On Palm Sunday and at yesterday’s celebration of the Holy Eucharist, I spoke about the importance of grief and voluntary suffering as aspects of prophetic criticism and resistance to evil. To follow Jesus means following him in the way of the cross, rekindling the fire of divine love through tears and hard work.
But lament is not the only tool in the prophet’s toolkit. The other tool is imagination. Prophetic imagination envisions alternatives to the way things are: the possibility of life beyond oppression, suffering, and death. Grief must be paired with hope. On Maundy Thursday, we celebrate Jesus’ prophetic imagination, expressed through the signs of a shared meal and an act of humble service. His is a specifically Jewish imagination, and it is important to acknowledge and honor the Jewish roots of our own practices of hope as we celebrate the rite of foot-washing and the sacrament of Holy Communion.
In Jewish practice, every common meal as well as the meals held on festivals is an act of thanksgiving for God’s gifts of creation and redemption. Thanksgiving is expressed in the table blessings prescribed for every meal, and include a specific commemoration for the various festival meals. The host of the meal recites a special blessing at the breaking of the bread at the beginning of the meal. At festive meals, a special blessing is also recited over the cup of wine at the conclusion of the meal.
Our accounts of the Last Supper depict Jesus reciting these blessings over the bread and wine consistent with traditions familiar to every Jew from their earliest childhood. Such table fellowship, however, was not only an act of thanksgiving but also a sign of unity and peace. To share a meal with someone was to include them in the promise of God’s future reign of justice and peace. Eating constituted community. This is why some of Jesus’ contemporaries were scandalized by his eating with tax collectors and sinners. It signified an invitation to them to share in the blessings of the future reign of God.
For centuries before Jesus, the prophetic tradition of Israel imagined the reign of God under the sign of a celebratory banquet or meal. Jesus’ table fellowship during his public ministry was a visible sign anticipating the fulfillment of God’s promised reign now. It was an enacted parable of the kingdom.
The Synoptic Gospels present the Last Supper as a Passover meal, the festival celebrating the Jews’ liberation from slavery in Egypt, and connect it to Jesus’ death (and resurrection). Through the lens of the Passover, we are invited to interpret Jesus’ death and resurrection as an act of redemption (liberating us from sin and death) and renewal of God’s covenant (re-establishing a community of justice and peace). The Church takes up this symbolism in our practice of Holy Communion, a ritual meal signifying the future to which God is calling us and gifting us with a foretaste of that future now. Only, in our table fellowship, Christ’s death and resurrection, rather than the Exodus from Egypt, is the sign and guarantee of God’s promise of salvation for the whole creation.
Sharing this meal is a practice of hope. It manifests our union with God and one another, and nourishes our capacity for faith and love. By it, we are given the grace to persevere in the work of love for God’s promised future, and the blessing of tasting the fulfillment of that promise in our life together now. The sacrificial love of God manifest in Jesus’ death and resurrection is made real in this meal. Each time we gather around the table, we affirm that life is meant to be like this; not the world of division and death that we too often experience. There is another way to live.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus adds another dimension to our practice of hope. Unlike the leaders of his time and ours, who are preoccupied with status and control, Jesus admonished his disciples that he has come to serve, not to be served. At the table we set to celebrate God’s reign, the leaders are servants. How much better would the Church be, if its clergy could only understand that we are the wait staff! Jesus underscores this understanding of leadership by washing his disciples’ feet after sharing the Last Supper with them. God’s reign is manifest in a community where power is exercised through mutual vulnerability and love, rather than through domination and manipulation.
Imagine a community in which all are welcome at the table, and no one goes hungry! Imagine a community in which leaders are trustworthy servants. Imagine a community that gives thanks for the gifts of the earth, and shares them freely and equally in the service of liberation and life! Imagine a God who comes close to us to break bread, pour wine, wash our feet, and die to set us free to live because God loves us that much, and for no other reason. Imagine! And give thanks for our Jewish brother, Jesus, and for our Jewish siblings then and now, for this gift of prophetic imagination. May Passover and Easter inspire us to realize God’s hope for the world.
