ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET
Sermon preached by Fr. Julian Browning at the High Mass of the Lord's Supper, Maundy Thursday, 1 April 2010.
Readings: Exodus 12: 1-4, 11-14; 1 Corinthians 11: 23-26; John 13: 1-17, 31b-35.
Jesus said: Now is the Son of Man glorified.
All year we try to find a place for God in our lives. We give him a place of honour, but, if we're honest, we give Him restricted access. We like to have God around, but on our terms. In Holy Week things are very different. We don't call the shots in Holy Week. It's the other way round. In Holy Week we see God at work, God doing something, and we join in. So God shows us our place in His life, He shows us where we belong, not the other way round. Do you know, I find that an immense relief not to have to take the strain, the psychological and physical strain of what we used to call "getting through Holy Week". Among the clergy it can become a sort of fashionable exhaustion. There must be a better way, and the better way, I think, is to see what we're doing tonight (and maybe for the rest of our lives) as God's story, in which we play a part. All we are trying to do is make clear to ourselves and the world, what God is like and what he does. We have to use what we've got, what we're used to: the traditions of the Church, words, actions, drama, music, silence. Through that medium, we reveal the living God, just as Jesus revealed who God is through actions, water, words and bread and wine.
Tonight we're telling that story in three dramatic sections and it's all about actions, rather than words. This action business often seems a bit of novelty to us in England, because we're taught to use our heads to sort things out, not our hearts. So God becomes a problem - an exam - we wrestle with in our heads, thus neatly preventing him from entering our hearts. Let's get away from ourselves for once and back to Jesus and the actions of tonight. First we have the Foot Washing, an acting out of tonight's Gospel. This isn't to show how humble and caring the clergy are. It's to show what God does. God is the one who cares for us when we are tired on our journey, who will clean us up and look after us, if we will let him, and that might be a big If for most of us. But we can join God in his work of love by doing the same in our lives, as Jesus commands us: I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. That's the Foot Washing.
The next action we have is the Last Supper, through the communion. There's no time to think about it, again there are more actions than words, and we are invited to the table. God invites us to join him. Again we see at last what God is up to. God is the one who feeds us. God can always be found because he has come down to our level, and is approached through simple things we understand, like bread and wine. Jesus uses real things, because his love, God's love, is real, not made up. We come here not to sort God out in our minds, but to be changed ourselves into the sons and daughters of God. The action of the servant is transformed in the washing of feet, the bread and wine are transformed, and you and I are transformed, changed, when we take into our lives his new commandment, love one another as I have loved you. Love is received only by loving. This is the love on show tomorrow, Good Friday. It's the love which goes on to the very end. That's two actions.
The third action is our procession at the end of the service to the Altar of Repose, the Garden of Gethsemane, with Jesus in the form of the consecrated bread. We go into the night to the Garden of Gethsemane, where the drama of the Passion begins. We follow Jesus into the night, into loneliness, towards betrayal and death. Again, we learn who God is and what He does, through what Jesus does in that Garden. God is the one who wants us to be with him there. God is the one we always leave, over and over again, but who always forgives us and holds us in His heart. We forget Him, He never forgets us. Jesus stays here, all night. We might manage an hour or two, but that's it. And that will always be the case for us, day after day. We are distracted by other things, we go to sleep, that's how we're made. God takes the strain, Jesus prays to the Father, Jesus watches while we sleep, God suffers for us. Here at last is a God worth having, a God worth following.
Maundy Thursday has a warmth and beauty and peace about it unlike any other day of the year. Our procession through Holy Week halts here, just for a while. It is the calm before the storm. It is the peace before the violence. It is the beauty before the disfigurement. Our ceremonies are all the more moving because we know what's coming next. And we know, that when it comes to the crunch, we shall, like the disciples, run away. The last supper indeed. But it's also a beginning again. All Christians have a dream to begin with, of being one of God's servants bringing good news and healing to the world. Then we find the world is not on our side, and a sort of corrosion sets in. But actually we were right the first time, the dream will come true, the Spirit is within us. Today the Bishop blessed the oils to be used in this parish over the next twelve months, the oil for baptism, the oil for healing the sick, the oil for confirmation. The oils are a sign of what a church can do. We can heal, we can open the gate of heaven, through forgiveness we can change ourselves and others. That is what we learn on this holy day, Maundy Thursday: Mandatum Novum: I give you a new commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.