Today marks the countdown for Jesus. The Gospel story relates the fact that this meal at the home of Mary and Martha preceded Passover by a week, and it was during Passover that Jesus had his last supper with the disciples and was then arrested and crucified. And so can you imagine knowing that in two weeks, more or less, you’d be dead? As I said, this is the countdown for Jesus.
Last week there was a piece on the news about Alzheimer’s Disease and whether or not a test could be derived for knowing that you would not only be a candidate for Alzheimer’s disease but that in fact you would succumb to it. These statistics alone are alarming in that one in eight past the age of 65 will get it, and that half of those over 85 years old will get it. But devising a test that could tell us with certainty that we would get Alzheimer’s raises the question of whether or not you would want to know that fact.
Bev and I talked about it and did not come to any hard and fast conclusions. If, for instance, you did know, would you be more likely to make every day count or become anxious and depressed? I suspect not knowing what the answer is could lead to the same possibilities. Also, shouldn’t all of us live every day as if it were our last and, to loosely quote scripture, “not to be anxious over things over which we have no control?”
Our Kerygma Bible study last week tackled Christ’s teaching, part of his Sermon on the Mount, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all these things shall be given unto you.” That advice concludes a passage in which Jesus essentially tells us that being anxious about life is a dead end and, frankly, a waste of time. But we also concluded that it takes faith and courage to live each day as if it were your last and not to be anxious, trusting in God for everything. Perhaps that discussion could be a part of your family’s deliberations. Would you want to know, and why?
Of course this might not be an entirely academic exercise on your part. Alzheimer’s and other life-threatening diseases are a part of the human condition, painfully so. But the question was not academic for Jesus either, and while it wasn’t a disease he had to confront, the political and religious maelstrom that encircled him was every bit as much life-threatening.
So what did Jesus do in light of the knowledge that he would be martyred during this particular trip to Jerusalem? You did not have to be the Son of God to know what happens when you have powerful enemies who are convinced that you are the evil one, that you are the trouble maker, that you are especially inconvenient. So what did he do?
I think he did what any of us might try to do under those circumstances: he had quality time with his family and his friends, and he went to church. His priorities were those of his summary of the Law: to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. This dinner recorded in John’s gospel was quality time with his friends—Martha, Mary, and Lazarus—and presumably his disciples because Judas Iscariot is mentioned. Perhaps this is sort of a last supper before the Last Supper when he washed his disciples’ feet and told them that after his death they were to remember him in the Eucharist.
But also during those two weeks he “went to church.” “Church” for Jesus was the Temple, at least in Jerusalem. It was the temple to which Jesus went when he taught, and it was just outside the Temple grounds in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus went to pray immediately before his arrest. Living life to its fullest for Jesus was to love God and to love his neighbor, to go to church and to say his prayers and to gather his family and friends around him.
Two things are going to happen shortly in this service I hope will relate to whatever challenges you and I are facing around end-of-life issues and Jesus’ own spiritual journey during the last two weeks of his life.
The first is Healing. As Jesus in fact prayed to God in a moment of great vulnerability, so too we pray to God for ourselves and for others to receive healing, whether of body, or mind, or spirit. If you remember the prayer of Jesus the night before he died, it was an anguished prayer. You and I can bring our anguish to the altar rail for ourselves or for another with the certainty that God will never abandon us, that God will never desert us, that God will always love us.
The second thing is the anthem the choir will sing during the Offertory, Deep River. This exquisitely lovely spiritual is the sentiment of one who faces death, one who knows that they must be plunged into that deep river before reaching the other side. It’s the slaves who sang this song who looked toward the other side of the river with unshakable faith in God. And it was Jesus who saw the river of his own death flowing before him into which he had to plunge before God would raise him from the dead. And it’s you and I who stand on this side of that same river, praying that there is a promised land beyond, “where all is peace.”
And so let me suggest that we be especially conscious of our healing prayer and our anthem and perhaps, ushers, wait until the end of the anthem before you bring up the bread and wine and then take the collection so that we can give our whole attention to those prayers both spoken and sung that we offer in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
