Fr. Andrew Armond – Maundy Thursday, April 14, 2022
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Wherever Christians have gathered for the past 2,000 years, they have remembered this night, the night in which Jesus, as John says, came from God, and was going to God. In that simple phrase, we, too, remember that Maundy Thursday is a focal point for Jesus’s entire story, though it is not the whole story.
Jesus came from God, and was going to God.
Born in the lowly manger; lived a quiet and ordinary life, until he heard the voice of the Father calling him, clearly and compellingly, to follow him, to dedicate his life to listening to God’s voice, to seeing God’s presence in the lives of those around him, to honoring, loving, forgiving, and serving the people among whom he lived.
Jesus came from God, and was going to God.
As Jesus honored, loved, forgave, and served, the world simply could not bear it. Our sin, after all, is simply our inability to bear the love of God. God’s love compels us, and it changes us, and we are not always ready for change, not always ready for transformation. And yet God waits, patiently bearing with us, understanding us and loving us in the midst of our inability to receive the gracious gifts of God’s love.
Jesus came from God, and was going to God.
Since the world could not bear God’s love, they dealt with it the only way they knew how. They rejected it. It was too painful to be loved in this way, too risky, too frightening.
Peter, one of Jesus’s closest friends, knew this. He was terrified by the depths to which Jesus’s love would go. “You will never wash my feet,” he says, in a moment of vulnerability. Peter looks with profound unease on the Lord stripping himself of his garments, taking the bowl and the water, and moving toward him first to wash his feet. This unsettles Peter so because he has confessed his faith, our faith, that Jesus is indeed the Son of God, God personified, in the flesh, the savior and redeemer of the world. Peter, like us, is afraid of what this kind of love might do to us, where it might lead us, how it might transform us.
Jesus came from God, and was going to God.
Later, Jesus tells them all–later, you will understand. And so as we look back on this story tonight, the story we re-tell time and time again, every time we gather for the sacred mystery of the Eucharist, we remember, and we still seek to understand. We elect to participate in that same love that Jesus shared with his disciples in the first Eucharistic feast, that shocking and scandalous love of Jesus that disarms us, that catches us unaware, that surprises us because it is so deep, so wide, so true.
Jesus came from God, and was going to God.
These holiest of days in the church calendar remind us of what the mothers and fathers of our faith have always determined to be most important, most central, most worthy of our attention. And so, while Jesus has taught in parables, has healed the sick, has demonstrated mastery over nature in the calming of storms and over the demonic forces of this world in casting them out, nothing shocks his disciples more than this humble, profound act of servanthood. Jesus shows them what God’s love looks like. In Jesus, God has come near to us. In Jesus, God serves us. In Jesus, God gives us God’s very self.
Jesus came from God, and was going to God.
Jesus comes to us in some regular and predictable ways. The Lord’s Supper or the Eucharist, instituted by Jesus on this holy night, and repeated every time we gather for the Lord’s Day. We eat and drink this holy meal to remember his death, to proclaim his resurrection, and to await his coming in glory. We eat it so that we may have his life in us, animating us, radiating outward from us to others.
We eat it so that we know the depths of God’s love for us. The body of Jesus, broken for us. The blood of Jesus, shed for us.
Jesus came from God, and was going to God.
And Jesus comes to us in irregular and unpredictable ways, too, like the washing of the disciples’ feet. The commandment of Jesus to love one another, seemingly so simple, so basic, something that we reduce and domesticate, is of course quite radical. To love one another is to open ourselves up to unpredictability. We do not know if others will reciprocate our love. We do not know when others will need our love. We do not know when the commandment to love will upend our plans, reorient our lives, change us.
Jesus came from God, and was going to God.
What Jesus leaves us with, however, is at the very depths of the faith we proclaim: God is with us. God is for us. God serves us in love, and asks us to model that love in our fidelity to one another. In loving one another, we love God. We, too, came from God, and we, too, will follow Jesus, our beloved Savior, in going to God.
AMEN.