Maundy Thursday 2018: May God’s words alone be spoken, may God’s words alone be heard. Amen.
Tonight we begin. Tonight we enter into a three day service – the Paschal Triduum. This year, to make that reality much more clear, you have been given a single bulletin, which includes each part of the Triduum – Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday. You will note that at the end of tonight and tomorrow night there will be no dismissal – no neat ending to the service…because it is not yet over. Tonight’s service continues tomorrow night, and that service concludes on Sunday.
The Paschal Triduum is the story of our faith – where darkness and light, betrayal and love, death and life – are intertwined. Why? Because as I said on Palm Sunday, and will repeat each service of this Triduum: to stand in darkness without the knowledge of light will kill us of hope. And to stand in light without the knowledge of darkness will blind us to suffering. Our faith demands both.
And so we begin this journey here – with Jesus at table with his friends, including the one who will betray him, and the one who will deny him. It is Maundy Thursday, Maundy being the Latin meaning mandate or commandment. And that mandate is the one we hear tonight. Jesus asks his followers to love one another – and then lives out the very thing he teaches – he kneels before each of them – Judas and Peter too, and washes their feet.
Jesus gives this commandment to us in between two acts of betrayal, washing the very feet of those who would send him to the cross, and deny who he is at his darkest hour. And yet, he loves them in no less a way than any other. Hold that in your heart for a moment, and consider something else we do tonight. We will strip the altar, the church, bare – and we will hear another form of betrayal – those who could not stay awake to give comfort to Jesus in his anguish. All that will be left for us in the end will be the altar of repose in the chapel – where the consecrated body and blood of Christ will be placed, and where we will, as each feels called, spend time there with Him.
Why? Why is this necessary? Why do we do this?
Everything about this night draws us deeper into the mystery of our faith – and into the depths of the truth of who we are in the story. For all of us are follower and betrayer, disciple and denier. That is one of the reasons I so love the Passion that Dzeici Theatre does here on Palm Sunday, and also repeated this past Tuesday for others outside our parish. I love it, because throughout the story as enacted by them, the character of Jesus, Judas, Peter…all the characters in the Passion – they move from person to person – male to female – even to one of us, pulled from the congregation. The symbolism is powerful – reminding us who we are in the story of the Passion…we are everyone in it. And that includes Judas, Peter, and Jesus.
We are Judas at times.
It is easier for us to point to what Judas did and see that as a betrayal – perhaps because we can rationalize it, saying we would never do such a thing. Oh, but we do. We do it all the time. You see, we betray one another whenever we turn our backs on others, and when we do – we turn our backs on Christ, and all that he taught us – we betray Him. In everyone – the friend and the stranger, the homeless and the wealthy, the strong and the weak – we look into the eyes of Christ. Betrayal comes in all shapes and sizes…It happens when we push others to the margins. It happens when we exploit others for our own gain. It happens when we value expediency over compassion, when we turn our backs on our brother or sister in need. We betray then our baptismal covenant in Christ, in which we promise to seek and serve Him in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourself, striving for justice and peace among all people, and respecting the dignity of every human being. So yes, we are sometimes Judas.
And, we are also Peter.
How many of us have, when faced with a difficult choice, decided to do as Peter did – to keep silent, to deny who we are, to deny someone else to save ourselves. How many of us deny Him through our neglect of our baptismal covenant to continue in the apostles teaching and fellowship, the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers. We do this when we do not come together at the table with our brothers and sisters in Christ – to do as He commanded and experience Him in the Eucharist. Worship isn’t an option, but part of who we are – and when we do not regularly participate in it – we begin to deny through neglect the very real presence of Him in what we share here at His table.
So yes, we are sometimes Peter.
And yet, even as we are at times either Peter or Judas it is only because we have forgotten that we are first and foremost Jesus – the body of Christ in the world. It may be difficult to imagine we are Jesus, but our very faith demands that we do – we are the body of Christ! We proclaim this gospel truth always. And Christ is found in everyone else too.
So yes, we are Jesus – the body of Christ in the world.
Jesus hoped that in this final act, he might offer his followers a way out of the trap of betraying him in the world, the trap of denying him in ourselves, the trap of not letting him near enough to wash us in His love. He knew that only love, genuine love found in humble service and experienced in His real presence in communion, would free us from bondage, would free us to be what we were born to be, and do what we are called to do. Would move us from our Peter and Judas moments to living fully into our Jesus lives – the life we died and were born into in baptism when we were marked by the Holy Spirit as Christ’s own forever.
See, that’s the key, right? That this baptism into which we entered into the body of Christ began not with life, but with death? And so too will we begin here tonight, not with joy and light, but in darkness and pain. This is where we must begin – there is no other path to Easter but through Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. All else is a shallow experience best left to chocolate bunnies and egg hunts.
Tonight we experience God’s love in Jesus’ humility – and face our own demons that lead us to betrayal and denial of Him in the face of our brothers and sisters, in the face we see in the mirror.
Tonight we strip bare all that will distract us from the darkness and death that awaits Jesus – that awaits us.
Tonight we dwell in the despair of the garden.
Tonight we enter into our three day journey that changed the world, that will change us, if we let it.
Amen.
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Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
March 29, 2018
Maundy Thursday
1st Reading – Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14
Psalm 116:1, 10-17
2nd Reading – 1 Corinthians 11:23-26
Gospel – John 13:1-17, 31b-35
