Take and Eat

Exodus 12: 1-14
John 13: 1-17; 31b-35
Maundy Thursday

It has been said that if you want to change someone’s culture you start by changing their food. Food, it seems, shapes the culture that eats it as much as the other way around. I’m sure that it is as debatable as the chicken and the egg debate, which comes first, the food or the culture, but no matter how you look at it, food is a remarkably reliable commentary on the people who eat it.
I have had the privilege of traveling around the world over the past few years, and the things that stand out most in my mind about each place is the food, how it seems to perfectly match the people that it sustains. In Israel and Palestine, the food was warm and inviting, but relatively complicated in it’s diversity and arrangement so that you never fully knew what to expect—just like the people. In Brazil, the food was a bit more robust, a bit bolder, and yet somehow more simple, more predictable in its passion—as if were an edible commentary on Brazilian society. The English like their food to be functional and filling, no time to mess around with frills and the like, eat your meal and get on with it! In Mexico, the food is as simple and as beautiful as the locals—spicy, warm, invigorating. The French—complicated and captivating. The Germans—solid and stable. America—diversely homogenous. What we eat reveals, or perhaps shapes, us more than anything else. If you really want to get to know someone, invite yourself over for dinner at their house. Eat with them.
This, of course, is only news to us American Protestants. The Jews have known this forever. That’s why what they eat matters so much to them. One Jewish guy that I know is particularly difficult to go out to eat with. He always has to ask if they have a kosher menu, and if they don’t (we are in North Carolina after all—even the chicken is pork-based) we have to go somewhere else.
When I asked him what difference it really makes what he eats he said, “For us Jews, every detail of our lives is God’s business. Our God is deeply concerned with who we are, and nothing constitutes our being more than what we eat. Any God that doesn’t tell you what to do with your pots and your pans isn’t worth worshipping.”
Sounds like someone who has digested Exodus 12. In our Old Testament reading this evening, Israel has been in bondage for nearly 400 years. Being swallowed up by the Egyptian culture for that long, they have begun to lose their identity. They speak Egyptian, now. They know how to build Egyptian architecture. They know how to shop in Egyptian stores. They know how to eat Egyptian food. The people of God have lost their culture.
If God is going to deliver Israel from being slaves of Pharaoh to being children of God, God is going to have to change who fundamentally they are. God is going to have to change their entire way of thinking, of being, of living. God is going to have to change how they relate to each other, how they live in the world, how they raise their children. In order to deliver Israel, God is going to have to change Israel’s culture. God decides to start with their food.
While they were still in Egypt, on the eve of being freed and yet still in bondage, God gives them a cooking lesson. It seems to me that there may be other things that they should be doing, like packing, for example. But God, determined to change God’s people as much as their location, tells them to have a meal. “Get a lamb for every household and roast it, for God’s sake don’t boil it! Everyone in the house of Israel is to come to this table,” says God. “As they come, they should gird up their loins, eat hurriedly,” like they are actually expecting God to do something soon. Perhaps most importantly, “mark this meal with the blood of the slain lamb,” says God. “This shall become for you a reminder of the night which I saved you from bondage.” Even if Israel didn’t understand what was going on at that moment, God was changing their culture. Eating, for Israel, becomes a participation in and a sign of their salvation.
By the time we get to our New Testament reading tonight, Jews are well aware of the implications of eating. Don’t miss the significance of the setting. Jesus and his disciples, on the eve of our deliverance, had gathered to eat. This is about culture—who they are. Cultures are based around food. As they were gathered around the table to re-enact the story from Exodus 14, loins girded, lamb roasted, bitter herbs seasoned, another cultural shift takes place. The other evangelists recount the words of the supper. “Jesus takes the bread, he blesses it, and he breaks it and he says take, eat, this is my body broken for you. Then after supper, he takes the cup, he gives thanks over the cup and then he gives it to his disciples and says drink from this, all of you. This is my blood of the new covenant poured out for you and for many. Do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” It seems that a new culture for God’s people is taking shape. This culture will be based on the body and blood of Christ.
While the other Gospel writers give us the words, John gives us the action of this meal. “Jesus gets up, takes off his outer garments, wraps his waist like a servant, and washes his disciples’ feet. After he had finished this, he offered them a new commandment. Love one another, as I have loved you.” Love, love like that of our savior, giving up his own life that we might live, is now our culture. Love, like that blood that was poured out to quench the thirst of the world, is now what marks who we are. We eat and we drink as a sign of and a participation in our salvation. We eat this meal of love, hoping that we are become a people who’s culture is love.
Not that we really have a choice in the matter. We call tonight Maundy Thursday, from the Latin Maundatum Novum, “New Commandment.” Jesus didn’t request our presence at this meal. He didn’t request that we love each other. Just like in Exodus chapter 12, Jesus joins in the divine act of commanding. Take, Eat, I’m making something out of you that you could never imagine. Take, Drink, from this time on you are going to be marked by the blood of the lamb. Love one another, this is how I am making myself known in the world. We get together tonight to re-hear this command from God, to anticipate the sacrificial love that has claimed our lives, and then to eat together to have our culture of love made manifest in us. See this bread and this wine, these signs of your deliverance, these elements of your salvation? See this table, this meal of love laid out for you? Take and eat.

When Proclamation Proceeds Comprehension

I didn't get to post on Palm/Passion Sunday last week. But, for your amusement, here's one that I preached on said Sunday in England.



Nothing strikes fear into the hearts of first year seminary students like Greek. And if you go to Duke Divinity school, like I did, Greek is synonymous with one man, Dr. Micky Efird. And so, by association, nothing strikes fear into the hearts of first year students at Duke like Dr. Mickey Efird. He has been teaching Greek at Duke since about the time that the Bible was written, and it is sort of a rite of passage for students to go through his class. He is, without a doubt, the most difficult professor at Duke, teaching what is, without a doubt, the most difficult subject at Duke. You only know two things when you sign up for his class. The first is that if you make it out of his class alive, you will know Greek. The second is that you probably won’t make it out alive. Everyone has a story about Dr. Efird., and I am no exception. The first day of class, Dr. Efird came in, looked the class over and waisted no time. There were no pleasantries, no introductions or handing out a sylubus. Instead, Dr. Efird simply started writing the Greek alphabet on the board. He went through each letter with us, teaching us what an Alpha looked like, and how to tell the differnece between a zeta and a Xsi. After what he thought was a sufficient amount of review, he told us to open our copies of the Greek New Testament. To our horror, he went around the room, asking students to read out loud from the Greek New Testament. After a few nervous laughs and the joke that he has heard every semester, “It’s all greek to me,” we were fumbling through a foreign text. He tried to teach us where to put the glottal stops, what a rough breathing mark was and how to determine where to put the emphasis in the words. After what seemed like an eternity of torture, a woman in the back of class protested. “Dr. Efird,” she said, “how can you expect us to read these words when we haven’t had any vocabulary yet? Shouldn’t we first learn the words, and then try to read them?” Dr. Efird slowly lowered his book, pulled his glasses down to the tip of his nose, looked the class over and said matter of factly, “Sometimes in life you have to speak before you understand.”
In preparation for the sermon this week, I have come to a conclusion. I’m pretty sure that Luke took Greek from Dr. Efird. After all, that is what Luke is telling us this morning. Sometimes in life you have to speak before you understand. The disciples, in our text this morning, are a perfect case of speaking before understanding. They have been waiting for this moment since they started following Christ. They are, after all, the ones who beleive that Jesus is the Messiah. And finally, after three years of traveling around with him, he is heading to Jerusalem to claim his rightful place. So, when Christ tells two of them to go and fetch him a colt to ride into Jerusalem on, they waste no time, knowing that such an act would fulfill the prophesy from Zechariah. They hasten back to Christ with the colt, and to signify that he is royalty, they lay their cloaks on the back of the colt and on the ground that Jesus rides upon. This is it! They are actually witnessing the Messiah riding into Jerusalem. Sure, they all had their different ideas of what that meant. Some thought that Jesus was going to take over the city with force, stirring up a political uprising and militarily throw Rome out of the promised land, freeing the Jews from ceasar’s reign. Some thought that miraculously the city would succumb to his reign and hail him as King, thus ushering in the peacful kingdom without any conflict or bloodshed. They all had their ideas, but they were all wrong. The faact is that no one knew for sure what it meant for Christ to be the Messiah. All they knew was that the Messiah had come, so they proclaimed it. The disciples shouted out, “Hosannah! Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord!” Of course, they had no idea what lay ahead of them. None of them knew that this one that they were claiming to be the Messiah would be dead before the end of the week. None could picture the beatings that he was going to undergo, the deception that he would be betrayed by, the lonliness that he would feel after being deserted by all those now proclaiming him to be Messiah. None of those in the crowd of disciples that day understood what it meant to claim that Jesus was the Messiah, but they proclaimed it just the same. I have to say that I’m on the side of the Pharisees here. They tell Christ to get his disciples to hush up. After all, they don’t know what they area talking about. The look pretty silly, making big claims that they can’t explain. But Christ is quite happy with the disciple’s praises. He seems to think that they are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing, whether they understand it or not. Such is the life of discipleship. We’re not always called to understand it fully, we’re just called to proclaim it. In that way, proclamation proceeds comprehension.
As I wrestled with this text this week, I found myself getting back to the basics of the faith. Questions like, how exactly did Christ’s death on the cross save us? What does it mean to say that Christ is Lord? So I went to Sarum college and pulled out the books that I read in seminary. After all, I thought, if I am going to stand up there and talk about this stuff, I’d better understand what I’m talking about. I re-read all of the theories of atonement, the penal-substitutionary theory that states that there was a penalty to be paid for our sins according to the rules of creation, and Christ’s death on the cross paid the penalty for us, almost as if he pleaded guilty to the judge when we were on trial, and the judge sent him to jail instead of us. I read the ransom theory, which said that becuase of our sin, the devil had a right to our souls. God had lost us when we left the garden of eden, and if he was going to get us back, he was going to have to pay the devil a ransom, and a hefty one at that. The terms for the deal, if we were to go free, God would have to give his only son. Which, as you know, he did, paying the ransom. I read about the moral inflouence theory, that said that the cross did nothing but teach us how to live, dying to ourselves in order to find eternal life. I read about the govenmental theory and the satisfaction theory. The more I read, the more confused I got. If I have to wait to understand this before I say anthing about it, I thought, I’m not going to have a sermon on Sunday. And then, the wisdom of Dr. Efird floated back into my mind. Sometimes you have to speak it before you understand it. Sometimes you have to speak it in order to understand it. Sometimes, proclamation proceeds comprehension.
Of course, this is nothing new to you people. You have understood this since at least the 11th century. You were blessed enough to have St. Anselm as the archbishop of Canterbury under William the conquerer. St. Anslem’s most famous quote stated that Christian discipleship was faith seeking understanding. That is, there is something about this faith that you have to live in order to understand it. You have to hail Christ as Messiah before you can understand what that means. Proclamation proceeds comprehension. You’ll have to speak it before you will understand it. I dosen’t matter what catchy phrase you use, the fact is still the same. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not calling us to a lazy faith, where we simply throw our hands up and say that we’ll never understand it. Rather, I’m saying that being a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ means proclaiming him to be the messiah whether we understand it or not. And as we do the most amazing thing happens, we somehow begin to understand what that means.
We are going to see some pretty unexplicable events this week. We are going to watch in awe as Christ shares a meal with his disciples, after which he washes their feet, even the feet of the one who will betray him. We will look on in horror as Christ is handed over to the Roman government to be crucified, hung on a cross until he is dead. We will sit, scared to speak on Holy Saturday, wondering if the end has really come. And on Easter Sunday, we will walk into the tomb, gazing at the splendor of the resurection. Now let me ask you this, who here can explain any of the events that we will see this week? I’m sure we all have our theories, how exactly Christ’s death saves us, how God raised him from the dead. We all have theories, but none of us has a full understanding. But that’s okay. We were never called to understand it, we were called to proclaim it.