Maundy Thursday | April 17, 2025 | A Sermon on 1 Corinthians 11.23-26 | by Richard O. Johnson |

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you.  Do this in remembrance of me.”  In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.  Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11.23-26 ESV) 

Tonight, as we take the bread and cup, we remember Jesus. This idea of remembering is a very important concept in the Bible. The Last Supper took place at the time of the Passover and was perhaps itself a Passover celebration. And the Passover was about remembering—remembering that the people of Israel were slaves in Egypt, remembering that God brought them out of slavery with a mighty hand, brought them through the wilderness and into the promised land. When Jesus shared a last meal with his disciples, he transformed the meal itself into a time of remembering him.

But I want to suggest a different sense of the word remember for us tonight. I want to suggest that as we come to the Lord’s Table, we are remembering not just Jesus, but we are remembering ourselves, remembering who we are and Whose we are.

Remembering who we are

In Alex Haley’s classic novel Roots, there is a marvelous scene of remembering. Kunta Kinte, the young man who has been brought in chains to America and placed into slavery, goes through months and years of confusion, not understanding what is happening to him. Trapped in a new world, there is no one who speaks his language, no one who looks or talks or dresses or acts in a familiar way, no one who cares for him. He is forced to work for strange-looking people who beat him and whip him. Everyone calls him “Toby,” and despite his insistence that his name is not Toby, they still call him that.

Then one night he drives his master to visit a neighboring plantation. And as his master disappears inside, where a party is going one, Kunta Kinte suddenly hears a familiar sound—a drumbeat. He frantically runs toward the sound and sees an old man, sitting in the slave quarters, beating his drum with a particular rhythm. And suddenly Kunta Kinte remembers! He remembers his homeland, his people. He begins to speak enthusiastically in his native tongue, and the drummer excitedly answers him. He remembers who he is! All this time his master and even the other slaves have tried to make him forget, tried to tell him that the way to get along is to go along, to forget the past and just concentrate on the present situation. And he had almost believed it. But now, this music has made him remember. He is not Toby the slave, he is Kunta Kinte! He remembers!

All of us who live in this modern world are lost in an identity crisis every bit as serious as Kunta Kinte’s. We wander about, trying to figure out who we really are and what the world is really all about. Many forces try to tell us who we are: You are consumers, the advertisers tell us, and your happiness depends on having all the latest gadgets and cars and material things. You are rational beings, the educational system tells us, and your happiness and success depend on being able to analyze everything to death and get it all figured out. You are made for pleasure, say the movies and television shows, and to be happy, you must be beautiful and attractive and above all else you must experience every pleasure and thrill you can imagine. And what all these different answers have in common is that they end up being wrong; they don’t make us happy, they don’t help us feel that we really know who we are.

Remembering Whose we are

But there is another answer for us. When we wonder who we are, the answer is that we are baptized, and that we belong to Jesus Christ. In earlier times, the baptismal ceremony itself was the time when a child’s name was announced publicly. One literally received one’s name at Baptism. We don’t follow that custom anymore, but we are still given a name in Baptism—the  name Christian, “belonging to Christ.” And that’s who we are. We are baptized: we are Christ’s.

Nowhere is that clearer than on this night. Here, in the upper room, the Lord gathers around himself those who belong to him. Here he kneels before them and washes their feet, giving them an image of tender caring, of servanthood. Here he gives himself to them so lovingly by feeding them bread and wine. Is there any moment in the disciples’ experience of Jesus that is more powerful, more intimate? Is there any moment when they are more aware of who they are, and of Whose they are? They belong to him, to Jesus. They take their identity from him. They are his.

And we are his, too. Why are you here tonight? Oh, we could answer that in many ways. The soup supper was good, the choir is entertaining, we enjoy one another’s company. But there’s a deeper reason, and it gets back to Baptism. We say that in Baptism, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. That gift is multifaceted, of course, but let’s remember the most basic thing, the thing that we learn in the Small Catechism: That the Holy Spirit, calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies. It is the Holy Spirit that calls us into the church, into the family of Christ, into the fellowship of Christ’s disciples. That is why we are here! We belong to that fellowship, that family, and so we are here.  It is where we belong, because we are his family.

In a few moments we’ll sing s hymn that I dearly love:

Around you, O Lord Jesus, your own you gather still,

To share the feast you give us, with grace our lives to fill. 

Yes, we are here because we have been gathered by the Lord, brought together to be with him and with each other. That’s what it finally means that we are baptized, you see:  that we belong here, with the Lord. That we are his own, and he fills our lives with grace.

We belong to Christ

So we say that we do this to remember him, but really it is perhaps even more to remember ourselves—to remember who we are and Whose we are. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in the loneliness of his prison cell, wrestled with who he might be. He was a pastor, yes, a theologian, a courageous opponent of the Nazi regime. He was also a man who was afraid, agonizing over what he knew was likely to be his imminent execution, concerned about his family, his church. He struggled, it would perhaps be fair to say, in something of the same way that Jesus struggled in that upper room, knowing what was to come, wondering if this was really God’s will. Who am I?  Bonhoeffer wrote. They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine. Amid all his uncertainty, that much was sure: that he belonged to Christ. And that is how it is for you, too. In the quiet of this evening, whatever struggles may be in your mind and heart, whatever doubts or temptations, whatever loneliness or despair or hope, whatever may be in your heart, about one thing there is no doubt, no question. You belong to Christ. He calls you by name. He gives himself to you freely. You are baptized! Remember it, remember who you are! You are his!—that’s who you are; that’s Whose you are. You belong to Christ. Remember it!

—

© The Rev. Richard O. Johnson (retired)

Webster, NY

roj@nccn.net