Some words from Rowan Williams in preparation for Maundy Thursday.
"In other words, the resurrection meals, for John and Luke alike, echo specific occasions of crisis, misunderstanding, illusion and disaster. They 'recover' not only in the memory of table fellowship, but the memory of false hope, betrayal and desertion, of a past in which ignorance and pride and the rejection of Jesus' account of his destiny in favour of power-fantasies of their own led the disciples into their most tragic failure, their indirect but real share in the ruin of their Lord. Yet Jesus, even as he sees their rejection taking shape, nonetheless gives himself to his betrayers in the breaking of bread. The resurrection meals restore precisely that poignant juxtaposition of his unfailing grace and their rejection, distortion and betrayal of it.- Rowan Williams, Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel, pg. 34
We may pause here for a moment to recall that this juxtaposition is built into every Christian celebration of the Eucharist. The narrative of the institution is introduced with a reminder that the sacrament of Jesus' self-gift originates 'in the same night that he was betrayed.' Those who eat at Jesus' table are his betrayers, then as now; yet from the death and hell to which our betrayal condemns him, he returns to break his bread with us as before. The Eucharist is never a simple fellowship meal, not even a simple fellowship meal with Jesus. Its imagery always and necessarily operates between the two poles of Maundy Thursday and Easter Sunday, beteween Gethsemane and Emmaus, between the Upper Room before the crucifixion and the Upper Room to which the risen Jesus comes. . . We do not eucharistically remember a distant meal in Jerusalem, not even a distant death: we are made 'present to ourselves' as people complicit in the betrayal and death of Jesus and yet still called and accepted..."
