1] Campbell, Cynthia M.; Coy Fohr, Christine. Meeting Jesus at the Table: A Lenten Study (p. 26). Presbyterian Publishing. Kindle Edition.

 

Sermon: Meeting Jesus at the Table

 Mark 6:30-44
Meeting Jesus as the Table
James Sledge                                                                            March 3, 2024 

Back before I went to seminary, I once sat in a pew of my church and listened to a sermon on the reading we just heard from Mark. The preacher told an intriguing story of what might have happened when Jesus fed a crowd of thousands out in the wilderness one evening.

“We have to assume,” he said, “that not everyone who wandered out into the wilderness to see Jesus came with no provisions. There were no McDonald’s or Burger Kings in those days. People could not expect to find a place to buy food. Surely many must have packed some food and carried it with them. They would have stashed it away under their long robes, so you might not have seen it, but many had a little supply of food and drink with them.”

“But it is also a good bet that not everyone brought food. Maybe they hadn’t planned on staying all day. Maybe time got away from them as they listened to Jesus. But as the day wore on, many of the people were beginning to get hungry. And they were regretting that they had not packed something to eat.”

“Those with food knew that many others didn’t have food. Some thought it impolite to eat in front of others, so they kept their food hidden away. Others were afraid that if they let on they had food, the people without any would demand that they share. They didn’t have enough to go around, and so they kept their food hidden out of fear that others would try to take it.”

The preacher continued. “But then something strange happened. Jesus took some bread that his disciples had, along with a couple of fish. He said a blessing, and he began to pass the food out into the crowd. As the bread made its way through the crowd, some people began to take loaves of bread they had beneath their robes and add them to the bread from the disciples. And as one person shared, another saw it and added her food to the growing supply. Before you knew it, there was more than enough food to go around. Jesus’ act of sharing when it seemed he had far too little had initiated a wave of sharing that fed the crowd with baskets full to spare. The crowd had the resources all along. They just needed Jesus to show them how to use them.”

I was struck by this interpretation of the story, and by its implications. We have more resources than we realize. It is merely our fears that keep us from putting them to use. But if we faithfully follow Jesus, our resources are far more than adequate to do whatever we are called to do, even something as seemingly impossible as feeding a crowd of thousands. Faith can release tremendous human potential.

My former pastor’s interpretation has stuck with me for many years. It was very appealing to me for some reason. But over those years I realized what an inadequate interpretation it was. Oh, I suppose it very well could have happened that way. It makes perfectly good sense that it might have. But it clearly is not the message the gospel writer intended for us.

This is a story about God’s incredible power to provide. There are clear parallels with the Old Testament story of the Israelites being miraculously fed by manna while in the wilderness, and even stronger parallels with the Lord’s Supper.

This story is not simply a story of Jesus teaching us to share by his example, any more than Jesus’ death on the cross is Jesus teaching us to practice self-sacrifice by his example. This story shows the same power of God that is revealed through the cross and the resurrection. It shows the power God unleashed in Jesus to reach out to and provide for humanity.

And as the first generations of Christians gathered to observe the Lord’s Supper, they were drawn to this story—this story where Jesus provided for the needs of those gathered around him. And as they ate the bread and drank from the cup, they knew that much more than symbolism was at work. Just as Jesus had miraculously provided food for thousands of people that day, so in the holy meal of the Lord’s Supper, he still provided for them.

And now we come to the Lord’s table. We come, and we remember. But do we expect anything? Do we really expect Jesus to reach out and feed us, to nourish us for lives as disciples? Do we really think that Jesus will come into our lives that way? Do we really want Jesus to come into our lives that way?

Or are we more comfortable with memories and examples? A Jesus who feeds the crowd through his example of sharing is less troublesome in a way. If it is only an example of sharing, then we are not confronted with the awesome power of God. And if the Lord’s Supper is just a remembrance, we need not worry about encountering the awesome presence and power of God here. We can simply hear about God and Jesus, and we can decide whether or not we want to act on what we hear. Just like people could have decided whether or not to contribute their hidden food if the feeding of the 5000 is only a frenzy of sharing.

Sometimes I think we prefer memories and examples. It allows us to keep God at a distance. It allows us to feel like we’re in control—to keep the power of God that might radically transform us into new people from getting too close. And so we explain how miracles might have happened. Or we try to restrict the miraculous power of God to the role of insurance policy, giving us eternal life when we die, or perhaps healing us from some disease if we get sick. But we do not want the power of God just hanging around, threatening to use us for its purposes, threatening to remake us into people who no longer worry about our own needs, who care only about loving God and loving others.

And yet, just as surely as Jesus fed thousands of hungry people all those years ago, he offers to feed us at this table. He offers us spiritual food which not only meets our deepest needs and hungers, but which also nourishes us for new life, reborn life in Christ.

The table is set before us. The words of scripture are read and preached for us to hear. And in them, the power of God to love us, to care for us, to nurture us, and yes, to change and transform us, is placed before us. Jesus reaches out to care for us, to change us into children of God, and to feed and nourish us for life as God’s children. 

Come to the table. Come, not only to remember, to hear, to see, to taste, but come to meet the risen Lord. Come to be touched by his power. Come to be fed, to be loved, to be healed, to be embraced, to be made anew in Christ Jesus.