We Didn't Choose Him
Maundy Thursday homily
His whole ministry, Jesus had been trying to help his friends understand the kingdom of heaven. Once, Jesus said it was like an invitation to a wedding feast. The privileged few who first got the king’s invitation did not want to come. Thinking they were perhaps confused, he clarified: you’re invited to a meal with delicious meat, oxen and fatted cattle—it was all ready! Come, eat, drink. But it was strange: those invited ignored the feast before them. They were too busy with work, marriage, and excuses. Some even mistreated the king’s servants.
So, Jesus says, in the kingdom of heaven, the king has taken another approach. He had his servants “go out into the streets and “bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame,” (Luke 14:21), “go out into the streets and [gather] all the people [you can] find, the bad as well as the good” (Matt 22:10). Come, eat, drink, be full.
The Passover was a night of remembrance, and tonight, we remember another banquet. Tonight we remember when our Lord gathered his friends at his table in the upper room for a Passover meal. They were the bad and the good, the financially poor and spiritually blind. Tonight we are gathered in the upper room of our church building, and we are all invited again to his table.
He invites us knowing that we will betray him, just as he knew his friends would. And they all would—one betrayal by a kiss, one betrayal by a lie, and the others betraying through abandonment. We know he said, “One of you will betray me, the one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me.” But in the rituals of the Passover meal, they all had dipped their hand in the bowl. So yes, while Judas had a particular infamous betrayal, it was not long after the echoes of “Surely not I?” died down that Jesus said actually, you will all fall away from me. And if we say, “Surely not I,” we would be just as mistaken.
But we would be even more sorely mistaken—so badly, badly missing out on the wonderful banquet before us, the wedding between Christ and his church—if we think that just because we betray and fall away from Christ that it disqualifies us from his table. At this same meal, the gospel of John tells us, Jesus says the disciples are no longer servants, rather, “I have called you friends…you did not choose me, but I chose you.” (John 15:15-16) Hear his words again, in the midst of what he knew would happen: “You did not choose me, but I chose you.”
Time and again tonight, we will see many of the ways and things we choose instead of Christ. We will see how we choose violence, choose the crowd, choose mockery, choose lies, choose sin, and choose ourselves over Christ. We did not choose him. He still chose us. He still chooses you today.
There is only one place he didn’t choose you that we also remember. He did not choose for you to be on the cross. On the wooden beams outside the city, he chose himself to die instead of you, to be the Lamb on this Passover night. The Passover was the remembrance of the deliverance from slavery, but now the Lord is delivering us from the slavery from which all other slaveries draw their power: death. In Egypt, it was lamb’s blood that marked households safe from death as part of God’s covenant, and tonight, Jesus says, I am the Lamb, and my blood is the new covenant, the fulfillment of God’s love for you from the very beginning. Tonight begins the rescue of all humanity, his people who have been scattered. And rather than putting any of us on the line, Jesus chooses his own body. “Rather than sacrifice any one of you,” he says to his friends, “I sacrifice myself. Take, and eat of me.”
Jesus chose you also as his friend. You are also invited. And tonight, Christ is really here. His Spirit is fully with us. We not only remember him, we say yes again to tonight’s invitation. The invitation into his love poured out for us in blood, in the midst of our betraying him, in the midst of our being in fear. The invitation to all parts of us, for there is no part of you that is hidden to him. There is no secret misdeed or bad thought that you’ve never told another person that he can’t see. He sees all of you and says, “I still want you at my table, friend. I know you’re not going to choose me when the times become impossible. You’re still my friend. I still pour myself out for you. No, you did not choose me; I choose you.”
Tonight, at his table, Jesus does not eat with those who will love him perfectly. Instead, he eats with sinners. He eats with his friends. Tonight, no matter what you’ve done, he chooses you, his friend, for his table. Come, eat, drink, and be full. Amen.