“A Toast to Better Things”

Luke 22:14-23

N. T. Wright says, “Much as I enjoy Palm Sunday, I can’t help remembering that, when he was riding the donkey, Jesus was in tears.” This is Palm Sunday, traditionally a day of celebration in the church, a day when we sing about little children praising Jesus, who had held them to his breast, and about Christ being our Redeemer, the One in whose presence we shall one day rejoice. So why read a quote about our Lord’s tears?

Because this is also Passion Sunday, the first day of a Passion Week journey with Jesus toward the cross. Tears are appropriate. Jesus knew what was coming: betrayal, desertion, torture, mockery, and then the cruel death of the cross. Jesus knew that before the week ended he would experience in our place the absolute absence of his Father. He knew that a descent into hell awaited him.

At first glance I thought today’s Gospel reading was jarringly out of place. It doesn’t even take place on Palm Sunday. It is more appropriately a Maundy Thursday text, for that is when we celebrate the institution of the Lord’s Supper. More than that today is not one of our Communion Sundays. Yet here I am preaching a text that reiterates Luke’s version of the words of institution we use every Communion Sunday.

The other readings are very appropriate, especially as we begin Passion Week. Isaiah recounts one of the Suffering Servant texts: “I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.” How’s that for a prophetic preview of Good Friday?

For another preview, we turn to Psalm 31: “I am the scorn of all my adversaries, a horror to my neighbors, an object of dread to my acquaintances; those who see me in the street flee from me. I have passed out of mind like one who is dead; I have become like a broken vessel. For I hear the whispering of many – terror all around! – as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life.”

And then there are Paul’s words from Philippians 2: “And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.” Paul isn’t prophesying what will be. He is describing what has already happened: the insults and mockery, the humiliation and rejection, the pain and the terror of the crucifixion and the events that led up to it.

Then we turn to Luke, and what do we get? A Passover Seder, a family dinner, some table fellowship. No terror there. No torture or pain. No death and dying. Dinner. With friends. A celebration of the freedom and deliverance from slavery in Egypt. The ongoing keeping of a sacred tradition.

But the hints of Good Friday are there: “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer… This is my body, which is given for you… This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood… see, the one who betrays me is with me…” Betrayal. Suffering. A broken body. Poured out blood. Suddenly the fellowship meal takes on a whole new meaning. It becomes a new Passover of sorts: “Do this in remembrance of me.”

Now we’re into Passion Week. Now we are being prepared for the horrors of Maundy Thursday night, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. The crucifixion is finally on the table. In the most literal sense of the word, hell week has truly begun. Jesus was going to suffer. He was going to die. His body would be broken. His blood would be shed. He was going to experience hell. And he did.

I don’t know about you, but the thought of the One who tenderly blessed the children being treated so cruelly almost causes me to choke on all the hosannas. Yes, Palm Sunday is a day of celebration. Yes, next Sunday will be the highest of the high holy days of the church year. But in between we will experience the sadness of knowing that our Savior died, and the excruciating psychic pain that comes from knowing that his death was made necessary by our sins.

All of today’s Scripture Lessons bring that lesson home to us. All of them deal with the impending crucifixion of our Lord. All of them remind us of the price Jesus paid for the remission of our sins.

So then why would I entitle today’s sermon “A Toast to Better Things?” Am I trying to be clever or cute as I describe the Passover wine Jesus shared with his disciples? No. First of all, the words are borrowed from one commentary’s exploration of the text. Secondly, even as all of today’s lessons describe, each in its own way, the reality that Jesus was the Suffering Servant Messiah, there are predictions of better days.

From Isaiah 50: “The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near.” And Psalm 31: “Blessed be the Lord, for he has wondrously shown his steadfast love for me when I was beset as a city under siege.” And Philippians 2: “Therefore. God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” A toast to better things indeed!

Jesus is very clear with his disciples that a better day is coming. Beyond the crucifixion would be resurrection, and then even more than that: “… for I tell you, I will not eat [the Passover meal] again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” He was telling his disciples that he would see them again, on earth and in heaven. He was telling them that they who had been faithful would be joining him in that great wedding feast thrown by God after he, Jesus, has been reunited with his bride, the church. Now that deserves a toast, for it does indeed tell us of better things to come!

Such things as recorded by Isaiah: “He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” [and] “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand in the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

Finally from Revelation 21: “See, the home of God is among [humanity]. He will dwell with them; they will be his [people], and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” Talk about a better day! No sin, no suffering, no evil. No sickness, no war, no death. Finally living out the final phrase of the third verse of the hymn to which I referred earlier: “And in His blissful presence/Eternally rejoice.” I think we can all drink a toast to that.

Meanwhile we must live as in-between people. During this particular week we will live life between Palm Sunday and Easter, and starting Friday, between crucifixion and resurrection. On a larger scale we live out our Christian lives between our Lord’s ascension into heaven and his coming again. The biblically correct name for this time is Tribulation. We live with pain, uncertainty, and fear; we life with illness, incapacity, and death; we live through wars and rumors of wars, all the while praying, “Come, Lord Jesus.”

But we also live in hope of that better day, of those better things yet to come. We trust God’s promises of a new heaven and a new earth. We grieve for those we lose to death, but if they are in Christ we are assured of seeing them again. We face the reality of our own mortality – we are all going to die – but in Christ we do not fear death. There is resurrection. The Lord who sadly but confidently rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and suffered death on a cross rose again. Because he lives, we live. Because he lives, that better day is not a cruel hoax but a guaranteed reality.

I began by quoting N. T. Wright. I will end by quoting N. T. Wright: “The world [is] now to be seen, neither as a tired old system going round and round without hope or meaning, nor as a sick joke in which intimations of immorality always [run] into the brick wall of death and cynicism, but in terms of new grass and spring flowers growing through a fresh crack in a concrete slab.”

Better things indeed! Amen.