Maundy Thursday sermon

Ten years ago at this same liturgy, a little further into it, something startling and bizarre happened. Few were aware of the liturgical innovation that was created by accident… a liturgical innovation which, to my surprise as I found out later, some churches do intentionally.

After communion while the congregation was singing hymn 329, Pangue Lingua, the same one we will sing tonight, the chalice bearer and I stood in front of the altar, ready to transport the reserve sacrament to the altar of repose for the overnight watch. In the split second that I reached forward to take the ciborium, I managed to grab onto the veil, which covered the cruet, thereby tipping it over. The chalice bearer reached forward quickly to prevent it from tipping over, but it was too late. Most of the wine spilled over the veils, over the corporal (that large piece of linen that serves as a tablecloth), and onto the fair linens themselves. There was nothing to do but keep on going — we had maybe three verses left to carry the elements to the side altar. With great chagrin, I left the mess on the high altar.

When it came time to strip the church of all its adornments, the chalice bearer and I came back to the altar. Our reactions were similar: it looked as though the wine had coagulated — as if it were blood. We looked at one another — tears in our eyes, a sinking feeling in our gut. We were looking no longer at wine, but Christ’s blood, spilt for us. When the two of us spoke the next day, we both shared how shaken we were.

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On Maundy Thursday, tradition has it we commemorate two things: first, the washing of one another’s feet as an act of humility and solidarity before God and, second, the institution of the eucharist. At our simple supper before this service, people could wash one another’s feet; now we observe the institution of the holy eucharist, for it is a gesture that transcends time and place, uniting all in the body and blood of Christ.

Tissa Balasuriya, a Sri Lankan theologian notes, ‘Jesus celebrated the Eucharist only once, and within forty-eight hours he was dead, killed at the hands of the social structure from which he sought to liberate people. That is the true context for the Eucharist.’ (1) As we gather Sunday in and Sunday out — week-days, too — to celebrate the eucharist, we forget that historical fact. Jesus’ demand that we remember him in the actions of the eucharist comes from that poignant moment when he gathered with his disciples, knowing he was walking to his imminent death.

How must it have been for him? He had washed the feet of his disciples, making himself a servant to them. Poet Michael Moynahan describes the last supper thusly:

So now it
comes down to this:
leave-taking.
What to say?
What to do?
So much to say,
So much to do.
All poured into this last
parting gesture:
a sign,
a prayer.
Relying on
memory’s gift
and what a transformed meal
can possibly recall
celebrated
miles and years
from here and now
with people gathered
in his name. (2)

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This transformed meal — one borne out of sadness, partings, misunderstandings and conflict — has become that bond which unites us with that first group of people who gathered with their master. The wine, soon to become coagulated blood on the cross, combined with the bread has become the means of our remembering. And remember we do.

This meal of which we partake week in and week out, in the words of Henri Nouwen,

[…] is the most ordinary and the most divine gesture imaginable. That is the truth of Jesus. So human, yet so divine; so familiar, yet so mysterious; so close, yet so revealing! But that is the story of Jesus who ‘being in the form of God did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming as human beings are; and being in every way like a human being, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, even death on a cross.’ It is the story of God who wants to come so close to us, so close that we can see him with our own eyes, hear him with our own ears, touch him with our own hands; so close that there is nothing between us and him, nothing that separates, nothing that divides, nothing that creates distance.

Jesus is God-for-us, God-with-us, God-within-us. Jesus is God giving himself completely, pouring himself out for us without reserve. Jesus doesn’t hold back or cling to his own possessions. He gives all there is to give. ‘Eat, drink, this is my body, this is my blood… this is me for you!’…

In the Eucharist, Jesus gives all. The bread is not simply a sign of his desire to become our food; the cup is not just a sign of his willingness to be our drink. Bread and wine become his body and blood in the giving. The bread, indeed, is his body given for us; the wine his blood poured out for us. As God becomes fully present for us in Jesus, so Jesus becomes fully present to us in the bread and wine in the Eucharist.…

God does not hold back; God gives all. That is the mystery of the incarnation. That too is the mystery of the Eucharist. Incarnation and Eucharist are the two expressions of the immense, self-giving love of God. And so the sacrifice on the cross and the sacrifice at the table are one sacrifice, one complete, divine self-giving that reaches out to all humanity in time and space. (3)

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On one of our holiest of holy nights, we come together perhaps hesitantly, reverently, and sadly, knowing we gather on this last night as friends to share a meal that changes our lives. The meal we share tonight, the left-overs of which we will consume tomorrow in a bare church become a tomb, is heart-rending. But we are people of memory and even tomorrow on the one day we cannot give thanks the way we normally do, we remember the One who died for us.

So the wine seems to coagulate as we imagine it spilt on the altar because it is the blood of Christ which was shed for us on the cross, the event toward which this evening’s liturgy points us.

END NOTES
(1) John Carden, A Procession of Prayers (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1998), 169.

(2) Cited in Imaging the Word, Vol 2 (Cleveland, OH: United Church Press, 1994), 173.

(3) Henri Nouwen: Modern Spiritual Masters Series, ed. Robert Jonas (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1998), 90-91.

[photo: altar of repose Maundy Thursday afternoon]