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Scripture: Matthew 26:17-30
Sermon
A while ago I read a Lenten meditation
about how we often go through this season complacently, secure in our
faith, but careful not to look at our faith too closely. We glide
smoothly ahead, not considering hope as part of our spiritual day to
day life. We don't need it, we believe: we go to Church, we do our Christian
duty, and while we believe in God, we never question what it is we believe
about God.
But sometimes things go wrong,
security disappears, and the rug that we are standing on is yanked from
under our feet, and our faith and our faithfulness is put to task. The events of Holy Week should
remind us that the best-laid plans frequently go awry. No matter
how often we tell ourselves that we are in control. The truth
is that we are not. So what does that say about our faith?
There is an article written by
a priest who was once a prisoner of war in Lebanon. He was imprisoned
for several years before being released. He writes about performing
Holy Communion after his release, and he says that during one part of
the ritual, he makes a change. Instead of repeating Jesus' request
to his disciples: "Do this in remembrance of me," he says
instead: "Don't forget me, now."
I think about the number of times
he must have prayed this message, while sitting in his dark prison cell.
I think that during those long years this man came to know the heart
of Jesus. He came to experience some of what Jesus must have felt
as he was led away by the authorities and later tortured. When I consider
this priest praying, "Don't forget me, now", I wonder what
Jesus prayed in the garden on his last night as his friends who were
supposed to be keeping watch, slept around him. The friends that
later ran away when he was arrested? "Don't forget me, now."
I think about the many times that Jesus could have prayed this same
message.
Each week we celebrate Holy Communion,
and we hear Jesus praying this message to us. "Don't forget
me, now". And the thing is, it's so easy to forget. Our lives
are so busy. The world is so full of distractions. But this is all that
Jesus asks of us: that we remember him.
When we celebrate Communion we
remember Jesus, God with us. If you never hear or remember anything
else in your life, remember this: our God became one of us. That is
what remembering Jesus means: coming face to face with this tremendous
mystery of God's love: that God became one of us in Jesus Christ. It's
one thing to do kind things for people who are despised, who are down
and out. It's quite another thing to join their ranks, to take on their
misery, to truly in every way, fell their pain and their joy.
Even if this priest’s friends
didn't forget him in his prison, most likely, they wouldn't have wanted
to go and be locked up with him. But that is exactly what God did for
us in Jesus Christ.
In becoming human, like us Jesus
suffered. His enemies called him a glutton and a drunkard, a friend
of tax collectors and sinners. He was accused of blaspheming God,
and that was the charge that finally brought about his crucifixion.
Knowing that he would die, he
still surrendered himself completely to God. He gave up everything,
as we all must. He asked only one thing of us: that we remember him.
As we eat the bread and drink from the cup.
Jesus' passage through death
to life means that Jesus goes on being one of us forever, though released
from our limitations of time and space; it means that our humanity is
forever caught up in God; it means that we share Jesus' triumph over
death.
The promise is true. Jesus
promised to never leave us. Wherever people are suffering and
striving, Jesus is present there. Whenever we try to banish the spirit
of any person or thing from the world, Jesus is there affirming life.
In this Supper, today and every
day, we do not just remember Jesus. We encounter Jesus, dead and risen,
here in this church, here on this altar, here in this food and drink
prepared for us. Jesus surrendered himself fully and completely to suffering
and death-just as we all must. All that he had, he gave. And God,
received Jesus' gift and returned it abundantly: by God's gift the risen
Jesus is not just a memory for us; he is present in our midst, on our
altar.
When we come to the altar, remembering
Jesus, we should look around and see him present, not only in the bread
and wine, but in the family he gathers at this altar, the family born
of his blood and his love; the family in need of God’s grace.
We see the risen and victorious Jesus in the bread and wine, and in
the body, the church, that shares the loaf and the cup. And in
participating in this sacrament we demonstrate our unity to God and
each other.
Tonight when we gather at this
altar to remember Jesus and to share in the sacrament of Holy Communion
together, remember that we do not come to the Lord ’s Table trusting
in our own righteousness, but in the Lord’s great mercy. Holy
Communion is Jesus’ gift to each of us to help us as we journey through
life, until He returns as victorious Lord of all. May it always be so.
Amen.
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Queen Anne 
