Day: March 28, 2024

Sermons

Sermon for Maundy Thursday

“And I, if I be lifted up will draw all unto me”

“He carried himself in his own hands.” Maundy Thursday marks the beginning of the most intense part of the Passion, the beginning of the Triduum Sacrum, the three great holy days. Maundy comes from the Latin mandatum meaning commandment and refers to Christ’s repeated statement in John’s Gospel, “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another.” And as we have seen in the Office readings from St. John that commandment turns upon our keeping his words and abiding in his love. That love is the love of the Trinity.

But “a new commandment”? In what sense is it a new commandment? Do we not find the commandment to love God with the whole of our being in the Torah of the Jewish Scriptures as well as to love our neighbour? Yes, to be sure. Yet in the intensity of Holy Week and, especially on this holy night, those two commandments are uniquely concentrated for us in the figure of Jesus Christ. They are not just what we ought to do (but which of course we fail to do). They are radically fulfilled in Christ’s words and actions on this night understood precisely in anticipation of his Passion. What makes the new commandment new is the Cross in which God in Christ gives his life to us, for us, and in us. His sacrifice is his love lifted up before us already even before his being lifted up on the Cross. Hence the wonder of Augustine’s remark that “he carried himself in his own hands” in reference to the one of the central features of this day of many moving parts, the scene of Christ with the disciples in the Upper Room at the supper of the Passover. Take, eat; drink. This is my body; this is my blood.

The symbolism becomes increasingly clear. It is captured in Paul’s great statement that we proclaim in joy at Easter: “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.” Christ is the Passover, the Paschal Lamb who gives his life for us. The new commandment is his sacrificial love at work and moving in us. Such is service and sacrifice which Maundy Thursday illustrates in its various moments: the institution of the Eucharist, the washing of the disciples’ feet, the agony in Gethsemane, as well as the other events such as the liturgical stripping of the altar, the King’s touch, and the Royal Maundy or giving of alms. They all belong to the Passion and to the forms of our participation in his Passion. They are all about sacrifice and service.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 28 March

If I be lifted up

We return from the various ‘journeys’ of the March Break only to enter into one of the profoundest spiritual journeys of our humanity. Such is Holy Week. We immerse ourselves in the Passion of Christ in all of its fullness and intensity, in all of the ups and downs of the human condition. “And I, if I be lifted up,” Jesus says, “will draw all unto me” (Jn 12.32) All refers to all people or all things; the variants in the ancient Greek manuscripts allow for either meaning. There is something universal and cosmic in this text which complements an earlier text in which Jesus recalls one of the crucial events of the Exodus story of the ancient Hebrews. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (Jn. 3.14). It is impossible to think about Holy Week apart from the journey of the Exodus which in its universal aspects belongs to the idea of human redemption and divine revelation.

If that were not enough to consider, there is also the Islamic festival of Ramadan which overlaps with much of Lent, Holy Week and Easter this year. It celebrates the revelation of the Qur’an to Mohammed and ends around April 9th with the Feast of Eid al-fitr, the breaking of the fast. It, too, echoes the Exodus story in terms of the making known of God’s Word and Will in the Law.

Something is made known to us about ourselves and God in the pageant of the Passion. Passion here refers to what Christ wills to suffer for us in what belongs to the truth of our humanity. He wills to bear our sins and in so doing makes the nature of sin known to us. We go into the Passion to learn the great lessons of sin and love; those “two vast, spacious things” as the poet George Herbert says. There can be no lifting up without a going down but in both those movements what we contemplate is nothing less than God in us even in our twisted brokenness. In this sense we are redeemed from the obsessive passions that imprison us in our own emptiness. It is not simply about ourselves.

Sin and love are made known explicitly in the events of the Passion and in ways that convict and move our hearts. As such we are lifted up out of the twisted forms of our loves in disarray. Homo incurvatus in se, humanity curved in or turned in upon itself is a helpful definition of sin derived from Augustine. We are too much with ourselves in the wrong ways and/or for the wrong ends that lead to the forms of suffering. It is not that our human passions are wrong but disordered.

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Prayers and liturgy

Maundy Thursday

The collects for today, Thursday in Holy Week, commonly called Maundy Thursday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

Gyula Benczúr, Christ on the Mount of OlivesALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who, of thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant, that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also he made partakers of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

O GOD, who in a wonderful sacrament hast left unto us a memorial of thy passion: Grant us so to reverence the holy mysteries of thy Body and Blood, that we may ever know within ourselves the fruit of thy redemption; who livest and reignest with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 11:23-29
The Continuation of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke
The Gospel: St. Luke 23:1-49

Artwork: Gyula Benczúr, Christ on the Mount of Olives, 1919. Oil on canvas, Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest.

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