St Anthony the Great

Christ Our Passover

What a week this has been.  Just the other day, along with all Jerusalem we were jubilant, waving our palm branches, as a man rode the colt of a donkey into the city.  We fell right in with the crowd, shouting ‘Hosanna, Hosanna – Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!”  We may not have been quite sure who he was, but we wanted it to be true.  We have been oppressed.  We’ve lamented, “How long, O Lord, how long?”  We wanted to believe that our Messiah had come.  But it doesn’t seem to have gone that way.

There was that trouble in the Temple.  We heard he rampaged through one of the courts with a whip and turning over tables and shouting, “My house shall be a house of prayer.”  My brother was there, he heard it.  He said the man called the Temple authorities robbers & thieves.  And there was that other incident when he told them the Temple would be destroyed.  That really got their hackles up. He even topped it off by claiming to be God.  Blasphemy!

Now the word on the street is that they’re going to get him.  Someone came to my uncle’s house looking for that guy, Lazarus, from Bethany.  They’re looking for him, too.  Who’s next?  Will it be me – or you or you or you?  Remember?  We were also in that crowd waving our palms and throwing our coats across the path as he rode by.  Maybe us next.

We were jubilant and hopeful just the other day.  Now all Jerusalem is surly and about to explode.  Roman soldiers.  Saturation patrols everywhere.  Even Pilate is in town.  That means more soldiers.  The Temple Guard going to people’s homes asking is you if you know who that man’s followers are.  They scared your wife and kids as they ransacked your house, looking for evidence.  And it’s hot.  Could it possibly get any hotter outside? And without a breath of air stirring. No even a leaf moving anywhere.  The whole city seems to be holding it breath, waiting.  Something has to happen.  Something has to give.  Better to just stay home with your door shut and your windows covered in this city that’s about to come apart at the seams.  Jerusalem – that city that kills the prophets & stones those who are sent to it.

But it’s evening and  the streets are quieter., now. The air seems a little cooler as the evening breeze begins to waft up through the streets, calming nerves at it cools the air.  Our attention now turns away from this city gone mad and onto one little group of people who have gathered for Passover.  We join them in an upper room of private home, where we see this same man who rode the colt of a donkey triumphantly into the city and who, in our local expression, now seems to be public enemy #1.  He is speaking.

In many ways it’s a Passover meal like many being celebrated in homes around the city at this hour.  All the traditional items – lamb, unleavened bread, bitter herbs, cups of wine, what you’d expect, but tonight there is an urgency we don’t quite understand in his voice,   “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you.”

But this Passover will be like no other.  Oh, I’m sure there will be the traditional prayers and blessings and the telling (the Haggadah),  the story of deliverance of our ancestors from Egypt, the shared meal and fellowship around the table.  But from this moment on Passover has been irrevocably changed forever.  This man, Jesus of Nazareth, has taken those familiar elements of the Passover we are all used to – bread and wine – and applied to himself. 

As he speaks, not with so many words, he is in effect saying, “This commemoration of the first Passover  –  with the lamb, one that must be chosen without spot or blemish – a perfect lamb, a perfect sacrifice – that’s me.  That is who I am.  I have been with you some three years now and some of you still struggle to know who I really am.  And as our families have done all these years, from generation to generation, celebrated that time when the Angel of Death passed over the first born of our ancestors in Egypt and delivered them from death and from oppression and slavery, tonight we eat this Passover anew.  We eat it in a new way.

I am that perfect lamb, that perfect sacrifice that must be chosen.  I am offering the sinless live I have lived in the will of my Father, as the ransom for you.  An exchange – my life for yours.  

And the symbol of this body that will be killed, given for your sake, will be this bread that I am breaking with you and giving to you.  And this cup, this fruit of the vine that we pour, this is my life’s blood that is going to be poured out for you.

Just as our ancestors had to choose a perfect and  spotless lamb, one white as snow, sacrifice it and paint it’s blood on the doorposts of their homes, so they might have life and might be free, so must you.  But from now on, you will eat it’s body by my symbol,  the bread;  and you must paint its blood on the door posts of your hearts because that is where I am going to be with you until I come to you again.  And you must paint that blood on the door posts of your hearts by my symbol, the wine, as often as you drink it.  And in addition, I do this not only for you, but for whole world.”

In just a little while, we are going to share in this Passover with the disciples, as this is what this night is all about.  We call it the Eucharist.  Just like the disciples, some of us still struggle, at various times in our lives, with just who Jesus was and is.  Was he just a good and wise teacher like so many others?  Was he a mad-man?  A heretic?  Or was he God come down into the lives of men and women, that he might be kinned to us, as our Kinsman-Redeemer, the only One who could save us from ourselves.  But even though we waver – we’re human – we are subject to human thoughts and emotions.  It’s how we’re made.  We’re sure one moment.  We question the next. Then we doubt and then we’re sure again.  Don’t beat yourself up if this is you.  It’s just part of the trip. We are constantly falling away and coming back.   It’s the journey of our Christian life.

But tonight, we know who he is.  Take a prayer book from the pew and turn to page 364 (BCP).  Down a little past half the page, under the heading the Breaking of the Bread.  I want us all to read the part that the celebrant, the priest usually says:

CHRIST OUR PASSOVER IS SACRIFICED FOR US!

And what is our response?  “Therefore, let us keep the feast!” And what a joyous feast because that is who and what He is!

Turning back to the scene, the dinner is now over.  Some of the disciples are struck silent by the truth of words of this man from Nazareth, their friend, companion and leader.  A few of them still shake their heads, wondering at his words, so hard to understand. 

The one who would betray him has gone about his business.  He’s been gone some long time now, and the deal has been made, another kind of exchange. It seems the One we just heard tell his disciples that he was giving his life as a ransom for the entire world, in another exchange is only worth  thirty pieces of silver. 

The final hymn of the Seder has been sung and the dinner is now breaking up.  We and they come down from the upper room and step out into the cool of the evening.  It’s getting late and there is one more appointment to keep this night, but the man from Nazareth takes a moment to stop listen to the night sounds, the sounds of the city bedding down for the night, a dog barking in the distance, a cricket chirping.  Such simple things. He stops to feel the cool air against his skin and shuts his eyes, as if enjoying it for the very first time, wanting to remember it later.  Then, we go along with this band of men and their leader, as we make their way down into the Kiddron Valley and go across, up to the Mount of Olives.

Amen.