Maundy Thursday sermon: The tree of life and its changing shape

            Tonight is the night. We have on a journey towards for the last 40 days. We may not realize it, but we have been walking a journey in our faith. It is a journey of reflection. This Lenten season, we have been focusing in our bible studies on the tree of life. Our journey began in the Garden of Eden with the tree of knowledge. We saw it as this big majestic tree, teeming with life…with all the Good things that God had in store for creation and for us; to live in love and peace, God’s love and God’s peace…all the time unaware of anything but all the Goodness that God created.

            Sadly, we did not stay in that Garden. We didn’t stay there because we wanted something more. Through Adam and Eve, we wanted some of that knowledge and that became our big downfall. We were not allowed to stay in the garden. Our journey took us from that tree of life in the middle of the garden out into the world. We began to see through scripture, the difficult world. We saw the pains and sufferings of God’s people. We saw people turn away from that tree of knowledge and the pains that caused.

            As time passed in our journey, we found ourselves going toward another tree of knowledge, a tree of life. And, tonight we are sitting at another tree. This tree is not a conventional tree. It does not have branches or arms; however, it does have legs. I am, of course speaking of this altar…the lords table. Our journey has brought us to this table, to this place of reverence and awe. This altar is the table in which our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ, gave us knowledge and life.

            We are given the knowledge of a new covenant. It is the covenant to love one another as he has loved us. It is the language that still comes from that original tree in the Garden of Eden. It is the language to take all those things that Jesus did and taught and live them out in our lives. At this point in our Lenten journey we are at the edge of understanding what it means to be a child of God. We are invited to the table this evening to sit with our Lord and Savior, the Son of God, hear the Words that Jesus has to say with our ears and with our hearts.

            Tonight we are called to the Lord’s table to experience the knowledge of that life giving tree that grew in the Garden of Eden. Tonight we, like Adam and Eve, will experience the loss of our innocence; Just like they wanted to have that knowledge, we are given knowledge that, frankly, we may not want to hear. Tonight we gain the knowledge that because we fall short of God’s glory, there will be a price to pay for our sins.

            All through this Lenten journey we have experienced words. We know the stories and have heard them over and over. Sometimes we might look at these stories as just another story to hear about Jesus. But, tonight and tomorrow at noontime is when we truly experience the reality of those stories. The reality is that living a life praising God IS NOT easy. It is difficult because there are so many things in the world that try and distract us and turn us away from God: a society that wants us to be more worried about ourselves then caring for our neighbor, unemployment, broken relationships, bullying, shaming, anger, hatred toward one another…we all see it in our world.

            Being invited to this table this very night calls us to do something extremely difficult. We are called to come to the Lord’s Table and look at our world in a much different way. We are called to come to this table in humility, to be humble in our lives…humble in caring for ourselves, humble as we stand before God on this night and every day to seek God’s peace and mercy with an open heart and an open eye. We are called to be humble in our faith and in loving our neighbors as ourselves; to realize that we all are God’s creation and that makes us all important and valued.

            We are called, tonight, to bear witness to the humility of God’s only Son, Jesus Christ. Even hours before he is handed over, our God’s Son is going to get down on his knees and serve others by washing their feet, to be a servant to the one’s he spent three years teaching. He will teach them that being God’s child is not some place of royalty where we put ourselves above others, but we serve others; we serve the employer who laid us off, serve the bully, serve the society that wants us to put ourselves above all others. We all know that is not an easy task.

            Despite that being difficult, Jesus teaches us that that is who we are called to be. Remember the phrase “be careful for what you wish for, because you just might get it?” We know have that knowledge that life is serving, life is being humble to the God who created us and loves us. This knowledge that we seek in Christ and in God is not at all about us but about loving one another as Jesus the Christ, God’s only Son has taught and loved us.

            There is one more piece of knowledge that we have yet to receive in our human nature. Tomorrow we will learn that the tree of life, which now, looks like this altar, will take on a new form. It will take the form of the cross. It will have arms and legs. It is the reality that in order for us to live, God’s only Son will be nailed to the cross, for our sake, for you and for me, for our sin and our falling short of the Glory of God. Amen