Sermon: Maundy Thursday – 14th April 2022 (Evening)
St. Mary Magdalene, Outwood
Exodus 12.1-4 [5-10] 11-14 – 1 Corinthians 11.23-26 – John 13.1-17, 31b-35
Holy God, as we journey with Jesus tonight, may our eyes and ears be ready, and our hearts open to your calling. Amen.
“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. “
I don’t know about you, but my memory is shocking!
I don’t just mean I forget stuff, which can be embarrassing or inconvenient.
I used to be good at mentally ‘putting things in boxes’ – keeping thoughts and memories separate….
Now, with ‘long covid’, medication and other factors – these days, I don’t even recall where I put those metaphorical memory boxes… or indeed how to open them when I find them.
Memory is fundamental to our human existence. We have seen the devastating effects of illnesses that steal away the life-memories from our loved ones, transforming them into apparent strangers – to us and to themselves.
Memory is key to the formation of our religious experiences:
The bible passages that come easily to mind…
The prayers we learn when young… so precious to us as we get older.
And in church, how the memory of ‘we always do it this way’ is passed on to the new vicar!
And at a deeper level, the Church relies on a history infused by earlier oral traditions and ideas that formed our scriptures and holy texts – a legacy of memories passed on and down through the generations.
None of us were present at the time of Jesus, so it is not our own memories that are relied upon to develop an understanding of the past. It is the collected memories of those past generations – adapted and lived – that light up the road ahead for us as we are formed and grow in faith.
And for memory to work, for the future, we need signposts, reminders, and methods of retelling with which to pass it on to the next generations.
The Croatian theologian, Miroslav Volf, writes about how memory influences religious histories and traditions:
He says – only in Israel, and nowhere else, is the directive to remember given as a religious imperative to an entire people.
Israel is commanded to recall its past, and acknowledge where God was with them.
In Deuteronomy – “Remember the days of old, consider the years of ages past” and again, “Remember that you were a slave in Egypt”.
And in Isaiah – “Remember these things, O Jacob, for you, O Israel, are my servant; … never forget me”.
Just a few examples from ancient scripture, with which Volf demonstrates a “hammering insistence” on memory, especially the memory of redemption from suffering and mistreatment.
Such memory of a shared history pervades all of Jewish life and practice – and Christians have inherited from the Jews this emphasis on the centrality of memory.
Every Christian confession is an exercise in memory.
To shout out ‘Jesus is Lord!’ invokes the name of a person who lived in a given time and place.
Every celebration of Holy Communion is an event of memory; it is conducted “in remembrance” of Jesus Christ, of what he has done and of what he will do.
The memories of the Exodus and Passion are essentially memories of God – flesh-and-blood events in the history of Israel and the life of Jesus Christ.
From the release of Israel, passing through the Red Sea to reach the Land of Promise; to a man condemned, beaten, crucified, and then raised to new life.
It is on God that memory zeroes in. God heard the cries of the Hebrews suffering under the yoke of slavery in Egypt; God delivered them and God raised Christ from the dead.
Always God calls upon Israel to remember, and to learn from its past and accept God’s abiding love.
In our Gospel passage, Jesus, in His divine prescience of what was to come, prepares to say farewell.
Unlike the other Gospels, John’s narrative doesn’t describe this meal shared amongst friends – a Passover remembrance of earlier times. We receive this Last Supper, as the institution of the Eucharist, in Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians.
Instead, we have reminders – of the nature of God and Christ – of what loving service is about, and that there will be difficulties in the times to come – for them, for those who came after and for us.
We are reminded, once more, of the depth of Jesus’s love for ‘his own’ – a love that also anticipates what Judas is about to do.
And then, in a final instruction on how to live a life of service, Jesus washes the feet of the Disciples. Wow!
I never cease to be amazed at this!
What did they think of it, I wonder?
This was an intimate but daily occurrence, offered to guests and performed by the most menial of servants.
For a Rabbi, or the one that the Disciples called ‘Master’, to do such a thing was unthinkable – awkward, and unsettling and yet ultimately so very Jesus – demonstrating the pattern of service and love which He asks the Disciples to adopt!
And of course, Peter gets the wrong end of the stick – SURPRISE!
Indeed, it will be the first of his challenges that evening.
Yet, what matters here, is that the Disciples will remember this strange moment – eclipsed by the events of their next few days – but recalled later: ‘why did He do that? What did Jesus try to show us in that moment?’
And into all of this, to underline all that He had tried to teach them, Jesus offers a new commandment.
This isn’t the same as the commandment to love your neighbour as yourself.
This ‘new commandment’, although not new words, is a call to love in the same way that Jesus has loved.
As HE loved THEM, so they must LOVE also….
My late father, a parish priest of yesteryear, would often preach on how Jesus turned everything upside down, by talking about love – how loving one another was the way to God; how living by such words was the mark of a Christian.
As you may have witnessed in others, I saw him live this New Commandment each time he was called out in the night to the dying, or comforting the lost and lonely – inevitably at a cost to his family-life and health – yet he believed it was the right way to live: the sacrifice of Christ as a pattern to us all.
I have often sat through the vigil of this night, long hours on hard seats – with a wondering mind, aching joints and a draft on my neck. I have spent this time listening to the sounds of the city outside, or to fellow watchers snoring in a corner.
We are like the disciples of Jesus in so many ways – especially in our efforts to support Him in prayer!
To stay awake I have read by poor light, prayed, and made lists in my head! And I have tried to remember…. what happens next….?
In the passage from John this evening, we omit part of the narrative where Judas leaves the gathering to betray Jesus. Verse 30 ends with the words: “…. and it was night.”
For some reason, I get to this point in my recall and then ponder deeply on what happens next. The chronological moments, the key points, the dialogue…. All so familiar to us…. But at times it seems to be essential that we ‘get it right’ – events in the right order, from here to there: from the Upper Room to the Cross and beyond…. via the Kidron Valley and Gethsemane.
As if getting the story right in our minds is all that matters; the signs and symbols, images and music, must all come in the correct order.
Of course it isn’t that. These are ways to remember – the recall of the generations before us, passed on.
No, these are not my own memories that I am trying to master – it is a story I have heard, central to my belief – yes, but the memories are of what I hear and see, built from experience, scripture, film and preachers and teachers throughout my life.
A picture is developed. A picture that I can gaze upon and find my place in the story.
How do we proceed from this tonight? Actually, that’s neither a good or right question.
The narratives and liturgies are set-out before us. Tomorrow is Good Friday, and we know what happens then. We also recall the stories we will hear, and the celebrations of Easter past.
The pattern of memory, is in our church year – it’s practices and lectionary.
History and tradition, instructed by scripture, enveloped in memory – with signposts and reminders, colours and sounds and smells – leading us through the seasons of the Church and enriching our lives.
So, a different question:
How do we respond personally?
What are our memories that bind us to Jesus, and draw us closer to God’s redemption and love?
Jesus didn’t say ‘worship me’. He said ‘follow me’. Imitate Him and do as He did.
Of course, not everyone feels able to receive this commandment, this invitation to form their life around Christ’s love.
There are many for whom the notion of unconditional love is a sign of weakness, and would prefer the more robust extracts from scripture that speak of judgment, vengeance, and rules.
Such passages are rarely presented in the right context, or offered in the hope of a Kingdom built on grace.
The Way of Christ – of following Him, and loving as He has loved, is always in context, always relevant and always necessary.
And it is not just for a season…..
This commandment, uttered amongst friends who were unsure of the future, in a time and place where hope was crushed by a violent occupation; against the strictures of religious practices that gave very little solace….
This commandment to love was for everyone, every day and in everyplace.
And so it is for us today.
Love one another: that’s each and everyone of us imitating Jesus, in this place and everywhere we go, to everyone we meet, not counting the cost…!
This seems like too much to ask from us – with all that challenges us…. doesn’t it?
It is only by God’s grace that we can hope to do this,
It is through faith in God’s love for us that we can hope to love!
In prayer, worship and sacrament, and in constant readiness for God’s call, we might attempt the impossible.
Oscar Romero, during the few short years that he was Archbishop of El Salvador, until his murder in 1980 by government forces, wrote and preached extensively about the redemptive love we find in Christ.
On Maundy Thursday in 1978 Romero preached that: “In all of history no one has ever encountered a love that was so …. crazy, so exaggerated: giving to the point of being crucified on a cross. There is no friend who has given his life for another friend with such an outpouring of suffering and love as Christ our Lord…. That is why Christ tells us that the sign of the Christian is living the new commandment he gives us. It is a commandment that tonight becomes fresh in our memory and our lives: “As I have loved you, so you also should love one another”.
So I offer you this hope:
Let us make this moment our own memory – one in which God comes close to us, through scripture, with our learned memories of His redemptive love; and where Jesus calls us again and again – reminding us to follow Him, to imitate Him, and to love one another as He has loved.
I pray you find the strength and grace to go and do likewise.
Amen.
Burridge, R.A. (2013) Four Gospels, One Jesus 3rd Ed., SPCK, London
Volf, M. (2006) The End of Memory, Eerdmans, Cambridge
Romero, O. (2018) The Scandal of Redemption [edited Kurtz, C.] (March 23, 1978; vol. 2, 316–18), Plough, New York
Wright, N.T. (2002) John for Everyone (Part 2), SPCK, London
Image: He Qui, Washing Feet