Maundy Thursday
April 5, 2007

What would you do if you knew you only one more day to live? Who would you want to see? What would you want to say? How would you spend your last hours?

On Maundy Thursday we find Jesus in just this situation. We often credit Jesus with prophetic insight, but that prophetic insight wouldn’t be necessary for Jesus to know that his life was about to end. It was the time of Passover, a time when Jerusalem was filled with Jews who had come from all over to celebrate in the Holy City. It was time when emotions ran high as Jews celebrated their deliverance from bondage in Egypt. It was a time that made the Roman authorities nervous, on the look out for any rabble rousing, any hint of revolt or foment on the part of their Jewish subjects. Jesus’ exultant entry into the city in many ways mocked the triumphal processions of Rome. Jesus’ teachings and his popularity had already singled him out as someone to be watched, someone who might agitate the crowds and upset the careful balance of power in the city. Jesus knew this; Jesus had seen the troops stationed visibly around the city, and he had seen the crosses Pilate had lined up along the pilgrims’ way, each bearing a victim whose painful death served as a stark warning to anyone who dared to disturb the peace. Jesus must have known what was in store for him if he didn’t lay low, and he had no intention of laying low.

So what did Jesus do on his last night? He did what I think many of us would do--he had dinner with his disciples. He spent time with those who he knew and loved, but he didn’t spend that time idly. We have two different stories of what happened at that meal, two accounts of what Jesus did, but these two accounts have something in common. Jesus used the time not just to be with his friends but also to give them one more lesson in how to carry on once he was gone.

In the story we heard in tonight’s gospel, the Gospel of John, it is just before Passover. Jesus and his friends have gathered to share a meal as they had likely done many times before. It was the custom of the time for the feet of the guests to be washed before dinner. We are used to the idea of washing our hands, but in 1st century Jerusalem when people walked either barefoot or in sandals through streets filled with garbage and filth, where human excrement flowed along with everything else, washing feet was not just a nicety, it was a necessity. Because it was a dirty task it was relegated to slavers or servants. But at this dinner, on his last night, Jesus gets up, ties a towel around his waste, and washes the feet of his disciples himself, much to their dismay. Jesus takes on a lowly task, a filthy job and in doing so he embodies for his disciples and for us what he has been teaching all along: servant ministry—gentle, humble, selfless, unconcerned with status, generous, loving. And then he commands them, and us, to do likewise.

In the synoptic gospels we hear a slightly different story. Jesus is again at table with his friends, sharing a meal—in this account the Passover meal—for what he knows will be the last time when he takes two common elements of that meal, bread and wine, and turns their meaning completely around. “Take, eat, this is my body” he says to them as he breaks the bread. “This is my blood, shed for you and for many. Do this in remembrance of me,” he says over the wine. Although it is likely that his friends didn’t understand it at the time, when Jesus utters these words he is inviting his friends to partake in more than simple bread and wine; he is inviting them to partake in his death and resurrection and the life-giving sustenance that paradoxically flows from that. Like the command to wash the feet of others, to act as servant ministers to others, the invitation to live into Jesus’ death and resurrection through the bread and wine is extended not just to the disciples, but to each of us as well.

Tonight, Maundy Thursday, we begin a liturgy that will not conclude until the Great Vigil of Easter on Saturday night. In this liturgy of the Triduum, the three days, we are invited to live into Jesus’ life, death and resurrection in a particular way. In our liturgy tonight we recall what Jesus shared with his friends on that last night when he knew that his death was on the horizon: As we wash the feet of one another we recall the mandate to act as servants, reaching out to and caring for others just as Jesus did, and as we celebrate the Eucharist we recall the invitation to partake in the life-giving sacrament of Jesus’ body and blood, broken and poured out for us. Tomorrow we will walk the way of the cross with Jesus and on Saturday we will mourn his loss before we discover the joy of the empty tomb. We participate in this liturgy not just to remember or just to reenact, but rather to make these events a part of our selves, to identify with Jesus as he approaches the suffering of the cross. In doing so we are shaped and formed—shaped and formed by Jesus’ teaching, Jesus’ suffering, Jesus’ resurrection so that at the end—the end of the Triduum, the end of our lives, we know, truly know that God’s redemption is there for us as we stand with Christ.

AMEN