Maundy Thursday Sermon -- 2023
At the opening of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, he says > Jews ask for signs, and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, 1
For Paul, everything he preached came down to "Christ crucified." That's more or less what I have to say tonight.
Where I'm coming from
When I reaffirmed my commitment to Christianity as a 20 something, I knew very little about the actual living out of being a Christian. I had read and meditated on a lot of things in college having to do with faith and spirituality generally. As my peers went off in a lot of different directions, things like:
- existentialism
- Hinduism
- agnosticism
- various sects and cults
I decided that there was enough promising material in Christianity, stuff that seemed attractive to me: things like mysticism, a commitment to service to the most vulnerable, prayerful living in community, ... that I would commit my life to that until I couldn't go any further. I'm still going after all these years.
I knew about people like Thomas Merton in the 20th c. --I had taken a class with one of Merton's colleagues at Gethsemane. I had studied Meister Eckhart from the 14th c., ostensibly in the Middle High German that he wrote in. I knew something of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. What I didn't know very much about was the actual day to day living of a Christian. I didn't know much about what goes on in church -- even though for 4 years or so I had attended an Episcopal Church every week.
In my mid 20's, I began attending a small Episcopal church out in the country. We were introduced to it by the priest who married me and my first wife. I knew him because of his research at the college library where I worked. He was a retired priest from the diocese of California. The people in the church accepted me with my hair stretching down my back. They accepted me with my questions and my uncertainties. That meant a lot.
And then I found myself anticipating the birth of my first born. And he or she was going to need to be baptized. (I knew that just from societal and cultural formation.) The priest told me that Easter was the best day to baptize folks -- the revised Prayer Book was then in its provisional status. I accepted that norm -- but unfortunately Owen was born in May -- too late for an Easter baptism. (I'll save the rest of that story for a later talk on Pentecost).
The point is that that's how things were when I first experienced the liturgies of Palm/Passion Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter. I started to process the notion that there were things that happened on Sunday morning that weren't just the same old same old.
- We did things that were dramatic: presenting the Gospel like it was a theater piece.
- We Episcopalians did things that just weren't done in ordinary society: people took their shoes off and water was splashed on them.
- Folks from the congregation carried a big cross down the aisle, and later people went up and kissed the wooden cross.
These things seemed extraordinary to me at the time. But I kind of let it go, because within a few weeks I had to name my first born child as the doctor delivering him held him up and asked me what his name was. I hadn't known he was he until that moment. I said, "Owen", feeling a little like I was Adam in the Garden of Eden, and then burst into tears -- tears that in some ways have stayed with me to the present day.
I knew that I had so much to learn I could scarcely imagine it.
Passion and Liturgy
I so often think that I know something when I don't really, or I have so often experienced it that it has become commonplace wisdom.
One of my fundamental convictions is that the ordinary way in which God communicates with human beings is by "surprising" them.
I thought I knew what Sunday worship was about; after all I had done it for so long. I didn't realize that Sunday worship was a regularly repeated celebration of Easter; since Easter was the foundation of Christian faith.
I knew what Easter was. I knew it wasn't about Easter bunnies -- although that had been a part of my family custom. It was about going to church.
What I didn't realize in my 20's, and wouldn't appreciate for a long time afterwards, is that the one thing that Christians had to proclaim is the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus. Everything else is commentary.
It seemed odd to me, many years later, after ordination, that there is only one Sunday in the church year when the Passion is read. We did that last Sunday.
I came more and more to understand that the central importance of the Passion in the life of a Christian meant that it took longer than a single sitting to even tell the story of Passion and Resurrection.
A whole week -- we call it "Holy Week" -- is set aside for the telling of the central Christian story. It gets told in sections and pieces. Then on this night in Holy Week begins the concentrated, white hot, version of telling the whole story.
We begin it with tonight, the Passion tomorrow, and then with the Vigil the Easter story is put directly into the context of the whole of creation. It's a big story. But there's a sense in which it is one story.
That was illustrated for me when in my first year as a graduate student at Notre Dame, I found that all the liturgies, from Thursday through Sunday, were published in one booklet.
The liturgy doesn't end tonight. It continues until the next chapter of our proclamation of Passion, Death, and Resurrection.
There is no dismissal after tonight's liturgy, because it isn't over. It continues. It continues in the prayer and watch which some of us will undertake over the next hours. It continues with the Good Friday liturgy, and it also has no dismissal. It continues with the first liturgy of Easter -- the Great Vigil of Easter as it is titled in the Book of Common Prayer.
Scripture tonight
One of the great misconceptions of the liturgical churches is that they somehow slight Scripture. Our worship in fact has a super-abundance of scripture. Our liturgies sometime seem to be overwhelmed with the richness and meaning of the scripture that is read. Such is the case today.
Each of the texts we have heard tonight is chosen for its vital importance to the overall meaning and significance of the day.
Exodus
Our reading from the book of Exodus comes from the extended opening of the book recounting the deliverance of the people from slavery. The primary liturgical ritual celebrating that deliverance is the Feast of Passover. Jews began the observance of Passover last night, and it lasts for 8 days.
You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.2
Countless are the Eucharists celebrated throughout the world and throughout the year where the prayer over the bread and wine culminates in the proclamation: Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.
For many years it has seemed clear to me that the only way for us to really understand the meaning of that phrase is to understand and know what that means in the context of the Torah.
We hear the divine words "Do this ..." in the reading from Exodus. We hear it in the words from Paul in the second reading. We hear it every time the Eucharist is celebrated.
Paul
In this brief passage from Paul's letter to the Corinthians, we hear the words associated with the Eucharistic Prayer. “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” He received the tradition from his elders and he is passing it on to his heirs. So it has been from the time of Moses up to the present day at St. Alfred's Church.
John
With the first two readings we hear emphasized one of the themes of this day. The Eucharist. With the passage from John what we don't hear is as loud as what we do hear. We don't hear from Matthew, Mark, or Luke who recount the same tradition that Paul had received.3
We hear from a different thread in the Tradition. From the Gospel of John. In this tradition Jesus institutes a different action. He washes the feet of his disciples. Peter objects, but Jesus overcomes his objection by saying: You ought to be washing one another's feet.
Then he adds another one of those commandments (a mandate): He says, "Do this".
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.
There are not many places where Jesus says, "Do this," but we hear two of them tonight. One of my heroes, Shane Claiborne, says, "When Jesus says something like that, we probably should pay attention to it."
Another of my teachers years ago used to say over and over: "If it's true, it's important."
Tonight we are commanded to "Do this. Pay Attention. It is important.
Outside of our comfort zone
It is not easy, this, "Do this ..."
The first priest I worked for had strong views on a number of things. At one point he left me a little card on which was written, "So, you think you're important? Put your finger into a glass of water. Take it out and see what impression you make."
That same priest didn't like what was called renewal music. One such song was frequently sung in those days, "They will know we are Christians by our love." My boss decreed that in his church we would never sing that song until there was some evidence that it was true.
I learned a lot from that priest.
One of the things I learned is that to be faithful to our calling as Christians we have to move out of our comfort zone as we try to do what Jesus commanded us to do. It's not easy to "Love one another." The Eucharist is a mystery as we seek to make Christ known even as we are known.
Traditionally, the liturgy for Maundy Thursday has required that people take their shoes off and let someone (maybe a relative stranger) touch them. That's way outside the comfort zone of many people.
My priest boss taught me that it's really difficult -- unless we get outside of our comfort zone -- to take seriously the commandment to "Love one another." In the largest sense it's really about how to be Christian in the world around us. It's a job for a lifetime.
Baptismal Covenant
In tonight's liturgy, as in many of the activities in the church, actions speak louder than words. That is particularly true during this week when we are telling with words and actions the most important and vital parts of our Christian calling.
We preach Christ crucified.
We are called to be a Eucharistic People. That is to be transformed into Christ's body in the world.
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks with Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
— St. Teresa of Ávila
Which is to say that Jesus's mandates to us are a call to a life of servanthood. Who is the community we are called to love and serve? What does that look like in the practical reality we live in? Each of us has the task to figure it out for our own lives and in our own time.
One person outlined these Characteristics: this way:
- To be more ready to listen than to give orders
- To cultivate and use empathy in relating to others.
- To refrain from projecting our own needs onto others.
- To make healing a part of our everyday actions and decisions
- To understand Stewardship as care and appreciation of the abundance that God provides, even when we seem pre-disposed to experience scarcity.
- 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.
I have for a long time thought that the 12 steps of A.A. are a powerful reflection of what we are commanded to do as Christians. The 3-step version of that is:
- I can't
- God can
- I think I'll let God do it
Closing
The next step in our liturgy tonight will be to make a sacred symbolic commitment to engage in the task of "loving one another" -- a task that can only be accomplished by the Grace of God. That grace can be seen in the anointing and blessing of our hands. So leave the building tonight, go forth as Christ's hand and feet, eyes and ears, heart of love and compassion, for the world in which we live.
Amen.
CEB↩
Exodus 12:14↩
(NABRE) See note on Mk 14:22–24. The Marcan-Matthean is one of the two major New Testament traditions of the words of Jesus when instituting the Eucharist. The other (and earlier) is the Pauline-Lucan (1 Cor 11:23–25; Lk 22:19–20). Each shows the influence of Christian liturgical usage, but the Marcan-Matthean is more developed in that regard than the Pauline-Lucan. The words over the bread and cup succeed each other without the intervening meal mentioned in 1 Cor 11:25; Lk 22:20; and there is parallelism between the consecratory words (this is my body…this is my blood). Matthew follows Mark closely but with some changes.↩
