Maundy Thursday

He riseth up from supper, and laid aside his garments, and took a towel and girded himself.
(St. John xiii. 4)

Tonight, you and I are invited to the Last Supper of Christ. With the Apostles, we move into a realm that is fraught with fear and trembling, not grasping the meaning of it all or what will come tomorrow on Good Friday. The Apostles have been following Jesus for some three years, and they have experienced the hand of God extended to them and others through the life of their Master. There was so much to be thankful for, many miracles, much useful teaching, and more that man could ponder. But tonight, we sense that it all must come to an end. With the Apostles, we fear the premature suffering and death of the Master.

And yet, against our fears, before the agony in the garden, the torture, and the unjust death, Christ offers God’s goodness to us. Christ doesn’t sit down to explain what will transpire, or how and why He must die. Strangely enough, He leaves that for the future. For now, He must impress His Apostles with some degree of goodness that they can remember and repeat. Christ is focused on God’s goodness. And goodness must even characterize Christ’s sacrifice, suffering, and death. Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee. (St. John xvii. 1) 

Tonight, the goodness that Jesus offers to us is found in the Last Supper. It is the Feast of Passover. The Passover celebrates God’s passing over the homes of the Jews in Egypt to spare them from the last plague that He visited upon the Egyptians. The Passover celebrates how God enabled the Jews to pass over from Egypt to the Promised Land. Tonight, Christ prepares us for how God the Father formulates a new kind of Passover. Tonight, Christ prepares us to accept that He alone is the true Passover, God in the flesh who passes over us and takes upon Himself the hard task of defeating sin and death to carry us over into new life.

So tonight, Christ gives us two forms of future goodness that will ensure our passing over into the good work of Good Friday. The Apostles didn’t understand it then. Christ was laying the groundwork for what they would remember and understand later. The first form is the Holy Communion, and the second is the call to servanthood.

St. Paul reminds us that The Lord’s Supper, The Eucharist, or the Holy Communion was instituted on the night in which He was betrayed. (1 Cor. xi. 23) Tonight is the night on which Christ was betrayed. In the midst of this evil, Christ promises to be with His friends in the future. His promise will be stronger than all Man’s efforts to impede the salvation that He brings into the world. His promise will be even stronger than His bodily Resurrection on Easter Day, which was necessary but temporary. So, St. Paul tells us that Christ

took bread; and when He had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat; this is my Body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also He took the cup, when He had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood; this do in remembrance of me. (ibid, 24,25)

The goodness that Christ will bring to us is threatened tonight by betrayal and tomorrow by cowardice, malice, vengeance, and death. But tonight, Christ gives us strength in a form that will enable us to fight off all these potential sins. The new Passover is being established by Christ in His body and through His blood. St. Eusebius of Caesaria tells us that:
Since the body he had assumed was about to be taken away from their bodily sight, and was about to be carried to the stars, it was necessary that, on the day of His last supper, He should consecrate for us the sacrament of His body and blood, so that what, as a price, was offered once should, through a mystery, be worshipped unceasingly.

Christ prepares His Apostles then and us now for the mystery of our participation in the goodness of His redemption. We are invited to believe that bread and wine can become His body and blood for us. We are invited to believe that this special meal of earthly elements will become our share of spiritual nutriment at His Divine Table. Christ the God/Man will return to the Father. Christ the Logos will return to us through the Holy Ghost, as the Word to be made flesh in us, Sacramentally, until the end of the ages.

What Jesus did and said, He offered as a friend. 

Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. (St. John xv. 14, 15) 
 
Friends, Do this in memory of me. (idem) Bread is broken and wine is outpoured. On Good Friday, a Body will be broken, and Blood will flow. Friends, remember this. The two acts will not be divided in the end. Jesus Christ is man–body, soul, and spirit. He is also God, the Logos. The Man and God are one for us. Bread and Wine will be Body and Blood as one for us.

Tonight, the Body and Blood –soon to be broken and letted, are offered to the future memory, understanding, and will of His followers. Tonight, also, the Body and Blood stoop down to wash and to cleanse the dirty feet of His disciples. The Body and Blood of Christ minister to us, feed us, heal us, and restore us. Today, He is the servant who feeds with bread and wine, and cleanses with water. Tomorrow, He will wash us in the Blood of His dying Body. Both will be one. Tonight is tender and tame. Tomorrow will be callous and cruel. Christ considers both to be equally good and necessary.

But there is more that we should see and grasp before we move from the Last Supper to Good Friday. What Jesus does is who He is, the will of the Father in human flesh. Who Jesus is, is what He intends we should become. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet…These things I command you, that ye love one another. (St. John xiii. 14, xv. 17) The suffering servant will give us bread and wine so that His Body and Blood, His nature, might be assimilated to ours. The suffering servant will wash the dirty feet of our souls so that we too might repent, believe, and offer ourselves to all others. To be nourished for servanthood will be perfected in the sacrifice He makes for us on Good Friday.

Tonight, we find ourselves the unwitting recipients of God’s goodness in Jesus Christ. Jesus does what he does, and we have no part of him if He does it not. Jesus comes to wash our feet, and, with Peter, we ignorantly resist. Lord, thou shalt never wash my feet. (St. John xiii. 8) Our instinct is to refuse to allow God in Jesus Christ to stoop down to feed and cleanse us. We prefer a God who does not stoop down because of our pride. We’d rather He not notice our sins and our fallen condition. We pretend that we don’t want Him to stoop down and bother Himself with our filth. We really prefer not to think of our filth. We’d rather He pass over and pass by our sins. We’d rather He forget.

But in Jesus Christ, nothing must be forgotten. Friends, do this in remembrance of me. Maundy Thursday is one day. There will be more to remember on Good Friday.  With Father Jean Mouroux, we must begin to realize that Christ must endure our sin and suffer our punishment of Him in death to overcome it.  Out of a means of destruction Christ made the very means of life; of a punishment the means of healing; of an annihilation the means to a resurrection. (The Meaning of Man, p. 88) In response to our sin, Christ still loves us and wants us for His Kingdom. Christ wants us to remember His measureless love, insistent love, persistent love, and love in search of His friends from the Cross. The Cross must define the Sacrament of Maundy Thursday.  

If the Sacrament instituted tonight is to have any effect, we must follow Christ, the suffering servant, to the Cross. Bread and wine will remain bread and wine until we embrace His Body as the place of our healing through the Blood He sheds for our salvation. From the Cross of His love, God’s suffering servant stoops down to cleanse and heal us. St. Paul tells us that for as oft as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come again. (ibid, 26) Christ’s death is the gateway to eternal life. We must not only remember it but also embrace its all-effectual power to save us. The Body broken and the Blood outpoured will be with us for as long as we live. Our calling must allow His brokenness and bloodletting to heal, repair, and redeem us. In Christ’s death, through the Holy Eucharist, we can die to sin and come alive to righteousness. The Holy Eucharist must join our hearts to His in death and beyond.  Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. (1 Cor. v. 7)
Amen.
©wjsmartin