Death Outside the Door

Propers: Maundy Thursday, AD 2022 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Fear. Fear would have been the overriding emotion at Jesus’ Last Supper. Anxiety, confusion, and fear. And somewhere there in the midst of it all—a faint glimmer of hope, like embers from a fire in the dark. How utterly appropriate for the Passover.

I grew up with Jewish friends and neighbors who would invite us annually to join them for the Seder, the Passover meal in their homes. And it was wonderful. I do confess to this day that I miss it. Passover was ever a joy to celebrate, and not just because each person was to drink four cups of wine. Passover is the foundation, the origin story, of God’s people Israel in the Hebrew Bible: how He with a mighty hand took a mixed multitude of slaves out from bondage in Egypt and led them to freedom in the Promised Land of their ancestors.

Every part of the Passover meal helps to tell this story. The meat recalls the lamb’s blood which people used to mark their households, claiming the promise of God for their own, claiming the Covenant. The bitter herbs recount their suffering; the cups of wine recount their joys; the charoset recalls their labors; and the flat bread reminds us all of the celerity with which God delivered His people from death unto life.

It’s all about remembering, you see. When the story is relived like this, in a ritual and religious way, year after year, generation upon generation, it ceases to be simply the tale of our ancient ancestors in the long, long ago. And it becomes instead our story. We are there. We are slaves in Egypt. We are freed from bondage. We are led out to liberty, led out to life, and given a law and a land. Passover doesn’t just remember how Israel was created; it recreates Israel now.

And it does so by uniting the generations, friends and family, neighbors and household; bringing the sacred into our homes. It’s brilliant, both homey and holy.

And so it can be easy to forget, amongst the celebrations and happy traditions, that the first Passover—the event which triggered the Exodus all those millennia ago back in the days of ancient Egypt—was anything but homey and joyful. It was terrifying. It was tense. It was midnight, and the Destroyer, whatever it was—an angel, a demon, the Spirit of God—walked abroad in the land, catching up the lives of the Egyptians’ firstborn.

They ate furtively, nervously, their loins girded, their staves in their hands, ready to flee at a moment’s notice. The only thing that protected the Israelites, the only thing that defended the slaves, was the lamb’s blood on the door. This marked them as claimants of the Covenant, those who wanted to be God’s people, those who put their trust in His promise. Any household with blood on the door, the Destroyer “passed over”—while all the others all wailed in the night.

Why take the firstborn? As judgment against Pharaoh, perhaps, who claimed to be a living god yet could not protect his son and heir. Generally speaking, the firstborn inherited the lion’s share, making them the wealthy and the powerful, the slave-owners, slave-drivers. Yet even with all these caveats, it must be said that the Passover Seder remembers the tears of God at the suffering of Egypt, for they too were His people, His children.

Have you ever seen the movie Pumpkinhead? It’s a classic 80s horror film about a backwoods demon that folks can summon up to wreak vengeance upon the guilty. The film begins on a dark and stormy night, with a nervous, fretful family locked up in their home, the father clutching his rifle, the mother praying. And outside the door can be heard the piteous cries of a wicked man, begging for mercy, begging to be let in—before he’s carried off their porch by the Pumpkinhead.

That’s how I imagine the first Passover. Holed up inside, scared, yet trusting that if they just stay hunkered down, if they just don’t go outside, their lives will be preserved from the storm of vengeance falling all about them. It’s a scary story. Yet it leads to liberation, to life and peace and joy. The terrible night breaks unto a glorious new day. This too is part of the Passover. This too we are to remember.

Fast forward from Moses to Jesus, a leap of well over a thousand years. Jesus has come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, as He has every year His whole life long. But this time is different. This time is His last. See, just a little bit earlier—a few days, a few weeks—Jesus, not two miles from Jerusalem, had raised His friend Lazarus from the dead after his corpse had spent four days mouldering in the tomb. It wasn’t Jesus’ first miracle. It wasn’t even his first raising of the dead. But it was terribly public. Everybody saw it.

And the whole town just went nuts. All of Jerusalem, in an uproar. That’s why they welcomed Him so ecstatically on Palm Sunday, casting cloaks before Him on the road, hailing Him as the Son of David, and crying out, “Save us! Save us!” That’s what “hosanna” means. And this, mind you, is exactly what the Romans do not want. Jerusalem is already a powder keg at the holidays, what with all these pilgrims and religious zealots crowing about God liberating slaves from bondage.

If this Jesus claims to be the long-expected Christ, the rightful heir of David sent by God to liberate His people, then there will surely be a riot, an uprising, a war. That’s what all the zealots want: to kick the Romans back to Rome.  And to be clear, the Legions aren’t worried about winning the war. They’ve crushed would-be messiahs before Jesus and would continue to do so after Him. But it’s bad for business, you see. Romans crave order. They want the trade to flow.

That’s what the West has always wanted from the Middle East: stability and money. But they’re in a bit of a pickle here. They don’t want Jesus to start a riot, but neither do they want to cause one by outright killing Him in the street. They wait, to see what He will do. They keep their hands on the pommels of their swords.

Christ is not so cautious. He preaches and teaches openly in the Temple, provoking the city authorities, who finally decide that they need an inside man, someone who knows Jesus well enough to tip them off as to where He’s staying by night. Then they can snatch Him, quietly, in the dark, away from the crowds. Nip it in the bud. And as improbable as it seems, Judas, one of the Twelve, one of Jesus’ inner circle, agrees to betray Him in this way. Now why on earth would he do that?

To make Him fight, I think. Judas wants Jesus to be the Christ whom we’d expected: a warrior-king, a purifying fire to burn the pagan occupiers out of the Holy Land. Judas wants Jesus to fight, because he wants Jesus to win. Or so I do suspect.

So the Passover Jesus celebrates—the Last Supper before His Cross—is held in a secret building, in an upper room. John and Peter, who host the meal, didn’t even know where it would be until the morning of. They know that the city authorities are seeking to take their lives. They know what the Romans do to rebels against their rule. The question now is: What will Jesus do? Thus does the Passover return to its original themes of anxiety, fear, and hope.

Jesus doesn’t help things, though, by continually flipping the script. First He turns to wash their feet—He, the guest of honor, taking the role of the servant. If anything, Peter should be the one to wash the disciples’ feet, given he’s one of the hosts. And then Jesus speaks of betrayal, and Judas leaves in the middle of the meal. You don’t do that, especially not at night, when only bandits are about. And then the strangest thing of all: Jesus changes the story. He changes Passover.

This bread, He says, is no longer about how quickly the slaves left from Egypt. Now this bread is My Body, given for you. And this cup isn’t about the old Covenant, but rather the long-prophesied New Covenant in My Blood. I won’t taste it again until I drink it in My Father’s Kingdom! This is a new Passover for a new Israel. And there is no lamb. Did you notice that? How does one have the Passover without the Passover lamb?

At last they sing the Great Hallel, the closing hymn of the feast before the fourth and final cup of wine—but instead of doing that, instead of proclaiming it finished, Jesus abruptly gets up from the table and walks out into the night: down through the Kidron Valley, down through the mass graveyard, down through the darkness.

And the Apostles, what can they do but follow? This Passover is far from done. Greater horrors are yet to come. But still they follow Jesus, as we must all do now.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.