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Sermon #614W Maundy Thursday B Sermon #614 Maundy Thursday B(Lent as Mystery) 1 The Rev. Joan M. Kilian Trinity Episcopal Church Exodus 12: 1 – 4, (5 – 10) 11 - 14 Psalm 116: 1, 10 – 17 1 Corinthians 11: 23 - 26 John 13: 1 – 17; 31b – 35 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The other day, Jack Orman told me that if he got to decide about liturgy, he would do tonight all up in white with big bouquets of white flowers and lovely shining silver and brass. All the trimmings for a celebration. Because, as odd as it might seem in the middle of Holy Week, tonight is indeed a celebration. Tonight, we celebrate several things. We celebrate endings and beginnings, we celebrate our calling to be servants of all, and perhaps most importantly, we celebrate the unfathomable mystery of Christ’s love for us. A love that brings redemption, wholeness and re-memberment, with God and with one another. On one level, with endings and beginnings, we celebrate the fulfillment of the Old Covenant along with the inauguration of the New Covenant. God had made a covenant with Abraham to make of him a great nation and this is the fulfillment of that covenant. As we hear in Exodus, God delivers the Israelites as they are brought up out of slavery in Egypt. This first Passover will, in fact, be the very first thing that they do, formed now as “the people of God.” The Passover is a feast, a celebration, of deliverance, of fulfillment. At the same time, in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, and in the passage from John, we hear of the initiation of the New Covenant by God. We hear about the new relationship we have which is established by the self-giving love of God through Jesus Christ. Like the Israelites, we, too, are brought out of bondage, in our case to sin and death, into a new life of love and service. We celebrate Jesus as the Paschal Lamb, our Passover, who loves us so much, he will go to any length, even death, to prove it. We celebrate the Eucharist as our own feast of deliverance and fulfillment. On another level of meaning tonight, Maundy Thursday also brings to an end our journey which was begun on Ash Wednesday. On that day, our foreheads were anointed with ashes, with dust, as a reminder of our limitations and mortality On this day, our feet are washed clean. We have walked the road of redemption and renewal. That part of the journey is over, but as we end, so also we begin. And what begins tonight will end with the resurrection, with the Great Vigil of Easter. What does begin tonight is the ancient Triduum, or Three Days: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. For over 1700 years, the church has celebrated these three days as the Passover of Jesus Christ from death into life, ever-lasting life. The themes of light and dark, good and evil, the sacraments of baptism and communion, the triumph of the resurrection over death – all are fashioned into this three-jeweled crown of the liturgical year. The Triduum, and Sermon #614 Maundy Thursday B(Lent as Mystery) 2 tonight in particular, is the bridge that will carry us from one side to the other, from darkness into light, from death into life, allowing us to ponder the stream of living water that flows under us and all about us. Tonight, as we allow our feet to be washed by another, we are briefly given a chance to sit on that bridge and dangle our feet into that stream of living water, if you will. We are given the opportunity to experience the incredible outpouring of love by our Savior, Jesus Christ, first in the offering up of himself as servant of all, and then in the offering up of his body and blood. It is in the realization of what that offering really entails that we will then strip the altar, just as Jesus’ power and glory, at least as the world sees it, is stripped away. And we will prepare for the barrenness and wilderness that is Good Friday. Tonight, we celebrate the institution of the Holy Eucharist, the Great Thanksgiving, when Jesus asks us to “do this in remembrance of me.” And we celebrate the example that Jesus sets for us and the challenge given to us, as individuals and as the church, to imitate Christ in offering servant love to others. The word ‘Maundy’ comes from the Latin word meaning ‘to command.’ Tonight, we are commanded to remember and to serve. There is something wonderful and special about the word ‘remember’ as it is used in the Bible. When we use it in our daily speech, it often just means bringing something back into to mind, recalling it, recollecting it, not forgetting it. But in Holy Scripture, it is much fuller and richer than that. It has to do with relationship and presence. Think of the word as re-member, pulling the pieces and parts back together again. Reconfiguring the whole. Each time the various members of the church gather together, we are re-membering the Body of Christ. In Scripture, to remember also means to have special regard for someone or some people. And during a liturgical celebration, there is the sense in Hebrew that it is not simply reenacting, but rather ‘being present to again.’ It is as if it is happening again for the first time. For the Jewish people and their celebration of Passover, and for us and our celebration of the Eucharist, the meal is much more than simply a memorial or an anniversary dinner if you will. For us in the Eucharist, to remember is to have Jesus fully present with us as he breaks the bread (his body), and as he pours out the wine (his blood). The bread and the wine bind us to Christ and to each other, all who are gathered at the table of the Lamb: past, present, and those yet to be. The Gospel of John doesn’t include a “Last Supper” story as the other Gospels do, and so the centerpiece of John’s dinner is the washing of the disciples’ feet by Jesus. Jesus gets up in the middle of the meal, takes off his outer garment and tucks a towel into his waistband. Jesus then goes around the room, kneeling at the feet of each of the disciples present, perhaps even at the feet of the women who are there. We can’t imagine how scandalous this is to Jesus’ disciples. Jesus, their leader and rabbi, on his knees, at their feet, doing the work of a servant, or a woman?? Sermon #614 Maundy Thursday B(Lent as Mystery) 3 In the image of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, the focus is not, perhaps surprisingly, on the water. Rather, it is on Jesus’ actions. Foot washing is not so much about the water as a kind of baptism or spiritual cleansing. It’s much more down to earth, much grittier, than that. It’s about loving service to others in the midst of the grit and grime and dirty feet of everyday life. The living water of Christ is the tool which empowers us to that service. For the disciples and for us, allowing our feet to be washed is to open ourselves to intimacy and vulnerability, and to remove distance and defenses. Foot washing brings us face to face with the incarnated, enfleshed love God has for us – from Jesus and from one another. Foot washing is about entering into an intimate relationship with Jesus by receiving the hospitality, the service, he offers. Our share in Christ, like Peter’s share, is in the relationship we then have with Jesus; we allow Jesus to wash our feet so that we may be companions with Jesus. We, in turn, become – in whatever flawed way – a reflection of Jesus by doing to others what has first been done to us by God. We become Christ-like in our service. And we open ourselves to intimate, loving, serving relationships with others. The fact that Jesus does this in the middle of the meal tells us that servanthood is at the very center of what our thanksgiving is to be about. Our gratitude to God for the saving acts of Jesus Christ is enacted in our servanthood to others. So who are those others, much like the rich young man’s question, ‘who are my neighbors?’ The book, Ah, but Your Land is Beautiful , tells the true story of a white South African judge during the time of apartheid. A black pastor invites the judge to attend his church on Maundy Thursday. Knowing that he is risking his political career, and perhaps his life, if he participates, the judge decides to accept the invitation. The judge learns that it is a service of foot washing, and he is encouraged to participate. He is called forward to wash the feet of a black woman, a woman who, as it turns out, has been a servant in the home of the judge for over thirty years. As the judge kneels down by the basin of water and towels, the judge takes the black woman’s feet in his hands, and he is powerfully struck by how tired and worn these feet are after so many years of service to him. He cradles her feet gently, and bathes them not only with the water from the basin, but from his own tears comingled with hers.
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