John Trumbull, Surrender of Lord Cornwallis
I'm really behind in posting my sermons. This sermon is from Maundy Thursday. It was a small service, held in the church social hall. We had a little over twenty people in attendance. I really enjoy the intimacy of those services.
The World Turned Upside
Down (3/29/18)
Sermon
Good evening. The title of my message this evening comes
from an old English ballad. When I was in school, I remember reading that this
song was played by the British military band when Lord Cornwallis surrendered
to George Washington at Yorktown. The story suggests that everyone present
understood the significance of the event—a small band of colonists with the
courage of their convictions bested the British Empire.
That’s a great story, but it’s not true. It’s fake news,
even though it’s been repeated to generations of students. Washington’s actual
orders, the Articles of Capitulation, called for the British troops to: “march
out to a place to be appointed in front of the posts, at two o’clock precisely,
with shouldered arms, colors cased, and drums beating a British or German march,”
and then to lay down their arms before the American troops.[1]
Historians would call this a denial of the full honors of
war. At that time, there was a very complicated set of rituals that dictated
how a defeated enemy would surrender, and then how the defeated enemy would be
treated during the ceremony of surrender. A year earlier, at the Siege of
Charleston, the British defeated the Americans, yet the refused the full honors
of war to the American troops as they surrendered. In retaliation, George
Washington denied full honors to the British troops at the end of the
Revolutionary War. It was all about honor and place.
As it turns out, these notions of honor and place run
through our reading from 1 Corinthians, too. We call these verses the words of
institution, and they are recited when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper. When we
hear these words out of context, we lose the radical inclusiveness of God’s
grace, that is enacted in this sacrament; when we focus on our own experience
of this grace, we overlook that grace is offered to everyone. Certainly, we
overlook those who are not in worship with us.
The Apostle Paul offered these words to the congregation at
Corinth as a sort of corrective action. There allegations of abuse described in
the preceding verses:
17 Now in the following instructions
I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better
but for the worse. 18 For, to begin with, when you
come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you; and to
some extent I believe it. 19 Indeed, there have to
be factions among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are
genuine. 20 When you come together, it is not
really to eat the Lord’s supper. 21 For when the
time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes
hungry and another becomes drunk. 22 What! Do you
not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of
God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I
commend you? In this matter I do not commend you!
Paul didn’t mince words!
The church at Corinth was divided and those divisions were
evident, even in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Those divisions mirrored
the divisions of the larger society:
Formal meals in Corinth
were usually class-specific. Rarely would people of different social status eat
together. The exceptions to this rule in which people of different economic
classes would meet together—gatherings of trade guilds and burial societies,
for example—transferred the class segregation to the meal itself. Social peers
of the host would be entertained in an inner room and served the most elegant
meal. People of less status would dine in outer rooms or the courtyard on less
costly food, on down to the servants who would not eat at all, but only serve
the others. At the end of the evening, all would be invited to join in the
rituals of the organization.[2]
This was also the
setting for the early Christians, who worshiped in house churches. The
congregations might have included the owner of the house, as well as the
servants. Congregants who were of higher social status would eat the best foods
and drink their fill of the best wines. No doubt some of them got drunk, too.
At the same time, the servants may only have eaten the bread from communion. For
Paul, this was too much like the rest of the Greco-Roman world.
To be fair, the members of the congregation at Corinth
thought that they were really different from the world around them. The
Corinthians were a Gentile congregation in one of the busiest trading ports in
Greece. All of the gods of the Roman Empire would have been worshiped there.
Plus, all of the sailors from around the Mediterranean would have found shrines
to the gods of their homelands somewhere in Corinth. So, for the Gentile
Christians of Corinth, worshiping the Lord, God of Israel, that was really
being different from the rest of the world. The Corinthian Christians thought
they were doing enough!
Paul said no.
For Paul, the Corinthians were still too much like the rest
of the world. They had learned the truth that there was only God, but they
hadn’t quite internalized the meaning of the Eucharistic meal. Paul believed
that the Words of Institution:
Declared a “new covenant”
(11: 25) uniting the church into a single body, just like the one loaf that is
broken and shared among them. When the members of the Corinthian church allowed
community norms to infect their time together, the supper was not a meal that “re-membered”
Christ in the body of the community united in the ritual. It was a private
dinner.[3]
The Eucharistic meal is
supposed to unite us as Christians. It is a radical declaration of equality
among all believers. It stands over and above the divisions that exist in society.
The truth is, we don’t do a good job of living into the
radical equality of the communion table. We pat ourselves on the back every
October when we celebrate World Communion Sunday. Yet we have brothers and
sisters in Christ around the world who hunger and thirst—to say nothing of
people of other faiths, or no faith at all, who hunger and thirst. What are we
doing about that?
Here’s one that’s a little closer to home. What do you do
when you see a homeless person, asking for money for food? Do you give what you
can? Do you give a little, but not too much? Do you turn away, thinking that
he’s probably just going to use the money to buy alcohol? Or maybe you just get
angry and think, “he’s probably not even homeless,” because then you don’t have
to think about Jesus’ words in the Gospel of Matthew: “I was hungry and you
gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.” In that story,
the people who are righteous have no idea that they have been righteous. In the
same way, the people who are unrighteous have no idea that they have been
unrighteous.
The inclusiveness and equality that we share when we
partake of the Lord’s Supper is supposed to guide our actions outside of the
church:
What would happen if we
contextualized our commemorations of Jesus’ last supper in the reality of the
global food crisis, instead of seeing it as a solely religious ritual? After
all, one of the difficult lessons Paul was trying to convey to the
spiritually-minded Corinthians was that their actions “in the flesh” were the
arena in which their faith and spirituality were expressed.[4]
The communion table is a
call to action outside of the church; it is a call to build God’s kingdom.
We all have different roles to play in building the
kingdom, but we must not continue to pass that work along to others. This is
why I wanted you folks to help set up this space for worship, and also to serve
communion to one another. This was a tactile and visual reminder that the work
belongs to all of us.
In these next several days, we’re going to reflect on
Jesus’ path to the cross, his death, and his resurrection. Yes, he died for our
sins and to save us from the powers of sin and death. Yet in that death, Jesus
passed the work of ministry on to us—to all
of us. Over these next several days, let us reflect on all the ways we fall
short of Jesus’ call. Let us reflect on all the ways that our practices still
reflect the divisions of our society, then let us repent of our sinfulness and
work toward the radical equality that we find in the Lord’s Supper. That would
truly be the world turned upside down. Thanks be to God. Amen!
Benediction
Now, beloved, as you depart from this place, remember that
we are called to be the Church, the body of Christ in the world today. We are
called to go forth and be instruments of God’s love and peace and love and reconciliation.
We are called to turn the world upside down. Do not return evil for evil to any
person, but know that we are all loved by God, and that we are called to
reflect that love to everyone we meet. Go forth and be the salt of the earth
and the light of the world. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, let all
God’s children say, Amen!
[1]
“Surrender of the British General Cornwallis to the Americans, October 19,
1781,” The Gilder Lehrman Institute of
American History, retrieved from: https://www.gilderlehrman.org/content/surrender-british-general-cornwallis-americans-october-19-1781
[2]
Sharon H. Ringe, “Commentary on 1 Corinthians 11:23-26,” retrieved from: http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3601
[3]
Sharon H. Ringe.
[4]
Sharon H. Ringe.
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