“God in Ordinary Life”
St. Matthew 26:14-21
Maundy Thursday – March 20, 2009
Pastor Chip Winter

            Grace to you and Peace, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this observance of Maundy Thursday is from the Gospel according to St. Matthew, the 26th chapter.  (READ 26:14-21).  This is the Gospel of the Lord.
            My dear family in Christ, did that text strike you as a little bit odd, perhaps?  Or maybe it’s just that the passage comes off as somewhat underwhelming on a day such as Maundy Thursday, the evening when our Lord took the Passover and expanded it infinitely for our blessing, strength and forgiveness?  I mean, we’ve got such high drama throughout the Gospel lesson appointed for the day, and yet the text selected here has got to be the least dramatic episode in the whole 2 chapters from St. Matthew’s account of Jesus’ betrayal, passion and crucifixion.  Few days are as pivotal as this one in the church year – a gift given, to be repeated in every time and every place until the Lord’s return. 
            Pastors have been known to lament what a tough time they have preaching on festivals like this: after the text has been read there really isn’t much left to say.  It has been duly noted that this usually hasn’t’ stopped pastors, though.  Plot, movement, atmosphere, it’s all here in the Gospel narrative.  Anything less really wouldn’t be worthy of the drama set before us.
            Even the start of the text sets a chilling tone, “Then one of the twelve determined to betray him.”  But, after that there is this little, humdrum, anything-but-spine-tingling episode.  On the first day of the festival, the disciples come to Jesus and ask, “Where do you want to celebrate the Passover meal?”  Jesus tells them to go into the city, there to find a “certain man” and tell him that I said to plan to keep the Passover at his house.  The disciples go and do as Jesus has commissioned.  That night He sits among the twelve and shares the meal.
            No names are mentioned.  The disciples obtaining the room are anonymous.  They talk to a “certain man.”  No address is cited.  There is a meal.  Nothing sensational – all quite generic. 
            Now when Mark tells the same story he expends some narrative on how Jesus knew these things in advance and how that had rather astonished the disciples.  But Matthew is more subdued.  It’s all so ordinary, so pedestrian, so everyday, no more unusual than any evening meal anywhere, anytime up to this point.  It’s a sparsely told tale which could have happened anywhere, to anybody, at most anytime.
            And, truth be told, that’s part of the power of this story.  It could have happened anywhere to anybody.  Even to us.  Especially to us for we are not much of anybody and we don’t live anywhere very special and not much truly surprising ever happens to us. 
            The rest of the story of Jesus’ is a drama of great betrayal, magnificent defeat, blood, money, death and denial.  It’s high tension.  It’s the story of forgiveness and eternal life for us all by faith in His passion, death and resurrection.  The meal, it could have happened to us, but the rest of it is beyond us.  We don’t live in Jerusalem, the capital city, nor in the white house on Pennsylvania Avenue.  We live on Clearfield Drive, we worship on 5th street.  Our names won’t be listed in history textbooks.  Of course, we can’t all be heroes because somebody’s got to sit on the curb and clap as they go by. 
            We remember Judas’ name because he betrayed our Lord in a most conspicuous way.  Our betrayals are more ordinary, petty rather than sensational.  Judas sold Jesus out for 30 pieces of silver - we betray our Savior merely by sleeping in on a Sunday, or keeping our mouths shut when we ought to speak.  In As You Like It Shakespeare wrote that each of us plays many parts, and that’s true.  But most of our parts are bit parts, small roles.
            We remember the names of those who were martyred for the faith - we name churches after them.  Our witness provokes not a cross but usually apathy.  We stand a far greater chance of being ignored than of being burned.  Our obedience to Jesus will more than likely consist of going to some “certain man” in a street whose name is forgotten, to have a meal with some ordinary people and Jesus.  And you know what?  Tonight’s text indicates that’s OK.  Jesus can use our small obedience, our little acts of faithfulness for His larger purposes.  Jesus is pleased to dine with us very ordinary people at each meal served around this table.
            The Passover meal among friends and betrayers in the upper rented room becomes a foretaste of the great messianic banquet beyond and the regular fellowship of the faithful at the Eucharist in every age.  The disciples’ obedience in going and doing as they are bid by the Lord, renting the room and preparing the table, opens onto the much more radical obedience of Jesus as He goes to the cross.  A kitchen table where thanks is given, wine is poured and bread is broken becomes the focal point of the remembrance and confession of the altar of God.  Here the blood is poured and the body distributed which won your forgiveness on Calvary.
            This day, and every day in faith, Jesus’ story of forgiveness and victory over sin, death and everlasting condemnation, is mixed with our stories.  His story, His dramatic, obedient and bloody story redeems our stories as it does our eternal lives, giving significance to our little acts of obedience and our gifts of forgiveness in His name.  Anonymous disciples performing commonplace acts of simple obedience, loving, admonishing and forgiving, are His way of working out cosmic purposes here and now.
            Someone has said that life is a handful of short stories, pretending to be a novel.  That being the case the Gospel, the message of forgiveness and life with God forever through the cross and open tomb, the great drama of how God is with us in the world in Jesus, takes form in our lives in a series of short sketches, situation comedies, 30 minute vignettes, which are part of the epic of salvation history.
            You may not be the martyr type.  You may pick up your cross to follow Jesus simply by being the only one in the household who gets up to come to worship on Sunday or a Thursday evening in spring.  It may be your participation in an adult bible class, driving your youth to the church to be a part of the SOAP group, bringing food to the potluck, or teaching the Sunday School or Vacation Bible School kids.  But you are a part of the story of God, here and now.
            This evening we move to the high drama of Jesus’ obedience.  From this point He moves to the cross to suffer there the punishment rightly due us.  His story enters into Holy Week.  We, however, will be moving on to home, to bed: such small potatoes, such minor matters.  We appear to be the disciples who will follow Him at a distance.
            Yet, be assured, our little lives, our non-storied acts of obedience, confession of the faith and practice of forgiveness, not captured anywhere on paper for posterity, still move the purposes of God.  In us, little ol’ us, God is effecting a great cosmic work of redemption.  Our daily acts of faithfulness, by God grace, are made to make a difference in the world.  And He is here to feed and nourish us for this work, this life, this grace, tonight.  Amen.