Sunday, March 27, 2016
Sermon for
MAUNDY THURSDAY
I have set you an example that you are to do as
I have done to you.
You should do to one another as I have done to
you….
if you know this, you are blessed if you do it.
March 24, 2016
* Holy Trinity & St. Anskar
Why
does the Fourth Gospel omit what is most distinctive in the other three
accounts - what happened
afterwards, “as supper was ending”? John
does not mention the Bread and Wine, Body and Blood, at all. The Institution of
the remembrance we call variously the Holy Eucharist, the Mass, the Divine
liturgy, the Lord’s Supper, or the Holy Communion is missing. Or is it? In place of the Institution, John has the
foot washing. What if John intends us to
understand that it signifies the same Reality as the Eucharist: the turning
point in history, the beginning of the Kingdom of God, where God’s will is done
on earth as in heaven.
John, writing much later, seems to offer a commentary on
the other Gospels, which were no-doubt well-known to him. They would have been
read in the gatherings that he attended – maybe presided at in Ephesus
(according to tradition) – and these gatherings themselves would have been
Eucharistic worship, in which the Lord “was known to them in the breaking of
bread”. Furthermore, the structure of
John’s Gospel as a Book of Signs
leading to the Passion and Resurrection culminates in this foot-washing – the
last sign before the beginning of the Passion in Gethsemane - the sign, which
shows what the Eucharist means in practical, historical terms.
I
have set you an example that you are to do as I have done to you should do to
one another as I have done to you….if you know this, you are blessed if you do
it.
The
worship of the Divine Liturgy is not just the rite of remembrance in Bread and
Wine, it is remembrance in the form of mutual love.
The Pedilavium or foot-washing is a sign in
the sense of a symbolic enactment of the New
Commandment, that Jesus links to it. Now, only God can give commandments.
That Jesus gives a new one is itself a sign of His divinity. At least by the
time of John’s writing, Jesus was known to be God-in-the-flesh. What He gave us
that night was not the supreme wisdom of a sage or prophet, but a New Commandment. This Mandatum
novum came to be called the Maundy
in English which became the name of the liturgical rite of foot-washing, which
we also do in remembrance of Him,
acting out the New Commandment.
Love
one another as I have loved you.
The
New Commndment summarizes the Two Great Commandments, which we already call the
summary of the law. As John would say
elsewhere, whoever loves in this way enters the Kingdom of God, here and now:
“whoever loves is born of God and knows God.” That is, whoever loves as Christ
loves – sacrificially unto death – enters fully into communion with God. Not only with the beloved whose feet are
washed, but with God. So, the Maundy is a sign of Communion, just as the Bread
and Wine.
The Maundy is the last sign Jesus gives before His final,
victorious battle with Sin and Death. The Mystery of His Body and Blood is its
setting. When we show forth that is,
when we PARTICIPATE in His death and
Resurrection in the Holy Eucharist,
we participate in it personally by receiving Communion. Personal salvation, does not mean individual salvation – it is communal, Communion. And so is the love of the New
Commandment – not just love others,
but love one another. The
reciprocity, implies community. You
can’t receive communion by yourself.
That is a contradiction in terms. Holy
Communion cannot be separated from the New Commandment. I think that is why the
Fourth Gospel put the enactment of the New Commandment in place of the Body and
Blood. Both signs point to the same Reality: a New Heaven and a New Earth.
Because the Commandment is not only to Love
one another, but to love one another
as I have loved you. That is, sacrificially unto death.
Not every one of us may be asked to lay down literal life
for others, but Jesus nevertheless commands this sacrifice of all of us in a
deep, spiritual sense.
Anyone
who wishes to be a follower of mine must leave self behind, take up the Cross,
and follow Me.
Insofar
as we give up our ego to be crucified, we follow Him. We lose our lives in one
sense in order to find Life in the ultimate sense. We lose our individual lives
I order to find interpersonal Life in the Communion of the Holy Spirit, in
which each is the servant of all, in the way that the One by Whom All Things
Were Made, reveals by washing our feet.
We Adore You, O Christ, and we Bless
You,
Because by Your Holy Cross, You have
Redeemed the World
