Maundy Thursday

Recently I was listening to someone explain how to teach the meaning of communion to children. She said that man children will not understand the concept of eating the body of Christ and drinking his blood. That doesn't sound very appealing. Well when you think about it, many of us adults do not understand what it means to each the flesh and blood of another human being. As a matter of fact, our culture tells us that to eat other human beings is not only distasteful, it is wrong. There is a book about a a group of people who were involved in an airplane crash some years ago. The airplane crashed in some remote in the mountains of latin america. Many of the people on the plane were killed, but there were also some who survived. They had no radio to call for help, and the only food that was in the plane were snacks that passengers had brought with them. and in order to survive, they did the unthinkable. They eat the body parts of the other passengers. They had crashed in the snow, so they were able to keep the flesh cold until they needed to eat it. By eating their fellow passengers, they were able to survive for a month until they were finally rescued. Can you imagine being stuck with such a choice? On the one hand you are traumatized, being in a plane crash. People who you once greeted, got to know, talked with in casual conversation, have been killed right before your eyes. For some reason God chose you to survive, to live to go on. But you have to eat in order to live and there is nothing around for you to eat. Do you live within the common understandings of what your culture has always told you, and die from starvation. Or do you look beyond that and choose to live, by eating the flesh of someone who you know, who you had a relationship with? Who you may have even grown to love? You know, when you think about it, this is also the choice that Christ has given to each of us as his disciples. When he offered us his flesh and blood. We can either live within the common understanding of our culture and die of spiritual starvation, or do we choose to survive for an eternity and eat his flesh and blood? The most fascinating thing about the story of the people of the airplane crash, was that their decision to live was never quite accepted by those who heard the story. The taboo of cannibalism is so taboo in our world, that they were always branded as making a bad decision. Yet for me, I think that the title of the book says all that needs to be said about their decision - the title is alive! they choose to stay alive. Today, Maundy Thursday, as we enter into the time of trial and death for our lord jesus Christ, we too can make that choice to stay alive. Jesus came to understand that all that this world has to offer toany of us is death. Death of our dreams, death of our hopes, death of our understandings, deaths of our trust in others, death eventually of our own flesh and blood. Christ tells us that howver, that his broken flesh and his cup of blood carries with it the promise of life. They contin the presence of Christ, the forgiveness of sins, the hope of resurrection, the joy of christ coming again. Eating flesh and blood of our loved ones, may still be very taboo in our culture. Yet eating the flesh and blood of Christ is important to what it means to be a Christian. Because once your have eaten the body of Christ, then you become a part of Christ. You are what you eat. The presence of Christ becomes a part of you a part of who you are. You become the body of Christ so that the world may know that in the midst of death, we can all stay alive. In the midst of the sorrow of death, we can have peace, love, joy and salvation. This is the body and blood of Christ, take eat and drink, and live. traumatized 4/20/00