What Do You Remember?

Exodus 12: 1-4, 11-14; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26

March 20, 2008, Maundy Thursday

Anyone who has been around me for the past eight years (It has been eight years since I concentrated on stories as a part of my Doctor of ministry thesis) knows that I find stories to be profoundly important in knowing who we are. Stories ground us in our roots. Common stories bind families more than common names. When we get together for reunions, be it family, class, or military reunions, it is the common events and people weaving through the stories that bind us together, more than name, or year.

This is also true in our religious heritage. It is our common story, shared events, and well-known people that weave in and out of our history, drawing us together.

The Jewish people were born out of the common story that we heard tonight from Exodus. This was the Passover of the Jewish people, and God was going to free them from bondage. All Jewish people are bound together by remembering this story. That is emphasized every year at Passover when they read and hear this story and celebrate a symbolic recreation of the Passover. Only the original Hebrews participated literally in the story, but for Jewish people today it is their story as well. They own it not only as they recall their ancestors’ liberation in the Exodus Passover, but also as they reflect on times God has liberated them from things that have bound them in their lives. Their story reminds them that they need to trust that God will free them, that God hears their pain. They know this because God did it years ago, and God being God still does it today.

Jesus, being a Jew, celebrated the Passover with his disciples. He and they recalled what bound them together in faith, but something changed when Jesus celebrated the Passover. Jesus became the unblemished Passover lamb that is sacrificed. Now it wasn’t the body and blood of the spotless lamb that saved them, but the body and blood of Jesus. And as Paul reminds us in our First Corinthians passage, every time we eat this meal we are to remember Jesus. We are to remember that night when he celebrated the Passover; we are to remember the events of his life, his teachings; we are to remember how he loved and served us. This now is the story that binds the new believers together. But this new story comes with a new punch-line. This story is not one we are just to remember, but one we are to follow. We are called to make the story real, to act it out. In many ways Jesus is not just a storyteller, but he is also a playwright. Jesus was the consummate storyteller, but his stories were also meant to be acted out, as it were. His life is the story and the script.

Over the years of our lives we stray from the script, we ad-lib and we find ourselves in the middle of the stage, lost because we have strayed from the script. Tonight, and every celebration of communion, calls us back to the script to find our lines and lives again. We are called back to remember who we are as Christians and why. We are called back to remember our storyline, not just to remember the story as it happened nearly 2000 years ago, but before that and after that. The Rev. John Jewell wrote in a sermon on this theme:

We are surrounded by our Jewish brothers and sisters who call Abraham, "Father" -- and by Peter, James and John who called Jesus, "Lord." -- and wonderfully, by our mothers and fathers and grandfathers and grandmothers who came to this church and remembered the Lord and received Holy Communion -- and passed it all on to us. What a rich heritage we have as we gather tonight with the whole Communion of Saints!

It is a wonderful and exciting story of a journey of people who have tried to be faithful to their God. It is full of dark moments where people strayed, and moments of glory, power, and grace where people for a moment got it right. But they can only get it right because they keep coming back to remember. They keep coming back to hear the story of how one Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed took bread, blessed it and broke it and gave it to his disciples say “take this and eat it, it is my body broken for you, eat this remembering me.”

I invite you to join me and all the saints in heaven and on earth as we come to this table tonight and hear the story once again. May it fill you with hope and courage and peace as it has for our brothers and sisters since the time it was first told.

May it be so for you and may it be so for me.

Amen

© 2008 Rev. Dr. Thomas T. Peters