Preaching at the Maundy Thursday Mass of the Last Supper, our Ordinand Danny Abraham said: “The Eucharist has a greater depth and a greater significance in the life of a disciple of Jesus Christ than just a simple act of remembrance”.
Sermon in Full:
If I was to ask you each of you here this evening to think of what your favourite meal of the year is, I would anticipate the answers I receive would vary a lot. Perhaps you might say Christmas lunch. Or maybe for you, it is the annual family BBQ, the annual celebration of a family members birthday, or even you have taken to celebrating Thanksgiving. Whatever your own personal answer, what is certain is that meals over family gatherings are, most of the time, wonderful occasions and can be extremely evocative events. Maundy Thursday marks the institution of the Christian family meal, the Holy Eucharist, one of the Church’s two dominical sacraments as ordained by Christ himself and there are six words spoken by Christ at that first Eucharist in Scripture that are re-spoken at every celebration of the Eucharist in Church today that we hold dear and hold fast to; Do this in remembrance of me.
Remembering of course is important and holds significant value, but if this is all we do when we come together to celebrate the Eucharist, then I would argue that we are missing something within a greater whole. The Eucharist has a greater depth and a greater significance in the life of a disciple of Jesus Christ than just a simple act of remembrance. Jesus does indeed command his disciples to break bread in remembrance of him, but while remembering Jesus’ redemptive action is vital, we must recall time and again that Christ ordained the eucharist in the life of the Church for a purpose other than remembrance. If the sacrament of the Eucharist is simply a rite of remembrance, then we lose its significance, and indeed its purpose. So what then are we to keep sight of and hold on to when we gather together at the Lords table? What is it’s significance to us today?
Firstly, note with considerable weight that the eucharist is a meal that is never to be eaten alone, but crucially, always as a fellowship meal of union with all other disciples of Christ. Just as Christ gathered around the table with others in the Last Supper, the eucharist serves as a poignant and regular reminder that faith cannot be exercised alone and that we are eternally bound with all who profess Jesus as Lord, those we love and those we are learning to love.
The Eucharist is not an individual expression of faith, but a meal that unites all believers together as one body, the one Church, as they gather around the one table of which Christ is both the minister of the sacrament and the source of nourishment.
It is through feeding on him in the elements of the Eucharist where we are united to both Christ and to the wider story of biblical salvific history of which we are a part through faith in him. It is in the Eucharist where the ordinary elements of bread and wine, the work of human hands but given in grace by God are transformed within a thin space where heaven and earth meet but for a temporal moment, and where they are made holy for a holy purpose.
But what is this holy purpose? As God’s people, we are nourished for the spiritual pilgrimage we are on when we come together as a family, both locally and globally, around the table of Christ to receive freely from his hand. But while consuming this meal is of enormous personal benefit to the believer, helping to to build Christ-like character through feeding on him in body, mind and soul, it is not a meal that is solely for one.
That which we receive, we are to freely give away. Just as Mary carried the Lord Jesus in her womb for the sake of the world, we, having received the Lord in a celebration of the Eucharist, carry him with us out the doors of the church for the sake of the world in an expression of incarnational love.
Again, note with significance that all notions of individualism are stripped away in the sacrament of the eucharist. The nourishment we receive is to be used as fuel, not simply for ourselves but for feeding and participating in the mission of Christ in the world by the Holy Spirit. To be in Christ means not only to be saved by his blood, but to participate in his mission in the world, and his church is his strategy for reaching the world. The Eucharist therefore calls us to action, and so just as in the Passover read about in Exodus 12, we as the Church of Christ are to consume the eucharistic meal with our own cloaks tucked into our belts, our sandals on our feet and our staff in our hands, ready to depart from that meal in order to share what we have received, the bread of life, with a world who is spiritually hungry, and in need of what we have so freely obtained.
Receiving the eucharist in this manner will be to model and live out the giving of self in sacrificial living that is required in discipleship, a model that Jesus demonstrated and lived out himself in his earthly ministry, with an example of this being seen in this evenings Gospel reading where he washes the feet of his disciples. Love that is sacrificial and service-shaped is not an optional extra in discipleship and discipleship, and if done in close proximity to Christ, is costly. And it should be discernible through the way we live out our faith at home and in the world as we make the historical command of Christ at the Last Supper to remember him a living memory through our actions.
This of course will take many different shapes and expressions, many of which you may already be doing, and for that we rejoice with thankful hearts. But I encourage you to pray with boldness and in faith as to how the Lord may wish to use you afresh in the coming years, perhaps in service to His church in this place, but also to His world, looking outward and participating with Him in loving service to reconcile all of creation to himself.
The Eucharist, by its very nature will no longer be required in the new creation that is to come through it being something temporal, a pilgrim meal on the way to God. Consequently, if we approach it each time with its temporal nature in our hearts and minds, it will transform how we receive it, helping us to look to the past and that which has gone before, to remember the story we are connected to through faith in Christ Jesus. It will also help us to construct a future that moves both ourselves and the wider world toward the Kingdom of God in all of its fullness, where we will dwell in His presence for eternity.
As Christ sacrificed himself as the one true atoning sacrifice for the sake of the world on the cross of calvary, and as he breaks his body for his Church in the Eucharist, so his Church, of which we are all a part, are to break ourselves for the world, to invite others to “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8) and to live a life that is holy, a life that is a living sacrifice, a life that is transformed by God for oneself and for His world as we anticipate the Kingdom to come.
