Maundy Thursday Sermon

Maundy Thursday Year C 04012010 St. Luke’s


EX 12:1-4, 10-14 PS 116:1, 10-17 1 COR 11:23-26 LK 22:14-30

How many times have you heard these words of wisdom: “Don’t believe everything you read." Well this can be especially true if you read it on the Internet! It’s truer still if you read it on April 1st, April Fool’s Day. Whether you’re the really cautious type or the very gullible type, we’ve all been the brunt of a good April Fool’s joke. Today, I was greeted by a Facebook friend who had posted a link to a blog by someone sharing the “news” that Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had changed some of his positions concerning the proposed Anglican Covenant. By the time I checked out the blog and read the post, the blogger was already responding to comments left by other readers admitting that it was indeed a hoax, an April Fool’s joke. Sometimes, things are not always what they seem to be or what they say they are.

Tonight, we celebrate the institution of the Lord’s Supper which grew out of the great Jewish feast of the Passover. Each year, the Passover is celebrated to remember the mighty work of God in freeing the Israelites from their bondage of slavery in Egypt. We are now in the midst of the great Easter Triduum in which we remember the mighty work of God in freeing us from the bondage of sin through our Lord Jesus Christ.

This night some 2000 years ago, the disciples heard these words for the first time: “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” Whether any individual disciple was quick to believe or was skeptical, I doubt any of them had a good idea of what this meant and probably weren’t even asking the question yet of how this could be, but because they were spoken by Jesus himself, they certainly didn’t mistake them for an April Fool’s joke.

The early Church in following Christ’s command, “Do this in remembrance of me,” celebrated the Lord’s Supper proclaiming the death and resurrection of Christ as they awaited his coming again. They discovered in this bread and wine, taken, blessed and shared; food for their journey of faith. In the midst of their joy and trials, they were strengthened for the journey. They discovered in their sharing of the meal the presence of the risen Christ and their oneness in that same Body of which they were all constituent members. It was this experience of Christ in the midst of the meal that made the Eucharist the central act of Christian worship.

The Eucharist became the central act of Christian worship through the Church’s experience of the Eucharist not because of a theological thesis that explained the Eucharist. As things go, theological statements about the Eucharistic can be helpful or problematic.

We human beings are want to explain things; what a thing is, where it comes from, how it operates, how it affects us. The advancement of our race has been dependent on this drive to discover and understand. This same drive deepens our faith; makes it our own. We Christians have a better understanding of who God is because God became one like us in Jesus Christ. In the end, however we can’t know God completely. We must be content to live with the mystery that ultimately God is beyond human understanding.

So we return to our weekly celebration of the Eucharist. In our doing as the Lord did and speaking as the Lord spoke, we experience the Lord in our midst just as the early Church did.

Humans are beings who must continually remember and be fed. Jesus knew this intimately well being born of human estate. He continually read the scriptures and ate with his disciples. In his institution of the Lord’s Supper, he established a perpetual meal in which we recall his death and resurrection and partake of the Word himself. In partaking of the one bread and the one cup, we become one with Christ and with each other.

All of this is neither conferred upon us by magic or by force. It is given freely in love and must be freely received in love. Any true encounter with Christ must be one of love.

Can any of us really explain our relationships of love? In the end, aren’t we left with some degree of awesome mystery? When the mystery ends or we no longer engage in the mystery of our relationships isn’t that when they grow old and bereft of life? Only when we reengage the mystery of relationship, start dating again do we rediscover the life and love that we knew before and then even more. Tonight, we are called to reengage with the Mystery of God’s love for us made known to us in Christ; in the breaking of bread and in the cup.

Immediately after the Lord’s Supper, Judas betrayed Jesus and the other disciples began arguing among themselves who was the greatest. Jesus turns upside down the notion that the greatest is one who is served. He asks his disciples, “For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.” Jesus demonstrates to us what it is to be great.

Those downstairs that will soon be joining us for the Eucharist are experiencing the servanthood of Christ in the Washing of Feet. In order to truly understand the greatness that comes from servanthood, we must be willing to be served and also to serve. Just as Jesus was willing to allow Mary to wash his feet with costly perfume, so was he also willing to wash the feet of his disciples. Jesus calls us to follow his example to serve and to be served if we are truly to be considered great.

Like the disciples at that first Eucharist, we don’t always get it. Sometimes we approach the table with little sense of the mystery of which we are about to partake. Sometimes we leave the table and immediately resume our disputes among one another and with our neighbors. We are called to something more. Listen again to the words we say at communion.

We begin the distribution of communion with the proclamation: “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us;” to which we all respond: “Therefore let us keep the feast.”

We are then invited to receive what we have just proclaimed to be true: “The Gifts of God for the People of God. Take them in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on him in your hearts by faith, with thanksgiving.”

When we receive the Body of Christ, the bread of heaven and the Blood of Christ, the cup of salvation we assent to this mystery when we respond, “Amen.” “I believe.”

As our words proclaim the mystery we receive, may our bodies dance to the rhythm of those words. From our procession to the communion rail, to our receiving of the precious Body and Blood, to the raising of our voices in prayer after communion, let our bodies move both in reverence and intimacy to our relationship with the crucified and risen One and with each other. May our regular participation in this mystery bring us ever closer to Christ and to each other. May it keep us ever before the cross and in the presence of the risen Christ that we may faithfully “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord!”