Maundy Thursday

He riseth up from supper, and laid aside his garments, and took a towel and girded himself.

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. In a sense there was so much to be thankful for, so many wonders and miracles, so many beautiful teachings and sayings, so much that man could endure and even enjoy. But tonight, we sense the impending doom of suffering, and death. Tonight, we feel fear and sense the approaching darkness of suffering and death.

But despite what is coming, tonight, we witness more of the Goodness of God in Jesus Christ. Come what may, no matter what might threaten His earthly mission to us, Jesus Christ came into the world to offer God’s goodness to us. Jesus has been tempted to reject His Father’s will and way. He has refused it resolutely by embracing God’s goodness. The Father desires the Son, and the Son desires the Father. Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee. (St. John xvii. 1) The two move together as One for us men and for our salvation. Jesus Christ always embraces the will of the Father. Jesus has never denied God’s light and love. Tonight, before He bids us follow Him into darkness, He offers more goodness from the Father.

Tonight, the goodness that Jesus offers to us comes in the Last Supper that He shares with His friends. 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 the Jews passing over from Egypt to the Promised Land. Tonight, Christ prepares us for God the Father’s passing over of our sins. Tonight, Christ prepares us to accept that He alone will not be passed over, but must bear the burden of our sins, defeat them, and put them to death on the Cross of His Love, tomorrow.

In tonight’s Epistle, 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, Christ imparts goodness in the face of impending betrayal. His promise to be with His friends will not be passed over because of Fallen Man’s sin. His promise will be stronger than all Man’s efforts to impede the salvation that He brings into the world. So, as St. Paul reminds us, 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 malice, suffering, and death. But tonight, Christ gives us strength to fight our many betrayals of Him, to be with Him in suffering and death tomorrow. The New Passover is being established by Christ. A New Testament or covenant is inaugurated through Christ’s body and 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. We have been given us an example that Christians will forever follow in Imitation of Christ.

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) Bread is broken and wine is outpoured. Tomorrow a Body will be broken, and Blood will flow. The two acts will not be divided in the end. Just as Christ’s human nature was joined to His Divine Being, so bread and wine will be joined to His Body and Blood, the essence of Himself as the Word of the Father.

Tonight, the Body and Blood –soon to be broken and pierced, offers Himself to the memory and will of His followers. Tonight, also, the Body and Blood stoops down to wash and to cleanse the dirty feet of His disciples. Jesus always serves His friends. He promises that He will feed them by stooping down to wash them. The Body and Blood, present to the Church until the end of all time, will nourish and serve. 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. We are washed through water and blood. Tonight is tender and tame. Tomorrow will be callous and cruel.
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) He will give us bread and wine so that His Body and Blood, His nature, might be assimilated to us. He will wash the dirty feet of our souls so that we too might become humble servants giving 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 see how God in Jesus Christ must humble himself to save us. Proud as we are, we prefer a distant and unapproachable God: a God easier to endure. We prefer a God who does not muddy His garments with the filth and corruption of earthly existence. Our sense is that the Holy Word of God should never stoop down from Heaven to suffer the effects of our sin. God is high, we are low; the Master should never condescend to become a slave. Depart from me Lord, for I am a sinful man. (St. Luke v. 8) Jesus answers, If I do not wash thee, thou hast no part with me. (Ibid) 

Tonight, with Jean Mouroux, we must begin to realize that, 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) Christ chose His destiny as suffering and dying servant for you and for me. At the source of this choice, there lay a measureless love, a love that never hesitated, never drew back, never murmured; a love on the contrary that accepted, desired, and bore with everything. (Ibid, 89)

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 offered for us, and His Blood outpoured for us. Servanthood will only and ever be an earthly virtue unless we allow Christ the servant to nourish and heal us from the Cross of His love. 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) Man was made for Communion with God. Man is remade for Communion with the Father, through the death of His own Son. We are called to partake of nothing short of God’s Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, to be made flesh in us. As easily as faith submits to Christ’s death for us, so shall bread and wine become Body and Blood, fitting us to serve God and one another.

Amen.
©wjsmartin