On this Maundy Thursday, as we begin our celebration of the Three Days of Jesus’ Passion, death and resurrection, our attention focuses on the Eucharist as the foundational event of the church and the center of Christian faith and life, an event that lifts up and brings together both Christ’s crucifixion and his resurrection. As Paul summarizes: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

The story behind the story of the institution of the Eucharist is the OT account of the Passover, especially the Passover lamb, whose blood was sacrificed so that Israel could escape her Egyptian pursuers, and thus live into her freedom, overcoming and breaking through as a gift from God her certain annihilation. The sacrificial lamb is the most obvious connection between the Passover and the institution of the Lord’s Supper. But there is another connection that also relates directly to the Eucharist, a connection we often tend to pass over, if you will. That connection has to do with the description of precisely how the Israelites were to eat the meal: “This is how you shall eat [the lamb]: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the Passover of the Lord.”

The Israelites were instructed to eat hurriedly because they had to be ready to flee Egypt at a moment’s notice. But the command to eat hurriedly also has wider implications both for Israel in its ongoing life, as well as for the church that it may understand more fully the meaning of the Eucharist. As the ancient Israelites were being nourished for an imminent journey, so also we who are gathered around the Eucharistic table are being nourished for a journey. We too must be ready to move on at a moment’s notice. We must be prepared to go wherever the God who nourishes and strengthens us commands us to go. This means that the Christian community is always planted lightly and connected loosely to the place and institutions and conventions and loyalties of its contemporary locale. Our attachment must never be simply to the place where we currently live or to the world as it is already. We are not to put down roots here (wherever “here” is for us), because as Paul says, “we have this treasure in clay jars” (2 Cor. 4:7). And as he also said, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:2); and as Jesus tells us, “My kingdom is not from this world” (John 18:36).

A particularly poignant sign of the not-of-this-world character of Holy Communion is Jesus’ washing the feet of the disciples. With this demonstration of humility and love, Jesus overturns human power arrangements, and instead orients all human relationships around mutual service, grounding the disciples’ lives and all human structures in his own supreme act of loving self-sacrifice on the cross, a reorientation and a re-grounding that will be fulfilled when Christ comes again in beauty and in power. By following his example of service and sacrifice, the disciples will be witnesses to that promise, not only to the death-defeating power of God, but also to the new humanity Jesus establishes and which they represent through his and their self-emptying love. “I give you a new commandment,” he told his disciples, “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

God’s kingdom is not of this world, because Christ is the death of all sinful human power arrangements, and whose resurrection inaugurates humanity’s judgment and thus its renewal, purification and perfection. God’s kingdom is not of this world, because human relationships are to be restructured according to his law of love. That Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world, therefore, is not a turning away from the world, it is rather an expression of God’s supreme commitment to it, and of his undying love for it.

The God of Israel’s ardent love and unbreakable affection for his people Israel, and through them his compassion for all humankind created in his image, is demonstrated in the story of the Exodus, the Exodus of God’s people from domination to service, from rivalry to compassion, from selfishness to sacrifice, all signs and tokens of their greater Exodus from slavery to freedom, from bondage to liberation, from death to life. The God of Israel’s love for his people is demonstrated, therefore, most clearly in the Passover, particularly in the lamb’s blood that saved God’s people from death. The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world is the true Passover lamb by whose sacrifice on the cross God’s people pass over from grave to empty tomb, from sin and death to life and salvation. That Lamb, according to Revelation, now sits on the throne. He, the risen Christ, whose blood has set us free, is proof positive that God’s faithfulness and love for his people will triumph. It is his very body, given up for us, that is imparted to us in the Eucharist, where in a simple meal of bread and wine, instituted on the night in which he was betrayed, we receive nothing less than the bread of life and the cup of salvation.

But we must remember again, though, that it is a meal for refugees and pilgrims, for transients and wanderers and for liberated exiles on their way home. They travel light with just what they need for the day. They are Exodus people, freed from their bondage to sin and death and ready to go where the Spirit directs. Even in our transient society, this is something Christians have forgotten, for we are entrenched and enmeshed in our denominations and traditions, our causes and crusades, our opinions and habits of thought, our prejudices and fears, and in our vice-like attachment to all things material. When these become the sources of our ultimate trust, then there is a danger that we bet on the wrong horse, put our faith in a pretender, and devote ourselves to an infinite array of idolatries.

That’s why God goes to such great lengths of Exodus, Crucifixion and Resurrection, because they demonstrate and confirm God’s true identity, sovereignty, lordship, and power: “on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord.”

The Eucharist is thus a feast celebrating God’s victory as Lord of earth and heaven, the vanquisher of all other claimants to divinity, whose faithfulness to Israel endures forever, who crushes idols and demons with cross and resurrection, who frees his people from their exile and captivity in a strange land ruled over by sin and death, whose love for his people is never-ending, who personally leads them home through the treacherous wilderness of life, and who in the death-defeating waters of baptism promises them eternal peace, blessing and new life in the land that he will give them.

So let us enter into these Three Days, fortified by the bread of heaven for our Exodus journey, trusting in the Lord’s promise of life and salvation, giving ourselves away to others in love and to God in faith, unencumbered by any and all unnecessary attachments, confident in God’s power and victory over death.

-Amen-