Where can we go?
Grace, mercy and
peace be unto you from God who is Creator, Christ and Comforter. Amen
Mark chapter 14 starts off with a pivotal event that
happened two days before the text from tonight, but it is essential for setting
the scene of the last days of Jesus’ life.
He is eating a meal at the home of Simon the Leper, and a woman comes in
as they are dining and anoints Jesus’ feet with costly perfume (which was an
average worker’s yearly wage)! Some
there protested at the expense and extravagance of this act, but Jesus tells
the gathered, “…She has done what she could; she has anointed my body for its
burial.”
I wonder if anyone at that dinner questioned what Jesus was
talking about.
On the day of the Passover, Jesus gives specific
instructions to the disciples as to where to prepare this sacred meal of
remembrance and celebration in an upper room in Jerusalem. They do just as Jesus instructs and the
disciples and Jesus share this meal that begins with the youngest person in
attendance asking this question, “Why is this night different from all other
nights?”
From John’s gospel we are given the story of Jesus, after
the meal, taking off his robe and washing his disciples’ feet, as we will do in
a few moments here. They are silent
(except for Peter) as he moves the basin down the row. This night is different, that’s for
sure! The teacher has performed the
lowest of servant’s duty and then we are told to go and do likewise.
And then, according to the text read this evening, Jesus
makes it REALLY different…by instituting a meal of remembrance…not a meal of
Passover from slavery into freedom…but a meal of Passover from death having the
last word, into the kingdom of God’s forever love and life.
Jesus changed the wine into his blood, part of a new
covenant. The old covenant…it began with
blood…blood on every doorpost. And…when
the covenant was renewed at the foot of Mount Horeb; and again when the covenant
was renewed again after the temple was built in Solomon’s time, blood was
splashed on the altar and spattered on the people.
Every Jew, including the disciples and Jesus himself knew these
words from Leviticus 17:11 -- For the life of the flesh is in the blood;
and I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar;
for, as life, it is the blood that makes atonement.
Jesus’ blood, poured out for many, given freely for all,
begins on this night that is not like any other, a new covenant where blood
will no longer be required. Jesus’ blood
poured out as he was beaten, and as it was spattered on those standing around
as his body is pierced…this new covenant began with these words that Mark
records for us, spoken in that upper room on the night before his
betrayal. While they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it
he broke it, gave it to them, and said, ‘Take; this is my body.’ Then he took a
cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it.
He said to them, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for
many.
How many times do you suppose we have heard these
words? How many times have we received
these gifts – and forgotten? – forgotten that these words were framed by
betrayal and denial, as Jesus gives to us the Sacrament of Lord’s Supper…as Jesus
gives to us himself, again, tonight?
Too many, I am afraid…too many.
As Jesus and the disciples leave the upper room they go to
the Garden of Gethsemane, full of olive trees, on the Mount of Olives. As a matter of fact, Gethsemane means, “place
of the oil press.”
It is here that Jesus begins his most agonizing prayer time
ever recorded.
Deeply grieved, he leaves his beloved disciples to pray –
earnestly, fervently pray – for God’s will to be done – for the cup to pass so
he doesn’t have to die – for God to bolster him up as he faces what is to
come.
And his beloved disciples?
His best friends? They are found
fast asleep. The night is far gone and
their bellies are full and their minds are numb. Sadly, the betrayer doesn’t sleep.
What would we have done had we been a disciple that
night? I would like to think that I
would have stayed awake seeing the deep agony of Jesus as he prayed, placed
ourselves with him, arms around him, and prayed, too. My own tears mingling with his, as he cries
out to his Abba, Father.
But I am pretty sure that I would have been like all the
others…mindlessly, numbly, sleeping away while Jesus prayed.
Tonight, as we sit here, where can we go when we leave this
place that will bring us what we need?
What can we do? How shall we be
as we leave here with feet washed and bellies full?
We enter these Three Days with our minds full of pictures of
brutality and death. Images from
Belgium, Palestine/Israel, Syria, and
countless other places where faces and names flash across our computer and
television screens.
We know death. We
know brutality. We know how it
happens. What we don’t seem to know is
how to make it stop.
So we stand, dear Jesus, with you in the Upper Room, in the
Garden of Gethsemane, and soon – oh too soon – at the foot of the cross, and
cry out, “Where? Where can we go? What can we do?”
We can pray. We can
pray for peace.
We can look to you and follow your example of radical love
and inclusion, Jesus who loves us.
Loves us to death…
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