Maundy Thursday

A Homily for Maundy Thursday                                All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C.  April 2, 2015                                                                 Thomas E. Wilson Rector

1 Corinthians 11:23-26                       John 13:1-17, 31b-35              Psalm 116:1, 10-17 

This is a Fresco by Ben Long  on the  wall behind the Altar at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Glendale Springs, NC. It is right off the Blue Ridge Parkway. I posed for one of the disciples before I went to seminary and later did a field placement there. Notice the basin, bowl and towel for foot washing near the bottom right of the fresco

Originally the early Jewish Christians took the Passover service and adapted that service to a remembrance of the institution of the Lord’s Supper. When the Gentile Christians started to outnumber the Jewish Christians, the Christian Passover services fell by the wayside. 

When Christianity became legal under Constantine in the 4^th century, his mother Helen, a devout Christian, started a Public Works program for Holy Sites in Jerusalem, and a booming Pilgrimage business got going. People especially wanted to come for Easter, so in the manner of all Chambers of Commerce in places that benefit from the tourist trade, the local Christians decided to make it a week long event rather than just a one-day Easter celebration. There is an account by one Pilgrim in 381-384 of that week-long event, and she described how a Thursday Eucharist was celebrated at 2:00 PM, and afterward, the Pilgrims walked to the crucifixion site for a service.  Then they would have a meal and move to the Mount of Olives where the service continued until 11:00PM, then move on to Gethsemane and pray until dawn on Friday.  The hearty ones would go to the site where Jesus was whipped, while the less hearty would take a nap until it was time to walk the Way of the Cross at noon. Saturday would be a quiet day of reflection and then Sunday would come with all sorts of celebration. When the Pilgrims returned to their homes, they shared their experiences, and their local communities adapted their own Holy Week celebrations. 

When Lent was established as a season in the church when sinners would go through penance for 40 days, by the 7^th Century the Roman Church developed a service of reconciliation for Thursday which sometimes included a washing of feet as an enactment of the Gospel lesson from John, and it developed into “Maundy” from the Latin “mandatum” meaning “commandment”. The Penitents would be welcomed back to have Communion and then the service would end with washing the altars for Good Friday. Later on Bishops, Priests, Abbots and Kings would use these services to show humility and wash the feet of a select number of beggars. 

The Protestant Reformation looked with scorn on these practices, and when the Anglican Church was established by Edward VI, the son of Henry VIII, the first Prayer Book did away with these practices in church. However, as Marion Hatchett notes, in 1590 Queen Elizabeth “kept her maundy” in Westminster by washing the feet of 20 poor women. Later Kings of England continued doing the “Royal Maundy” practice until the 18^th Century when the more Protestant German House of Hanover came to the English throne with George I.

The Liturgical Movement in the 20^th century gave the opportunity for this service to be experimented with in some churches and, in the 1979 Prayer Book, it came to its present form. I started participating in this service as a lay person long before going to seminary, and it helped to inform me about what the message of Jesus was in my ministry as a lay person and later as a Priest.My understanding was/is that I come as a servant.

In the Gospel lesson at the end of his earthly ministry with his disciples, Jesus has supper with them. Chances are that the disciples had already washed their own feet as they came into the house before they reclined down to supper. Jesus interrupts the meal by getting up and taking off his clothes. I don’t know about you, but if my host starts to take off his clothes, I start looking for an exit.  Jesus then takes a towel and wraps it about himself and offers to wash their feet. Remember the feet are already washed; there is no need for this activity unless Jesus is trying to make a point. 

It seems to me that there are two main points he wants to make. I think that Jesus is acting out a metaphor of his ministry. The Christ energy of God, through whom all creation was made, empties out to become the human Jesus, to do the work of showing us what being human is all about - to empty oneself in serving God and neighbor. At supper Jesus leaves his place of honor and, after emptying himself out to be a servant, he resumes his place of honor when his work is done.  Jesus invites people to follow his example and become vulnerable with each other. I think his second point is to show how we are to deal with our enemies. Jesus will wash the feet of the one who will betray him. He could have stopped Judas, but he chose to love him instead.

Feet are how we stand on the earth, our connection and orientation to the reality of life. Karl Jung said, “When you walk with naked feet, how can you ever forget the earth.” In the same way, when our naked feet are washed in love as a remembrance of Jesus’ love, how can we ever forget that we did not earn that love we have been given?

The purpose of the church is not to do rituals to remember the past but to help us to be transformed, and this church continues the ritual of emptying out oneself for neighbor and for enemy so that Christ might transform the world as we are transformed from rulers to servants.

This reflection seemed to miss the point so I added Frederick Buechner's  midrash which a friend sent to me and I pass it on to you.

Buechner's midrash:

The Lord's Supper is make-believe. You make believe that the one who breaks the bread and blesses the wine is not the plump parson who smells of Williams' Aqua Velva but Jesus of Nazareth. You make believe that the tasteless wafer and cheap port are his flesh and blood. You make believe that by swallowing them you are swallowing his life into your life and that there is nothing in earth or heaven more important for you to do than this.

It is a game you play because he said to play it.

"Do this in remembrance of me." Do this.

Play that it makes a difference. Play that it makes sense. If it seems a childish thing to do, do it in remembrance that you are a child.

Remember Max Beerbohm's Happy Hypocrite, in which a wicked man wore the mask of a saint to woo and win the saintly girl he loved. Years later, when a castoff girlfriend discovered the ruse, she challenged him to take off the mask in front of his beloved and show his face for the sorry thing it was. He did what he was told, only to discover that underneath the saint's mask, his face had become the face of a saint.

This same reenactment of the Last Supper is sometimes called the Eucharist, from a Greek word meaning "thanksgiving," that is, at the Last Supper itself Christ gave thanks, and on their part Christians have nothing for which to be more thankful.

It is also called the Mass, from missa, the word of dismissal used at the end of the Latin service. It is the end. It is over. All those long prayers and aching knees. Now back into the fresh air. Back home. Sunday dinner. Now life can begin again. Exactly.

It is also called Holy Communion because, when feeding at this implausible table, Christians believe that they are communing with the Holy One himself, his spirit enlivening their spirits, heating the blood, and gladdening the heart just the way wine, as spirits, can.

They are also, of course, communing with each other. To eat any meal together is to meet at the level of our most basic need. It is hard to preserve your dignity with butter on your chin, or to keep your distance when asking for the tomato ketchup.

To eat this particular meal together is to meet at the level of our most basic humanness, which involves our need not just for food but for each other. I need you to help fill my emptiness just as you need me to help fill yours. As for the emptiness that's still left over, well, we're in it together, or it in us. Maybe it's most of what makes us human and makes us brothers and sisters.

The next time you walk down the street, take a good look at every face you pass and in your mind say, "Christ died for thee." That girl. That slob. That phony. That crook. That saint. That damned fool. Christ died for thee. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee.