The Final, Last Supper That Never Ends [Grateful, Epilogue]

Psalm 132:1-12

John 18:33-37

  

I want to begin by inviting you to reflect on the ups and downs, the highs and lows of the past year.  Of course it’s not possible to fit the past year into a single word, but I wonder what happens if I give you a short list of words.  Which word best captures what the past year has felt like for you:  Anxious?  Peaceful?  Fearful?  Joyful? Stressed?  Excited?  Sad?  Angry?  Curious?  Bored?  Are there other words that express some of what you’ve felt and experienced over the past year?

 

The full cycle of a year carries us through the four seasons and back around to where we started.  And there are rhythms to our lives.  We go, then we rest.  We work, then we rest.  We engage, then we rest.  We need time for retreat and reflection.  You can’t just keep charging forward all the time.  We need time to take inventory, ask ourselves large questions, survey what has happened and ask ourselves about the current status of our hearts. 

Christ the King Sunday is the final Sunday of a year of worship.  This Sunday brings our year of worship full circle, and offers a moment to pause and reflect before we go charging into Advent and Christmas.  Sometimes, we need simple, clear teaching.  And the wisdom of the church is that on this final day in a full-year cycle of worship, we let ourselves be reminded of one simple thing: that the living Christ is among us as king of all creation.  His voice is the voice that directs our lives like none other.  The living Christ, raised from the dead, now reigns within the world in a strange and surprising way.  And the biggest question for all of us is whether we are aware enough to taste and touch and smell and hear and see this new kingdom, this new order, this new way of being together with others. 

John’s gospel provides us with one of the traditional readings for this Sunday: Jesus has been arrested and tried by the Jewish authorities and has now been taken before Pontius Pilate (the Roman Governor of Judea).  He is the most powerful representative of Rome, the most powerful empire on earth.  Pilate’s job is to make sure no one causes trouble.  His job is to make sure everyone in the Empire recognizes that “there is no King but Caesar.”

Pilate is no Jew.  He has little interest in Jewish matters.  But he interrogates Jesus regarding the claims the Jews are making against him.  In this interchange, Jesus does not appear to be very respectful.  Jesus does not appear to be nervous either.  It is Pilate who appears fearful.  It is Pilate who is afraid of something new coming to birth within the law and order of the Roman Empire.  It is Pilate who cannot hear any voice but Caesar’s call for obedience.  But Jesus claims that his new, big, beautiful kingdom is so secure that his followers need not use violence to defend it.  His followers recognize him by listening for the sweetness, tenderness, kindness, and mercy in his voice.

The reading from Revelation is the early church’s confession that the empire of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, will outlast the Roman Empire and any other.  This living Christ is and was and always will be the true and proper king over all creation.  Everything finds its home in him.  And lest we comfort ourselves by saying, “Well, yes, Jesus is a wonderful spiritual guide, but in matters of war and the economy we follow different rules and rulers” – the confession is that the living Christ rules over all the rulers of the earth.  In other words, it is the mission of all earthly rulers to direct those under their care, as best they can, towards this new world of love and justice and healing and compassion coming to birth within the ordinary old world.

This lively news of Christ’s ongoing authority in our lives is good news.  It can reorient and redirect us when we are confused.  It can energize us when we lose heart.  It can reassure us when we become fearful and overwhelmed.  If only we could pry open our hearts to trust in this fragile, small, quiet revolution of love that is always happening right under our noses.

Like Pilate, we waffle and dither, we close ourselves down to the real questions of life.  We seek to stay in control at all costs.  We fear losing what we have.  And we give heed to voices that do not tell us the truth.  We fail to follow the only voice that can lead us through the challenges of life – the voice of God’s love, God’s quiet way of sustaining and helping, God’s solidarity with those who need help.   We fail to register the voice of the king who is also the good shepherd leading the sheep to water and pasture and rest.

Like the congregations of Christians in Asia – the recipients of the letter Revelation – we wither in fear before powerful political challenges to our faith.  We wilt like flowers.  We lose steam and opt for a soft and comfortable life, tired of fighting with powerful ideas and powerful people and powerful rulers whose voice is nothing like the voice of the living Christ who is in our midst.  We allow ourselves to be worn down by the battering voices around us that can only lead us into a spiral of living death.

But even in our unbelief, our flagging energy, our failure and betrayal, Christ the king continues to welcome us into a new community, inviting us to share again the meal of grace, with sisters and brothers that are all different shapes and sizes and colors, and who have no business sharing their lives other than the fact that they have all heard this beautiful, alluring, persuasive voice calling them to something new and different. 

In the 1490’s the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, hired Leonardo da Vinci to paint the scene of the Last Supper on the north wall of the new dining hall in an elegant church and monastery in the heart of Milan.  Leonardo was well known at this point.  Crowds would gather to watch him work.  Some days he climbed the scaffolding and painted all day long without eating or drinking.  Other days he would climb up, stare at the painting for a couple of hours, and leave without doing anything.  Sometimes, he would run into the monastery, scramble up the scaffolding and apply only a brush stroke or two to one of the figures, then suddenly depart.

Leonardo’s goal was paint something new.  He wanted to capture the drama and action of the scene.  This was not to be a frozen snapshot, something still and lifeless.  He wanted to convey the motion and emotion of the scene.  That’s why he painted the scene in a way that emphasizes the gestures and movements of all the figures in the scene.  The moment he captures comes just after Jesus has said to his disciples, “One of you will betray me.” 

And we see in the disciples the frenzy of worry and argument and self-defense that may be familiar to us - because we too live in the tension between wanting to follow Jesus and wanting nothing to do with him.  Leonardo captures the moment just before the disciples discover the identity of the one who will betray Jesus.  But now we know. . . it’s you and me.  We’re the unfaithful ones who keep listening to a thousand other voices than the only one that can bring us life and joy.  In the Bible and in the painting, it is Judas who represents this betrayal on our behalf.  Judas is third to the left of Jesus, holding a small bag of coins in one hand and reaching for bread with the other. 

The wonder of da Vinci’s painting is the wonder of life: that the king of all creation refuses to give up on us in our repeated betrayals; that the living Christ keeps inviting us back to the table, even knowing all we’ve done and left undone; that our failures to follow and serve him only result in amplifying and increasing God’s grace towards us.  Friends, we have much to be thankful for.  But today we can be thankful for the beautiful, graceful, tenacious voice of the living Christ that never ceases calling us into the way of abundance, sharing, joy and gratitude.

We give thanks for this life-shaping news that is elusive and hard to grasp: that we are loved beyond measure, and so is everyone else.  What we celebrate is that this newness is not merely an otherworldly idea, an abstract principle.  No, we celebrate the arrival of this newness right in the middle of this ordinary world; right in the middle of our ordinary lives.  It is the presence of the new within the old that makes our celebration so confusing to so many. 

When we gather to share communion, we do so as early adopters, celebrating ahead of time, and on behalf of all others, the “biblical story of abundance.”  I’ll end with the language from Butler Bass’ book on gratitude:  “That is what the church is intended to be: a festive community dependent on gifts of abundance.  Everything is a gift.  Bread is a gift; wine is a gift; life and joy are gifts.  No one can ever pay them back.  God never withholds.  All we can do is receive – in awe of such favor and grace – say thank you to the Giver, and then ‘pay it forward’ with humble service to others” (Butler Bass, 121).  Amen.