Beyond Just the Eucharist: Maundy Thursday


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Sermon:


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Jesus came into this world to bridge the gap in our relationship with God. This is what Holy Week is all about, and it is the main purpose of our Faith. Our work in this world is to bring ourselves and others to God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Holy Eucharist helps solidify that connection. One could even say it is the most distilled way we come closer to Christ. When Jesus says at the Last Supper, “Do this in remembrance of me”, He’s not just asking that the Disciples remember this event as if they were reading a entry in their journal. Jesus is instead inviting them to recall this event in a way that makes it real and present for the Disciples. He wants them to live into it again and again as if this event is still going on now. Jesus wants us to do the same, and so we remember not only the Last Supper, but the the death and Resurrection and all that built up to it in a way that makes us present in those events every time we celebrate Holy Eucharist.

However, this past year plus we have not had the opportunity to celebrate Holy Eucharist very often, because it is an event that doesn’t just require words or a celebrant, but a Eucharist instead involves all of us together. We have not been able to gather together for much of the year, and we have thus not gotten to celebrate Eucharist until recently.

That doesn’t mean that we haven’t been able to connect meaningfully to God, just as it doesn’t mean that those who cannot be here with us can’t strengthen their relationship with God like we can. God speaks to us in a myriad of ways. We build our relationship with God through a myriad of ways too, beyond just the Eucharist.

The next step for the church when this pandemic is over will be to explore how we build our relationship with God outside the Eucharist. We will have to do so for when the next pandemic comes, because it will come as history has shown us. My hope is that in listening to Jesus’ words in Luke tonight, this parish, as well as all in the church, can be humble and listen to the servants set aside by the church to think through these issues. Those servants, at least myself as one of them, will be pondering over these questions very carefully with an ear to what God is trying to say to us. When the time comes, I hope you will have an ear to what God has been saying too.