Edible Words

"... and take this holy sacrament to your comfort, meekly kneeling upon your knees" wrote Cranmer in the Book of Common Prayer.

Mark 14:17-31 is not, on the surface, a particularly comforting section of Mark. It is, in fact, a profoundly disturbing portion of his gospel. Mark sets Judas and Peter alongside one another as two examples for us. Judas is the one failure - yet what he does in betraying his Lord is so serious that non-existence would be a better prospect than what awaits him.

Jesus then predicts that all his disciples will disown him. This is a far less dramatic form of letting down Jesus, but it is to let him down nonetheless. This time it is not one disciple who will do it - they all will. If Judas was earlier the one spectacular failure, here Peter thinks he will be the one success story. He will be the one who does not disown. But not even the Rock is immune from letting down the Lord Jesus.

If Judas shows us how serious it is to let Jesus down, Peter shows us how universal it is. Mark intends us to realise that none of his readers, none of us, fall outside the scope of this. We all let him down, and if we think we are any different we are as naive as Peter. Furthermore, it matters for all of us that we do so - to let Jesus down is no matter of indifference.

As I say - a profoundly disturbing section of Mark that punctures any notions we bring to the Lord's table of our own grandeur. But mercifully that is not all there is to Mark 14:17-31.

In the middle of this talk of betrayal and disowning, is the Passover meal itself. They eat bread - only the bread is "my body". They drink wine, only the wine is "my blood of the covenant, poured out for many". The unleavened bread which commemorated the hasty departure from Egypt now signifies the broken body of the one in front of them. The blood which sealed the covenant in Exodus 24 is now the blood of the one in front of them. Just as the first Passover constituted God's new people, so does this one. The death of Jesus is not just the occasion for our faithlessness to show itself. It is also the death that seals and forms the new covenant. Faithless people like us, deserving a future worse than non-existence, can be God's people.

In Exodus 24, when God sealed by blood the covenant with his people, the elders of Israel had the privilege of eating and drinking with God. They ate and drank - and did not die. Here, Jesus, the Son of Man, eats and drinks with those very disciples who have been exposed as faithless. A shared meal made possible only because Jesus' death establishes the covenant relationship failures like them need so badly. That failures like us need so badly.

So as we turn now to bread and wine, may I invite you to eat and drink "to your comfort". As we eat and drink, we are guests at the table spread by the Lord Jesus. Our grandeur punctured, his death on the cross once for all - his body and his blood - means that we can eat with him and not die. So take, eat, drink - and be comforted.