Sermon - Maundy Thursday (4/9/2020)
Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14; Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31b-35
We always begin our celebration of the Three Days by gathering together here in church on Thursday evening, as Jesus gathered with his friends around the table on the Thursday night before his Friday crucifixion. They had gathered together in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, the festival of God’s action to deliver God’s people from bondage in Egypt, the meal that celebrates God’s gift of deliverance and freedom.
Tonight we read what Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, repeating the formula that he had already taught them, words that we repeat and proclaim every time we gather together at this table: The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
I don’t think I had noticed, before this year, that the original Passover meal, the last supper of the people of Israel on the night before they were delivered from bondage in Egypt, was not shared by all of the people gathering around a common table, as we normally do here in this church. I don’t think it ever occurred to me before that the last supper in Egypt was eaten by each family in their own home, as they hunkered down and prayed to be spared from the plague that was ravaging the Egyptians that night.
Yes, they ate that meal fully dressed, shoes on their feet, staff in hand, like people in a hurry. They ate that meal as people about to flee from slavery, as people about to be delivered from bondage, as people about to be set free to worship the one true God and to live together under God’s law in a community of justice and mutual care and concern for one another. But they ate that meal in their own homes, with their own families, huddled together in fear as sickness and death were spreading among their neighbors. And yet they ate that meal in people in a hurry, people preparing to be delivered, in hopeful anticipation of the beloved community of justice and peace that God was about to call them into being.
Tonight we also eat our dinners at home, with our families if they are here with us, and perhaps alone if they are not. It is not safe or responsible for us to come together tonight as the family of God, to share the bread and the cup, to wash one another’s feet, to pray and watch together. And yet, we are still connected to one another, for those who are able by the magic of electrons, and even more by the power of Christ who is always present to each one of us in the Word and in the Spirit. And so tonight, each in our own place, we also gather as people preparing to be delivered, as people living in hopeful anticipation of the communion of love which Jesus is still gathering around himself.
In the gospel tonight Jesus commands his disciples not simply to remember him by sharing the bread and the cup as he did on that night, but to embody his presence by our love for one another, by our willingness to put ourselves on the line to serve one another, to follow the example of Jesus in serving one another in awkward and even humiliating ways like washing one another’s feet – and, perhaps even more awkwardly and humiliatingly, by allowing others to wash our feet.
I know, in speaking to many of you by telephone or over Zoom these past days and weeks, how many of you continue to check in on each other and your neighbors, to help one another while maintaining the physical distancing we need to practice to keep one another safe. “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,” Jesus said, “if you have love for one another.”
But even as our own dinners tonight are, like the first Passover, eaten at home, we know that the table of Jesus, the communion of God’s love, the hope of God’s deliverance and freedom, is for everybody. Jesus did not just eat with his own family, but with everybody, with a lack of scruples that many found scandalous. Jesus shared the bread and the cup with the one who was about to betray him; Jesus washed the feet of the one who was about to deny him. The family with whom Jesus chooses to share fellowship at table is the whole human family, all of us, saints and sinners.
And so, even as we are physically apart tonight, we are united together as the family of Jesus Christ, united by our love for one another and for all the people God loves. For where charity and love prevail, whether we are physically together or apart, there God is always found.