“One thing is needful”
Luke’s story about the encounter between Jesus and Mary and Martha in their house in Bethany seems to privilege contemplation and to discount active service. Maundy Thursday would seem to counter and contradict that story. For Maundy Thursday not only marks the beginning of the three great Holy Days of the Passion, the Triduum Sacrum but also sets before us the themes of service and sacrifice and the means of those concepts living in us. It might seem that the better part is the part of service as illustrated in the figure of Martha in total contrast to the idle leisure of Mary, sitting and listening and therefore doing nothing.
We are apt in our world and day to compliment Martha and condemn Mary. She is after all just sitting there, doing nothing, we might say. And yet, the one thing needful on Maundy Thursday is to attend in a thoughtful and prayerful way to the nature and purpose of the various activities in which we are involved. In other words, Mary’s contemplation is key to the redemption of Martha’s activity, to the entire task and business of commending everything into the hands of the Father, the very last word of Christ in Luke’s account of the crucifixion.
Maundy Thursday is an intensely busy day, liturgically and scripturally. There is, well, such a jumble of things all vying for our attention. It is easy to become distracted and to lose sight of the one thing needful. The one thing needful is to attend to the proper forms of our service and sacrifice. That means attending prayerfully in a Marian fashion to what Jesus says and does. It is a day of many ceremonies. It is called Maundy Thursday, the word “Maundy” being the englishing of the Latin mandatum, meaning a command, a reference to Christ’s powerful words of commandment to us, words which we hear tonight at the Offertory. “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another”. Something of the nature of that love is seen in the various forms of service and sacrifice that belongs to Maundy Thursday.
There is the liturgical rite of the washing of the feet. There is the royal ritual of the almsgiving to the poor. There is the institution of the ritual and rite of the Holy Communion, the Holy Eucharist, the Mass, the Lord’s Supper, all terms referring to Christ’s act in the Upper Room on the very night that he was betrayed which however understood constitute the central act of Christian worship. There is the custom and practice of stripping the altar and watching with Christ in Gethsemane. What, then, in all this busyness of service and sacrifice is the one thing needful? It is to attend to the radical meaning of these events on this evening.
For all of these things have to do with the one thing needful which Luke’s continuation of the Passion reveals in the three last words of the crucified which his account provides. The words from the cross begin and end with an address to the Father. Luke gives us the first and the last word as well as the second word. In Luke’s account the whole of the Passion is gathered into the loving hands of the forgiving Father. And Christ’s hands on this night also place us in the hands of the Father’s care for us. The Epistle reading from 1st Corinthians provides us with Paul’s words about Holy Communion. His words here are almost verbatim the words of institution in our Prayer Book Communion Service about Christ taking bread, giving thanks and breaking it on the same night in which he was betrayed and with the words “Take, eat; this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me”. Likewise, almost verbatim with the taking the cup after supper and saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood: this do ye, as oft as he drink it, in remembrance of me”. Powerful words that are familiar to us, perhaps too familiar. Perhaps we do not attend to them closely and thoughtfully enough.
For these words are delivered on the night of betrayal. These words anticipate the impending passion and death of Christ. These words already signify a participation in what is about to happen even as they provide for us the means of participation in what happens. What happens is Christ’s redemptive sacrifice. Why redemptive? Because he is placing us in the hands of his Father. The first word, “Father, forgive them,” – us – “for they know not what they do” is complemented by the last word, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit”. This is why, too, that at Mattins on Maundy Thursday, though often anticipated at Tenebrae the night before, the second lesson is from the 17th chapter of John’s Gospel, the great high priestly prayer of the Son to the Father. Everything is gathered into the intensity of the relation of the Father and the Son, into the community of the Trinity.
Our being part of the community of the Trinity is the basis of our community with one another and not the other way around. The one thing needful is our attention, our consciousness of the nature of our communal relations with God which in turn shapes our communal relations with one another. In other words, the service of Martha is redeemed by the attention of Mary. Our service is really about the one thing needful which is found in contemplation. The interplay of activity and contemplation, of the hands of Martha and the heart of Mary is wonderfully concentrated for us in the busy events of Maundy Thursday, events which seem to end in quiet prayer but which are really all the forms of prayer themselves. Aelred of Rievaulx captures best the dynamic of the interchange between Martha and Mary.
In this wretched and laborious life, brethren, Martha must of necessity be in our house; that is to say, our soul has to be concerned with bodily actions. As long as we need to eat and drink, we shall need to tame our flesh with watching, fasting, and work. This is Martha’s role. But in our souls there ought also to be Mary, that is, spiritual activity. For we should not always give ourselves to bodily efforts, but sometimes be still and see how lovely, how sweet the Lord is, sitting at the feet of Jesus and hearing his word. You should in no wise neglect Mary for Martha; or again Martha for Mary. For, if you neglect Martha, who will feed Jesus? If you neglect Mary, what use is it for Jesus to come to your house, when you taste nothing of his sweetness?
On this night, this very night in which he was betrayed, we taste his sweetness but it is bitter sweet, tainted with the awareness of all our betrayals of his love. At best and, perhaps, the one thing needful is to be with “all the people that came together to that sight,” the sight of the crucifixion as described by St. Luke, “beholding the things that were done” or to be with “his acquaintance, and the women that followed him from Galilee”, standing, it seems, afar off but “beholding these things”. Only by beholding these things will we learn what it means to serve.
“One thing is needful”
Fr. David Curry
Maundy Thursday, 2016