Here’s a quick “food-memoir” of my last week...

1. Sunday night we had a BBQ dinner with a Bethany couple and their daughter
2. Monday night we had dessert and coffee with a small group
3. Tuesday I had coffee across the street with one of our Interns
4. Wednesday-Thursday I had four wonderful meals with our pastoral staff (we were on retreat together)
5. Thursday night we had dinner at a Thai restaurant with Laura’s brother-in-law
6. Friday we had coffee and snacks with a home group
7. Yesterday I stopped in to the Men’s Breakfast and grabbed a couple pancakes
8. …then later on I had some doughnuts with some Middle Schoolers.

Now in case it’s not obvious, I love food – preparing, cooking, eating – all of it…the term now is foodie…I’m a foodie. But even if you aren’t a foodie, there’s just something great about sharing a meal with other people, isn’t there? Well I’m beginning to think that there’s not just something great about sharing a meal, there’s something truly sacred that goes on there.

Our sermon series for Lent is “The Hands of Jesus”… Today, Jesus is using his hands to serve dinner to his friends, the night before he died.

The Preparation (Luke 22:7-13)
The occasion was the Passover Feast, the meal that celebrated God delivering the Israelites from Pharaoh’s slavery in Egypt. Remember: God sent a final, terrible plague on the Egyptians that wiped out their firstborn males (people and livestock) throughout the land, but God “passed over” the homes of the Israelites (meanwhile they were inside eating a special meal, after having wiped lamb’s blood on the door posts). In the Passover meal, the Jews remember – and re-enact – God saving his people and setting them free.

Later, when Moses led the Israelites out into the desert to Mount Sinai, God verbalized his covenant agreement with the people of Israel, and there was another meal. This time Moses took the elders of Israel up Mount Sinai (Exodus 24), and they “ate and drank” in the very presence of Yahweh, “sealing” the covenant agreement he had just made with them. The Passover meal remembers that God saves, and that God keeps covenant with his people.

A couple weeks ago I met with a Jewish SPU student, who was doing an assignment on Christian worship…as I described our Communion meal, dipping the bread into the cup, right away she said: “That’s Passover…we do that.” She grew up eating the Passover meal, every year; Jesus also grew up with this meal, every year of his life.

Jesus is in Jerusalem now, the holy city where millions of Jews had gathered for this Passover celebration…Jesus and his disciples were staying out on the Mount of Olives (likely no “room at the inns”). He was there with his disciples, his friends, whom he had invited to join him on this ministry journey. Jesus was teaching to the crowds about the Kingdom of God…and generally getting himself into very hot water with the religious officials.

Today was the feast day, so Jesus makes preparation for the meal. He takes Peter and John aside, tells them to go into the city and tells them exactly how to find a certain house he had in mind, with a second-story banquet room, where Jesus will gather his disciples. How would they find the right house? “Follow a man carrying a jar of water.” This was women’s work in the Ancient Near East, so it wouldn’t be hard to spot the right guy.

In addition to securing the dining room, John and Peter would need to get groceries: lamb (properly sacrificed and roasted), bitter herbs, unleavened bread and wine. Perhaps Jesus was preparing Peter and John for the meal, by having them prepare it together.

There is something about preparing a meal that gathers people together.

A couple years ago we were with the high schoolers in Honduras, working at Agros Uno (the farming village that Bethany partners with). The people at the village were generally very shy…shy around new people, shy about their poverty, shy about the language barrier. Though we worked side-by-side, when we went to the Hacienda to eat lunch, our group would take out our sack lunches and eat on the porch…the villagers we were working with would shyly form their own group around the corner, or inside the hacienda. We worked together, but we ate separately.

Then someone had the idea: let’s make lunch together! So for the next three days, we did just that, rotating so that everyone on our team got to be in the kitchen. It didn’t take long – on the next day we were eating as one group, sharing the same food, and by the last day, we were laughing, singing, and sharing stories together as we ate.

Jesus was present there as those meals were being prepared, gathering us together as we made tortillas, cooked beans and rice, and made lemonade.

There is something about inviting people to a meal, about sharing food, which can bring very different people together.

Peter and John even, two very different personalities, not to mention the other disciples. But very different people can connect over a meal. I think of a family here at Bethany who invite the neighbors on their block over for soup every month…I think of the Wednesday Night Dinner and Alpha, where people from very different walks of life connect over a meal. Jesus is very present at all these meals, among very different people.

Eugene Peterson writes that meals are probably the best place for evangelism. When it comes to salvation, he thinks that the kitchen is “as essential” as the sanctuary (Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, p. 220). Everyone has to eat, after all, no matter how different they are. And meals can bring us together.

The Meal…(Luke 22:14-21)
And so this “Last Supper” was prepared, and Jesus reclined there at the Table with his friends, friends who were very different from one another…but this was the “last supper” of many suppers shared with these friends, and lots of other very different people:

1. There was the dinner when the prostitute showed up anointing Jesus with perfume (Luke 7)
2. The dinner with that despicable tax collector Zaccheus (Luke 19)
3. The picnic for 5,000 (Luke 9)
4. There were those intimate meals with Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus (Luke 10 and 12),
5. and the more public Sabbath meal where Jesus humiliated the religious hosts for their arrogance and lack of hospitality (Luke 14).

It wasn’t just the high holy church suppers Jesus shows up for…he was down at the pub eating burgers and drinking beer with the riff-raff, the whores and drug dealers. All in all folks, I think Jesus is a foodie! (But his company he ate with was far from conventional.)

Well tonight, Jesus reclined there at the table with his friends one last time…they’d been through a lot together; they would go through much more in the days ahead. Jesus would go through death and hell. And his friends would go through grief and danger unimaginable…

There is something about sharing a meal that invites us to share the difficult stuff, to go deeper.

Jesus shares with his disciples [paraphrased]: “I’ve really been looking forward to this Passover dinner…but afterward I’m going to suffer, and I will not eat this meal or drink this wine until the Kingdom of God comes.” That must have seemed a long ways off. What’s worse, he tells them, “It’s one of you who will betray me tonight.” Hard stuff to share, hard stuff to hear.

In seminary one year, I was going through a difficult time…a break-up with my girlfriend, conflict with my housemates, lots of school stress, I wasn’t feeling very sure about becoming a pastor and I felt a little lost.

I was walking to school one morning, and my friend Matt came out of his house as I walked by, and he called: “Will you come in for toast?” “Sure,” I said. I was still getting to know Matt; we hadn’t spent a lot of time together. He made some toast and poured the coffee, and I poured out my heart. I think I skipped class that morning. Matt listened, he listened really well, and I needed that.

Jesus was very present there in that simple meal with my friend…as we shared the difficult things, and went deeper. Jesus was doing something there. Take a look at what Jesus was doing – with his hands – in this Last Supper:

Jesus takes the cup of wine in his hands, blesses (gives thanks for) it, he gives it to his disciples to share. Then he takes the loaf of bread, in his hands, blesses (gives thank for) it, breaks it, and gives it to his friends.

Watch the verbs: Take – bless – break – give. When Jesus fed the 5,000 and when Jesus reveals himself to the disciples he walked with on the Emmaus road, we see the same verbs…take – bless – break – give (Peterson, Christ Plays). Jesus is at work in these meals, he’s doing something.

The food and drink are not incidental here…we need food. Food nourishes us, sustains us, food even heals us. Yes, there is something about a meal that can even bring healing. I know a married couple – and every year on March 3 they go to Queen Anne Café and she orders the same thing…an omelet. They do this every year on March 3 because on March 3 a few years ago, she got very sick and went in and out of the hospital for a few weeks…she couldn’t eat food for three months (she was fed intravenously). But thanks be to God, she got better. Much better. And every year on March 3 you can find them at the café, and she’ll be eating an omelet.

Jesus is present there in that meal at the Queen Anne Café, every year, he shows up faithfully…and they remember his faithfulness to them. That’s healing.

Maybe you’ve seen the film, Babbette’s Feast (we’re showing this in our Lenten film festival in two weeks). Babbette is a maid in a stodgy, legalistic religious community…the people refuse any sensual pleasure (food, beauty, etc.), lest Satan tempt them. Their senses are so dulled they lose any sense for one another…their interactions are abusive and hateful. Babbette prepares an extravagant meal for them, and though they try not to enjoy the food and wine, their senses come alive again – they are re-sensitized to one another (it’s hard to hate someone when you are eating with them). Relationships are healed and restored.

In this Last Supper, Jesus holds up in his hands the cup of wine at the end of the dinner, telling the disciples how the “cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood…” Now that’s healing. But as he dose this, Jesus also sees the hand of Judas resting there on the table, the hand that just accepted 30 pieces of silver from the religious leaders, a deal to betray Jesus (Matthew 26.15)…the hand that would sometimes – when no one was looking – pilfer the money box that Jesus’ disciples shared and entrusted to Judas (John 12.6)…yes, Judas was a thief and a traitor, and yet he was there at dinner. Satan had his hand on Judas that night. That night, Jesus put bread in the hand of his enemy.

Eating with our enemies. Though Judas didn’t see it happening that night…or couldn’t see it…there is something about a meal that can reconcile enemies.

A couple months after the morning when I had toast with my friend Matt, the woman I had been dating called me…she wanted to have lunch, to talk. We hadn’t talked for several weeks, since we broke up. I had hurt her, we had wounded each other. But that day we broke bread together in a corner sandwich shop – we broke the silence, and we forgave each other. Jesus was present there in that meal, and in time, we let our past die and a friendship rise. In so many words we “proclaimed the Lord’s death” and held on to his resurrection. That’s when real life begins…when we let the old things die, and Jesus brings new things to life.

Well, the meals with Jesus don’t stop when he dies: after his resurrection, Jesus is breaking bread with the disciples after walking with them on the Emmaus Road (Luke 24.13f), he’s eating fish with them in the Jerusalem gathering (Luke 24.36f)…in John’s Gospel (and this is my favorite), Jesus even makes a surprise breakfast for his disciples the morning they went fishing…Peter and John were there on the beach eating the meal that Jesus prepared that morning.

Jesus is present in our Communion meals, he’s doing something…reaching out and inviting us, preparing and gathering us, being intimate and ministering to us, healing us and reconciling us to himself and to one another.

The Table:
There is something about a meal, isn’t there? You sit on the same level together and use your hands to eat, drink, pass things around. You look each other in the eyes as you share food and drink, you share conversation, you share each other…you have to pay attention. There is mystery and wonder, intimacy and healing. These things are never more present than when we gather at this Table for this Communion meal.

• This meal binds us to one another…
  we come together as the Body of Christ to receive the Body of Christ. This meal binds us to the church around the world…all believers, God’s Kingdom in Kenya and in Honduras and everywhere where God reigns in the lives of people. “And they will come from east and west, and from north and south, and will recline at the table in the Kingdom of God” (Luke 14.29). Picture the ends of the Table extending out infinitely, in both directions.
• This meal binds us to heaven…
  where God is worshipped continually, where Jesus sits on God’s right-hand side. But this meal also binds us to earth…the legs of the table go down to the floor, to the earth where the food was grown, by unnamed people we often don’t even know, all part of God’s good creation.
• This meal binds us to the past…
  because we remember Christ on the Cross, and in the grave, and rising from the grave. He died and rose for us, his friends.
• This meal binds us to the future…
  it’s a foretaste, and “appetizer” even, that looks forward to that great wedding reception banquet we will eat with Christ when he is united to his Church on resurrection day (Revelation 19).
• This meal binds us to the present…because Jesus meets us here today, it’s here that we take him in, body and blood…it’s here that we receive him.
  
  Take – bless – break – give.

There is more going on here than we will ever understand…how Jesus is here, and what he’s doing here. It’s mystery, by definition…but it’s real, a reality that is bigger than us. Maybe it’s good we don’t understand it…keeps us from grasping it, so we come with open hands to receive him.

Charge:
Recognize Christ in your meals together…this afternoon, tomorrow and the next day…in the breaking of your burritos, Phad Thai, sub sandwiches…(don’t get hung up on the bread!). Remember and proclaim…every meal we share is somehow connected to this Table, and Jesus is present with us there.