Maundy Thursday 2008
This sermon was preached by the Revd Daniel Weir on Maundy Thursday, March 20, 2008.
There is something very odd about this night and about the two events that we remember at this celebration. And it is that very oddness that gives us, I believe, a clue to how we are to celebrate this Maundy Thursday, in deed, more broadly, how we are to live.
In Exodus we heard instructions on how the Passover was to be observed, and if we pay attention to where these instructions come in the story and when that first observance is said to have taken place, we might be struck by the realization that the event being celebrated, the passing over of the children of Israel from bondage to freedom, that event had not yet occurred. The children of
And that same strangeness surrounds the story – as Paul and the synoptic Gospel writers tell it to us – of the last supper at which Jesus took bread, gave thanks to the Father, broke the bread and shared it with his closest friends with the words, “This is my Body, which is given for you.” Given, and yet that, quite simply, had not yet happened.
And so we have two celebrations that stand in the space between the promise and the promise’s fulfillment. Two celebrations that now look back in remembrance to what God did once in human history, but which also must look forward – as they did when first celebrated – to what God will do, and, in deed, is doing, in fulfillment of God’s promise to us and to all people.
We stand, in a phrase that has been very much used by Biblical scholars, in the tension between the already and the not yet, between what we have already experienced of God’s grace and mercy and what we hope yet to receive. As we celebrate this Sacrament of Christ’s Presence in our midst, we perform an action of remembrance and of hope. This feast looks back to both the supper Jesus shared in that upper room “in the night in which he was betrayed” and to the suppers that our ancestors in the faith shared as they prepared to leave
But that is not all that needs to be said this night. There is that second symbolic – perhaps even sacramental – action of Maundy Thursday, the one that only the 4th Gospel records, the one that gives this day its name. The new commandment – the mandate – the Maundy – that Jesus gives us - “Love one another as I have loved you” – that he gives us and demonstrates with such utter simplicity as he stoops and humbles himself to wash the dirt and dust and grime from the feet of his disciples. This new commandment is not something laid upon us from outside our human experience. It is in truth a revelation of what it means to be truly human and it is a revelation of the very nature of God In this simple act of service, of diaconate, Jesus makes clear to us that being created in the image of God means being created to love, sacrificially, humbly, with reckless abandon. We share in the divine life as we love, as we take the risks of loving, as we lay down our lives for one another. If you want to know what it means to be human, look at Jesus as washes his disciples’ feet. If you want to know what it means to be human, look at Jesus as he reaches out his hands in love to touch and heal the leper, the tax collector, the notorious sinners, the least, the last and the lost. If you want to know what it means to be human, look at Jesus as those same hands are pierced by the executioner’s nails, look at Jesus as he hangs upon the Cross. There, there we see true humanity. And it is that humanity, that loving humanity that is ours to share.
