“Do this in remembrance of me.”
For most of us who have been Christians our whole lives, we have heard these famous words of Jesus at the Last Supper so many times that we could say them in our sleep. Some version of them shows up in virtually every Eucharistic prayer. Take, eat, and do this in remembrance of me. Take, drink, and do this in remembrance of me. Week after week after week.
Until now. If you are like me, you literally cannot remember a time in your life when you have gone so long without receiving Communion. We have not been hearing these words in church, because we have not been able to be together in church. We have not been sharing the bread or drinking from the same cup. We have not been fed. And we are hungry…so, so hungry.
We are hungry with a spiritual hunger that cannot be entirely filled by other things, no matter how good they are. We want the bread, broken for us. We want the wine, poured out for the forgiveness of sins. We want these things—these good and holy things. And we cannot have them.
We live in a time when feelings of fear and of longing seem to dominate our emotional landscape, and the kind of sustenance that the church usually offers is nowhere to be found.
Our Scripture readings tonight might help us to remember that fear and longing are not only normal, they are opportunities for faithfulness and a deep connection to God and to one another. If we think about the story of Passover, a holy day celebrated by our Jewish siblings just last night whose origins are recounted in the Book of Exodus, we quickly realize that the context for this day is an experience of life-or-death danger and a time of trial. The original Passover meal was created for a people oppressed by a tyrannical ruler and threatened by impending plagues. It was to be eaten in a hurry, because the people of Israel needed to be ready to flee for their lives.
In a similar way, according to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus and his friends were celebrating this very same ritual meal when he instituted what we now think of as the sacrament of Holy Communion. Like the people of Israel and like us, they had their own reasons to feel afraid and isolated. Religious authorities were increasingly threatened by what Jesus was doing, by the ways he was upsetting the status quo. Just a few days or maybe hours before the events in the Upper Room we call the Last Supper, Judas had offered his services to “the chief priests and the teachers of the law [who] were looking for some way to get rid of Jesus, for they were afraid.”
In our own time of longing and uncertainty we might be tempted to think of the Last Supper as a cozy and comforting scene of people who loved each other coming together to share a meal. But it was also a moment of grave danger, when the person who would betray Jesus to the authorities and the person who would deny him three times were right there with him. Jesus knew that he was going to be betrayed and killed, knew that the danger was present in the room that night, and yet he asked them to remember that moment, to remember him, and to love one another.
Remembering Jesus through the Eucharist has never been just a way to come together with people we love and be comforted. It has always been a revolutionary act, a way to stand up to the powers of darkness in the world. It has always been meant to join us together with people in all times and all places who recognize that there are forces greater than empire, that the liberation and well-being of one is dependent on the liberation and well-being of the least among us.
Some of us will likely remember the Eucharistic prayer that encourages us to come to the table for strength and courage as well as solace and comfort. I think we need to heed that call tonight. Even as our hearts are breaking we are called to be brave, patient, and resolute. Yes, we will share the bread and wine only spiritually, not physically, and this is a hard thing for us. Yes, as Episcopalians we believe that when we consecrate the bread and the wine they become the Body and Blood of Christ. But there is more to the Eucharist than that. The great Anglican theologian Richard Hooker taught that the true miracle of Communion was not that bread and wine could be transformed, but that we could. The fact of the bread and wine not touching our lips does not change God’s power to transform us, our lives, our wills, our spirits, through these simple and common elements.
No matter what is happening in the world tonight or in the days to come, we are still the Body. Scattered as we are, broken as we are, hungry as we are, God is still here feeding us and urging us to feed one another. I have heard of and even seen so many great acts of love among you these last few weeks. People are checking up on each other, reaching out to each other, and working so hard to be sure that nobody falls through the cracks. People are making masks and giving them away, are homeschooling their children as they work remotely for their own jobs, and are showing up at St. Martin’s to feed the hungry. Nurses and doctors and grocery store clerks and other frontline workers continue to inspire us all with their acts of heroism and courage. Even just staying home when you don’t want to, resisting that urge to go out and do one more not-quite-necessary thing—that too is an act of sacrificial love and generosity right now, an act that might save someone’s life.
Our longing and our hunger are holy and faithful responses to this unprecedented moment in our common history. Tonight’s Psalm reminds us that even after God had saved his chosen faithful, his beloved community, from oppression and from plague, they had moments of doubt and despair. They rebelled against God in their hearts. They thought that the cure was turning out to be worse than the disease. They railed against God and cried, “Can you set a table in the wilderness?” They showed God their weakness, their fear, even their pettiness, and God continued to love them. God said yes. God opened up the doors of heaven and rained down food upon them, so that mortals ate the food of angels and were satisfied. Let us do the same tonight, trusting that God will provide for us, setting a table for us even in this journey through the wilderness, setting a table in our hearts.
