20th March 2008MAUNDY THURSDAY
Fr David Cherry
Exodus 12 : 1 – 4 & 11 – 14 ; 1 Corinthians 11 : 23 – 26 ; John 13 : 1 – 17 & 31b – 35
“…having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them to the end…”
At the moment when Jesus comes forward and offers himself, surrenders himself into the hands of others, his glory is revealed.
The events we commemorate and contemplate tonight – the Last
Supper, the Institution of the Holy Communion, the Washing of feet,
betrayal, the walk across the Kidron valley, the watch in Gethsemane
– are the events which lead up to Jesus handing himself over in
the early hours of Good Friday, handing himself over to be done
unto.
The active Creator, Jesus in his ministry of healing and teaching, the
one who ‘comes from God and is going to God’ becomes the
Passive Victim.
Vanstone in his book, The Stature of Waiting, makes the point that in
St John’s gospel there is no Transfiguration on the Mount.
It happens in Gethsemane. When the soldiers arrive to arrest
Jesus, Jesus steps forward and asks: “Whom do you seek”;
and they reply: “Jesus of Nazareth”; and Jesus says
‘I am he’. At that point the soldiers step back and
fall to the ground.
At the moment when Jesus comes forward and offers himself, surrenders
himself into the hands of others, his glory is revealed. A
similar point is made in the gospel tonight after the washing of feet
where the Lord Creator is our servant : “Now is the Son of man
glorified, and God is glorified in him.”
This is nothing less than the revelation of the True God; what he is
like, and what we are like and meant to be for we are made in his
image: those who surrender all, step forward and say this is me.
Passivity is hard to deal with. We don’t easily admire the
passives, the ‘done-unto’s’. But there is a
story of a guard saying to Nelson Mandela ( I think) : Don’t you
know I have the power to kill you? And Mandela replying:
“Don’t you know that I have the power to go to my death
freely?”
The truth about our lives is that we’re not actually in control.
Life happens to us. The choices we make are all to do with
responding to what is given. We are not the originators.
The beauty of the lives of holy ones, saints, is that they live in
God’s world, always in remembrance that they ‘come from God
and are returning to God’; never forgetting that they are the
beneficiaries, the passive recipients of all that God has created as
gift. They are those who have stepped forward out of illusion
into truth, surrendering, offering themselves to it. Like St
Paul, they are those who know that possessing nothing they possess all
things.
At the closing of our lives we must surrender, hand ourselves
over. In our culture it is fighting off death to the last breath
that is commended at funerals, not quietly surrendering. Someone
writing recently about healing made the point that physical healing is
only for a while. We need to be realisitc: the death rate is still 100%.
A friend of mine whose doctorate is in feminist theology reminded me
the other day of the problem passivity raises for women.
It’s all very well for a man to say things about surrender,
sacrifice who you are. It is all very well when the powerful of
the earth, spiritual or temporal, talk of surrender, passivity.
This is and has been the royal road to abuse. It is as pertinent
to the Tibetans at this time as it is to you and me in our own
culture. She remarked that the important point being made by
feminist theologians is that one has to have a self to surrender; a
sure sense of self so as to step forward and give it away freely, a
sense of who one is to make the offering, a self-possession, someone to
give away. Thank God for feminist theology which reminds us of
this.
Jesus, through the gospels reminds us who he is – his self is
from the Father – he and the Father are one; he lives because of
the Father, he receives who he is from the Father; he speaks what the
Father gives him to speak. Who Jesus is, is given by and offered
to the Father.
The coming to be of who we are – persons, unique selves,
ironically is to be received through others. It is also destroyed
and marred through others.
‘Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back, guilty of dust and sin’… writes George Herbert.
To a soul that has no sense of who she is - only ‘guilty of
dust and sin’ one can only withdraw, wanting to serve, to
wait on others, to know one’s place, to play one’s assigned
role, to be useful.
And so the soul protests like Peter: ‘you will never wash my
feet!’ - ‘let my shame go where it doth
deserve.’
‘And know you not,’ says Love
‘Then I will serve,’ continues the soul.
‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘And taste My meat’
So I did sit and eat.
Maundy Thursday always unnerves me. It takes me to the core of
Christ’s priesthood and his calling to me to share in it.
Priests stand before our bishop and renew our vows every Maundy
Thursday in his cathedral. I recall : I said I would give away myself
for love of him. And I have kept so much back out of fear,
shame, guilt, the effort of making something of my life.
But this mass, every Maundy Thursday, takes me deeper to who I am, one
who must be served by Christ, receive who I am from him and surrender,
step forward and offer, if I am to truly share God's life, love for love.
First, I must sit down and be honoured by him, my feet washed as by a
servant. I must be fed at his table, as with a cloak and ring for my
finger like a prodigal returned; or like a healed demoniac brought back
to his right mind, finding myself at table, the banquet of life, served
by God. Holy Communion is about that – we, each on our true
dignity –daughters and sons of the Most High, at table being
waited on by God.
And this is what has been handed down to us – not rubrics for
worship; this is what St Paul received and delivered: that on the
night he gave away his life the Lord Jesus gave us a share in his
life: “This is my Body.” This is who you
are. And this is who I want you, my new People to be - for
yourselves, yes, but also so that the world may be saved.
And all this by a God whose glory is revealed as he kneels at my feet
tonight; a God who loves me in this world, how I am, and loves you and
me to the end. Amen