Broadcasting the Passthrough

Broadcasting the Passthrough

It might end up just the latest passing fad, or it might become the most radical change in the Church’s worship since the time in which Paul wrote to the Corinthians, as in the Latin root radix — root — the Church returning to its roots. It is called Dinner Church, where Christians gather for The Holy Eucharist, as we have this night and as the Corinthians in Paul’s time gathered. But instead of a ritualized, more symbolic community meal, they share a full meal together, as Jesus shared a full meal with his disciples on a Thursday night, and as the Corinthians initially tried to recreate.

Presumably within that meal, the Corinthians repeated the words that Jesus had said on that Thursday night. “This is my body for you; do this for the recalling (Gk anamnesis) of me … This is my blood of the new covenant; do this for the recalling of me.” That is closer the Greek word translated as “remembrance.” The ancient Greeks saw time as a circle not a line, so events could come back around. Thus, in what the Church calls the Words of Institution, Jesus’s saving death and Resurrection would be recalled from that Friday, Saturday and Sunday centuries earlier. And in those words and the sharing of bread and wine, he would be as present with his disciples now as he was with his first disciples.

It makes sense that the first Christians would have wanted their Lord’s Supper to be as close to the actual experience of that first Lord’s Supper as possible. They would have wanted to experience the same fear and awe that Jesus’s first disciples had felt on that night and in the days after as they understood what Jesus had meant by connecting the most satisfying thing in this life – food and drink – to the experience of a death and eternal life that Jesus had made one thing and given them a taste.

The Christians in Corinth wanted to re-present that experience so that it would be an experience they could share with those first disciples. But at some point after Paul had initiated them into that experience, repeating the experience failed to re-present the experience. They lost the meaning of the experience. Those who were wealthy were glad to share the experience of eating lots of food with others who could afford lots of food. Those who were really into joy were glad to share the experience of intoxicating joy. But they forgot that the joy of the Passover of the Lord was rooted in his passing through death first. Theirs was a shallow joy.

And so, Paul had to tell them to give up the immediate experience of the meal and turn the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Eucharist, into a ritual or rite. The eating and drinking had to become ritualized in order to refocus the Corinthians on the meaning of the Lord’s Supper — Every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you broadcast the death of the Lord until he comes — That’s what it really means to proclaim, to shout like the village crier shouting out the news. Implicit in that proclamation or broadcasting is the news that Jesus has risen from the dead. How else could he — come — after his death unless he has been raised from death?

But first, what must be shouted at the top of our lungs, broadcasted through as much social media as we can, is that Jesus has been killed, by us and for us. That’s what else it means for us to recall his death so that we are as present with him in his death as were the first disciples, most of whom left him to his death, and some like Paul, who approved of his murder.

Whenever the Priest cracks the bread and broadcasts — Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us — we are doing just as Paul received from the Lord and handed on to the Corinthians, broadcasting the second Passover of God. In the first Passover of which we have read, God passed over the Israelites as God claimed the lives of the firstborn Egyptians as a rough justice for their having tried to eradicate the firstborn boys of Israel. But beginning tonight, the Son of God will pass through death, not over it. What begins this night, as it began nearly two millennia ago, is the Passthrough of our Lord, recalled so that we are there, and need never fear death.

Our ways of worship have evolved and returned to their roots and will do so again. But the experience and the meaning are the same yesterday, today and for all time. And that is worth broadcasting by any means necessary.

April 2nd, 2026

Maundy Thursday

The Rev. David Kendrick