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.

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