Jesus Christ did not come to establish a religion.
He came to establish his Kingdom.
This day marks the beginning of three days.
I'm going to explain why we do this,
where it came from,
and then move on to the important stuff.
One of the great tragedies in the recent centuries,
is that people are taught things
and then they fail to teach those things to others,
and so the things we do
lose their meaning,
and then they get discarded.
The first Christians were Jewish.
The most important holiday for Jews is Passover,
and the first Christians understood
that Jesus was the fulfillment
of the Passover.
He is the Lamb.
They also took biblical prophecy seriously,
and they knew that the Messiah
would have to be in the earth for three full days,
just like Hosea predicted,
and as Jesus said,
Jonah in the fish.
In the beginning, the first Christians marked the three days
that Jesus was in the tomb with fasting and prayer to celebrate the resurrection.
As you may remember from the Passover Seder,
We tell the exodus story,
but in very broad symbolic strokes.
The activities are not a rigid recounting,
it's a bunch of symbolic movements that jog the memory.
The first Christians were not like us,
with a reductionist, post enlightenment grid.
They were Jews in the Greco-Roman world.
So they created broad strokes.
The first day,
Thursday,
was the memorial of the New Covenant,
followed by a night of prayer and fasting.
On Friday,
they remembered the passion and the crucifixion,
and then at sundown on Saturday
they would celebrate the resurrection
with a fire and baptisms.
These three days became the beginning of what we in English call Easter.
So no, Jesus didn't die on a Friday,
but rather,
a Wednesday.
And in the days before people had nice kitchens,
everyone had to cook their lamb before the feast.
And so everyone went to the temple early,
and this day that year was a Tuesday.
They did this, so that dinner would be ready at Sundown on the Passover.
And this going to the temple early became a tradition,
just like people going shopping before Christmas.
The New Testament says it was called the day of Preparation.
And it was on this day,
that Jesus said,
we are having a seder.
Jews today do this.
Some people have a seder with friends,
and then the main day of Passover they celebrate with family.
And at this seder
Jesus does two things.
He leaves them with one commandment
and he establishes a new covenant.
Love one another.
And this commandment he first demonstrates
by washing their feet.
Then he teaches on this commandment for a long time.
John 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17
are a discourse on loving one another.
It's about double the length of the Sermon on the Mount.
And here is the rub.
This commandment,
Jesus tells us,
is only possible to keep
if the Father is living in you.
Jesus says that the works he does
are the work of the Father in him.
The Father in Jesus is doing the work.
And you can only do this
if you are in the Father.
And so Jesus says,
I am going to the Father,
and I am going to send you the Holy Spirit.
And the Holy Spirit in you
will give you the ability to do greater works.
And what are the greater works?
To love.
Because all the miracles,
all the teaching,
all the signs,
are one thing:
demonstrations of the love of the Father
toward us.
The Father is the Most Relational Being in the Universe,
and all the acts of God up to this point were leading to this seder.
God was establishing a new covenant with all of creation,
and the covenant is all about a renewed relationship with the Father.
And you cannot understand the New Covenant
until you understand this:
there are no rules,
only one.
Love one another.
And when you understand this,
then you suddenly discover
that this is impossible.
This is why people come up with all kinds of
religious regulations and activities.
Being busy and religious
is much easier than loving,
and it gives you permission to hate people,
not forgive,
and be selfish
while you keep the rules perfectly.
Jesus said,
if you have seen me
you have seen the father.
And I am the way, the truth, and the life.
If you want the way to the Father,
come to me.
If you want Truth,
look at me.
I am truth.
If you are sick and dying,
come to me,
I am life.
And then he says that the Holy Spirit in us
will make it possible to do greater works then he does.
The Greek is really interesting here.
It says that we will do
categorically different and exponentially greater
works.
Jesus is the pioneer,
and we are designed to not only do what he did
but more and better.
We were designed to follow him and get better at it,
because we have more time and more opportunities.
The Kingdom is so much better than religion.
And then,
Jesus takes the last piece of Matzo.
The Afikomen,
that had been broken
and hidden
until the end of the seder,
and he says,
this is my body.
To the ancients
there was no distinction
between something symbolic,
and the reality it represented.
So a word was as good as the thing.
And Jesus speaks the word over this bread,
and he says,
this is my body.
And then he takes the third cup
and he says,
this cup is the cup of my blood,
the blood of the new and everlasting covenant.
He is doing something new and different.
He gave us a new law,
and a new covenant.
And in the ancient world a covenant
had three things:
an obligation,
an offering accompanied by death and sacrifice,
and a sign of fellowship.
The new covenant obligation:
to love one another.
An offering accompanied by the death of an sacrifice:
his body, and this bread.
And a sign of fellowship,
eating and drinking together.
Jesus said,
I am the bread.
I am going to die.
And you are going to eat this bread
and drink this cup,
and when you do,
you are going to anamnesis me.
you are are going to bring into the present
reality what I have done for you
and make this covenant real in the here and now.
This is what Paul meant when he said,
Whenever we eat this bread
and drink this cup
we proclaim the Lord's death
until he comes again.
And Jesus spent his whole life pointing toward this event.
This was what he longed to do,
establish a new covenant with us.
This is why we say in the Lord's prayer
give us today our supersubstantial bread.
Jesus said in the greek:epi-ousias.
Meaning
more than real bread.
Give us this bread of the new covenant,
where God lives in us
by the Holy Spirit
and does the work through us
so that we can do more than real things in this earth.
We are not mentally remembering Jesus,
we are reconnecting to the covenant
and all it's promises:
God is in us,
and physically we are taking Jesus into us.
And when we take Jesus into us,
Jesus in us
by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit
gives us the power to love.
And in that place,
we can ask anything in his name
and our Father will get the glory.
And after that,
Jesus went out
and he faced the sealing of what he just did.
Greater love
hath no man than this,
that he lay down his life
for his friends.
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus Christ,
we thank you
that in this wonderful sacrament
you have given us the memorial of your passion.
Grant us so to revere the sacred mysteries
of your body and blood
that we may know within ourselves,
and show forth in our lives
the fruits of your redemption:
for you live and reign with the Father,
and the Holy Spirit,
one God now and forever.
Amen.
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