Sermon: Maundy Thursday 2009

I've been promising for a while to put the text of my sermons onto my own web-page, but for now (at least until I can get my head and PC to co-operate with ftp) I'll start to post them here, and we can catch up later.

This was preached at Sunnyside Church on Maundy Thursday - 9th April 2009
Texts: Exodus 12:1-4,11-14, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, John 13:1-17, 31b-35

“Having loved his own who were in the world he now showed them the full extent of his love” John 13:1b

On Maundy Thursday caught as we are between the cries of ‘Hosanna’ and the cries of ‘Crucify Him’, we can have mixed feelings. We know the painful events of Good Friday are coming, and in the back of our mind we console ourselves with the thought of the resurrection after that. That’s the benefit of hindsight.

Tonight we can only read the words, try to imagine what it was like in the upper room, but our understanding is softened by our foreknowledge and anticipation of the good news to come.

This is our chance to look at a turning point in the history of salvation, and of our faith. The change from Passover to Communion, the foot-washing, and at the new commandment to love as Jesus loved us. Jesus shows us the full extent of his love, and all of his actions and words direct us towards one idea; to be the body of Christ as believers, as church, as one.

Let’s look first at

The change from Passover to Communion

Jesus institutes communion in words we will use shortly.

He fulfils and extends Passover; “When I see the blood I will pass over you” from Exodus is reprised as “the new covenant in my blood” in 1 Corinthians.

“When I see the blood I will pass over you” - “the new covenant in my blood”; only this time it isn’t the blood of a lamb, it is the blood of a man. Like the scapegoat of Jewish worship – the ram that was released into the desert which took the sins of the people into the desert to meet with wild beasts and death, Jesus in his baptism took our humanity, then went into the desert, confronting and defeating the demons and beasts, and came back to offer himself as a sin offering for all of us – a once and for all offering.

When Jesus talks about “the new covenant in my blood” he is offering us the chance to join with him.

Because communion is centred on the death of Christ, it demonstrates, not just the cross, but the effects of the cross, which we will celebrate on Sunday – our salvation.

Jesus’ blood becomes the marker of our salvation, the means of each one of us avoiding the penalty for our own sin because Jesus has already paid.

Our communion links us to the cross as, “we proclaim his death until he comes.” In communion, we are united with God and each other, every Christian, everywhere, past and present, the church, one body, one in Christ.

Listen to the words of institution, the broken body, the spilled blood; we are part of that, and we share it with each other as one.

Foot-washing

Is it a demonstration of service? Yes it is, but not just that.

It echoes Mary of Bethany anointing Jesus’ feet with nard. Jesus accepted this act of service from one who loved him as a human.

When Jesus washes his disciples feet his action confirms, just as his baptism in water did, that he has become one with all of humanity. God the son, the second person of the trinity, gave up his divinity to become human. He didn’t choose a high status role, with earthly power and authority; and here he symbolically took the role of the lowest of the low – a slave. He performed the actions of a slave, just as the Philippians passage that we sometimes use as a creed says, “…emptied himself, taking the form of a slave”. for us – how much lower could he get?
His action is prophetic – it is showing us how far God is prepared to stoop to clean us up. Not just our dirty feet, but our dirty hearts and lives; our prejudices and grudges, our arguments and divisions and our slavery to the things of this world.

It shows that none of us is too lowly to be touched by God’s love. It reinforces the message that we serve each other, out of a new model of love demonstrated by Jesus; one that says we are many people but one body, each one of us of equal value to God, and each of us part of one body. That love is the love of God for us, of which our love is but a reflection. If we know anything of love, we know God because God is love.

If we look at Jesus, washing the feet of his disciples, let’s remember that the cross achieved spiritually what his water did physically, and use that model of love for each other, one that replaces our own love of self with self-giving love for others – something that holds us together in our different roles, as one body.

This is love that values all of us. Did Jesus, even as he washed Judas’ feet and shared communion with him, weep for his friend? Did he weep for Peter and the others? Does he weep for you and me? What kind of love is this?

It is the love that Jesus teaches as he gives us

The new commandment

Just as he took the Passover ceremony and used it to institute our Eucharist, so Jesus took the commandment in Leviticus 19:18 to “love your neighbour as yourself” and reframed it. We know that Jesus knew this commandment – he quoted it to the teachers of the law, in Matthew 22:36-39, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law? 37 Jesus replied: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbour as yourself.' 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Jesus rephrases the commandment; offers us a new commandment, “to love one another as I have loved you” “As I have loved you”.

This love that Jesus modelled for us is not an emotion, it is a decision, and it is about determination and will as much as it is about feelings, “1 John 9, “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that God loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins”

We receive a new understanding of love; from our default position of love of self to the new standard of self-giving love; we are encouraged to imitate the love that God has for us, to love as God has loved us.

Funnily enough we are not being asked even to like each other, but to love each other. We are not being asked to wash each other’s feet, but to learn from the motive behind that – to treat each other as if we were all of equal value before God. We are being asked to love each other, and not just those people with clean feet, but all those who are part of the body of Christ. (Acts of service, generously given are the practical outworking of love. Mahatma Gandhi cleaned the toilets in his ashram as a sign that he wanted to be of service to others. I was going to talk to you about changing nappies, which is something I have been delighted to do this week, but I will spare you the details!)

There is one other side to this that I haven’t mentioned, that we each have to learn for ourselves. Each one of us is valued before God, and that includes each one of us. When we refuse to accept help, to accept the service of others in our own vulnerability then we are exercising a false humility. We are refusing to let Jesus wash our feet. Not for nothing do we sing, “Brother, sister, let me serve you, let me be as Christ to you. Pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant too.” God does love every one of us. We are all of equal value. We have different roles, but we are one body in Christ.

One body

Last first, first last, one body. The institution of communion, the service of foot-washing, the new commandment all tell us that each of us, in our different places, serving in our different ways, have an equal place in the love of God, that we all fit together to assemble the body of Christ.

And just like the disciples

We meet at a point of failure

a. The traitor eat with the saviour
b. The traitor and the betrayer have their feet washed by the saviour
c. The watchmen and prayer’s fall asleep
d. The friends back away
e. Jesus loves.

Tonight we remember, in our communion, that we are one body because Jesus loved, and continues to love, to make us one body in him.“Having loved his own who were in the world he now showed them the full extent of his love.” Let us celebrate that tonight.