Maundy Thursday

Lamentations 2:10-18
1 Corinthians 10:14-17, 11:27-32
Mark 14:12-25

 They cry to their mothers, "Where is bread and wine?” 

Today's reading in Lamentations gives us a picture of a truly desperate people.  God has turned his wrath against his people.  All the warnings which He's been giving them since the days of Moses are now being fulfilled.  All the sanctions for violating the covenant are now, after centuries of mercy and patience, being invoked.  The threat ordained so long ago has been carried out.  "The Lord has become like an enemy" and vast as the sea is the ruin of Zion.  God who once sustained his people in the desert with the bread of angels now lets them suffer hunger and want in the extreme.

We might ask, "how could God be so cruel?" "How could he do this to his own people?"  It is a valid question, and not one easily answered.  Perhaps, one reason was to teach them what it means to forsake God and to be God forsaken.  To be without God is really to live and be dead.  It is like living your life without some key necessity, without food or drink.  The thing is, that's how most people live.  They live without that key ingredient that makes life more than a living death.

Of course, we know that God has not fully abandoned his people.  They are not truly God forsaken and neither are all the people who live today with their backs turned to God.  He still sends his rain on them, he still blesses and loves them.   There is only one who has been truly God forsaken.  Read Lamentations again, and instead of envisioning a ruined city, see Christ on the cross as he cries out "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani" and begin to understand the searing pain of true God-forsakenness.   But we get ahead of ourselves.  That is tomorrow's sorrow and tomorrow's glory.  Today we remember a different and yet intimately similar way in which our Lord gave himself for us.

We all cry out in our starvation and deprivation "where is bread and wine?"  "Where is that which will nourish us in our starvation, which will save us from our living death?"  Really, that is what all people are after.  Everyone is searching, whether they realize it or not, for the bread of life.  Unfortunately most people fill themselves with false bread which is really no more than poison.  That is, I think, really the nature of addiction, our common human compulsion to fill that void with anything that even for a fleeting moment eases the pain or distracts us from our distress.  There is, however, only one thing which truly satisfies our hunger, that ends our starvation, that brings us into true and abundant life.  That is the Living Bread, Jesus.   There is only one drink which truly slakes our thirst for meaning, for peace, for love.  That is the Living Water, Jesus.

In the night in which he was betrayed, Our Lord took bread; and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take, eat, this is my Body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me."

Likewise, after supper, he took the cup; and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, "Drink this, all of you; for this is my Blood of the New Covenant, which is shed for you, and for many, for the remission of sins.  Do this, as oft as ye shall drink it, in remembrance of me.

Jesus gives us the bread and wine for which all the seemingly God forsaken cry out.  The bread and wine is His Body and Blood.  He gives himself to sustain our lives, to rescue us from impending death.

Now, I know that there are church rupturing disagreements about what all that really means.  What does it mean that the bread is his Body and that the wine is his Blood?  It is truly, I believe, one of the greatest tragedies of the church and most pernicious works of the devil, that the very sacrament given to us to be the source our unity and strength has so often been the source of our division and weakness.  I think, however, that we should all be able to agree that was does happen is that in some way Christ nourishes us.   Whether it is with his true Body and Blood, or merely with the memory of his great sacrifice, we are nourished, our cries for sustenance are answered.

Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen