Maundy Thursday 2022

date: "April 14, 2022"

"Maundy"1

You may remember that on Ash Wednesday as Lent began, I called attention to the fact that the practice of the church was to do the opposite of what Jesus seemed to be saying. The gospel of that day relates Jesus saying that we are not disfigure our faces when we are praying so as not to brag about our spirituality. That's the day when many of us have found it empowering to be out of our comfort zone by showing to the world the ashes on our foreheads.

Today is one of those days when the liturgy urges us to get out of our comfort zone. We had a hint of that last week when we began the liturgy outside, and processed into the church. That's not the way we usually do things.

As this night is traditionally practiced with a footwashing there is a real sense of intimacy and vulnerability, even nakedness that happens when we let relative strangers touch our bare feet. Getting outside of our comfort zone.

The disciples were pushed outside their comfort zone as we hear the last supper from John's Gospel. Jesus got to Peter's feet and Peter was astonished that the roles were being reversed the master was washing the feet of the disciples. Jesus responded almost in riddles. It was important to Jesus to get his disciples outside of their comfort zone so that God might mold them into the persons they were meant to be.

Jesus said, "Do this." "A new commandment I give unto you: That you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another." it's the "maundy" of Maundy Thursday. Jesus was asking them, commanding them, to do what they were unaccustomed to doing. At this point they didn't really recognize that because the crucifixion had not happened.

I think of the old wag from G. K. Chesterton: “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.” I think also of a group that has been called the new monasticism. They are determined to put Jesus's commandments into practice. They are convinced that in order to do that one must be a radical Christian. As a way of signifying their determination they refer to themselves as "red letter Christians". They are referring to the practice in many traditional printings of the Gospels where Jesus words are printed in red type.

Their notion is that if Jesus said something we are to pay attention to it. If he actually said do this, it might be important.

Servant leadership

Today I will not ask you to take your shoes off and place your naked feet into someone else's hands. We'll save that for another year. Mostly out of a sense of caution with regard to the Covid pandemic / endemic circumstances of the day, it seemed to me that to ask us to remove shoes and handle one another's bare feet was moving too fast. In a few moments I will ask you to come forward and allow me to symbolically wash your hands. You've seen the acolytes do that for the priest at the Eucharist. Tonight, let me do it for you.

This is a means to take seriously what Jesus is saying to us. "Do this." Wash one another. Serve one another. Love one another. If we really listen, really pay attention, it's a tall order.

The seal for the Bishop of Rome -- "the Pope" -- has around the outside of it the words "Servant of the servants of God." For most of the history of the church, "servanthood" is not the first thing that would come to mind when thinking about the Pope. Nor would it for many leaders in the church, from top to bottom.

Be servant to one another. That is what Jesus tells his friends to do. Leadership through servanthood. A wise bishop I knew said that the reason the church needs ordained deacons is to be sacred symbols of servanthood for all the rest of us. One of the essential elements of being a baptized Christians is to "serve one another."

Characteristics of such servanthood might include:

  1. To be more ready to listen than to give orders
  2. To cultivate and use empathy in relating to others.
  3. To refrain from projecting our own needs onto others.
  4. To make healing a part of our everyday actions and decisions
  5. To understand Stewardship as care and appreciation of the abundance that God provides, even when we seem pre-disposed to experience scarcity.
  6. It is a concern for the well-being and building-up of the community, where the common good is experienced as foremost of the concerns of all.

This is something of what Jesus's mandate to love one another looks like. ### Eucharist

How do we hear the command of the Lord? One of the ways, clearly, is in the "Red letters" of the Gospels in the New Testament. In today's readings -- John's gospel -- we hear:

So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.

I have called attention to the fact that this day combines two views of the last night before Jesus's crucifixion. One we symbolize with the washing of hands -- "wash one another's feet." The other is reflected in the words from Paul's letter to the Corinthians. "Do this in remembrance of me."

We hear those words every time the Eucharist is celebrated. "This is my body." The sacrament. What appears to be bread and wine is truly the body and blood of Jesus.

At the heart of it all is the Eucharistic action, a thing of absolute simplicity – the taking, blessing, breaking and giving of bread, and the taking, blessing, and giving of a cup of wine and water, as these were first done with their new meaning by a young Jew before and after supper with His friends on the night before he died. ... So the four-fold action Shape of the Liturgy was found by the end of the first century. He had told His friends to do this henceforward with the new meaning ‘for the anamnesis‘ of Him, and they have done it always since.

Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacle of earthly greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth. … 2

We hear the "words" directing us through sacraments -- through the sacramental lens looking onto God's creation and perceiving God's presence.

One of my closest friends in Hawai'i told me in the last few weeks about the new green plant he was tending in his tiny garden outside his front door. He said every time he walks out the door and looks at the dark veins, within the pale green leaves, he experiences a glimpse of God's presence and handiwork.

When we live in such a world, everything around us becomes an amplifier to hear God's words to us, a lens to see the grace by which God crafts our world, each person or creature is a tangible sign of God's marvelous reign over all.

Our world itself become a "sacramental" world that speaks to us and directs us how to do what God commands of us.

Do this in remembrance of me. Serve one another. "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

Notes

  1. Lectionary↩

  2. Dix, Gregory, and Simon Jones. The Shape of the Liturgy. 2021.↩

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