Maundy, 2014

Maundy Thursday

Preached at St Paul's Cathedral, 2014

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Holy Week 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama was unlike any that it had experienced before or after.  That year, the city was rocked by peaceful protests for racial equality that led to the arrest and harsh imprisonment of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.  During that Holy Week, eight religious leaders of the city wrote an open letter, entitled A Call for Unity, in which they condemned the peaceful protests, and urged the black population of the city to use the courts and other legal means, rather than protest their condition and unfair treatment; that letter contained a veiled reference to King when it condemned outsiders who were in their city to direct and lead the events they criticized.  Of the eight white religious leaders who signed that letter, two were Episcopal bishops.

The letter was smuggled into the jail where King was being cruelly kept, and he wrote a response to those eight men, his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail.  Surely, with both the events in Birmingham, and the events in Jerusalem during Holy Week on his mind, King wrote to those men who called him an outsider: 

I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

During the liturgies that mark the great events in Jerusalem that led to the arrest, trial, and death of Christ, the words, and actions, and melodies are powerful enough without need to embellish with a rousing sermon.  The liturgy itself is the sermon.  I’ll use my opportunity tonight merely to point you to the liturgy, to help you focus your thoughts on the events unfolding.

We are caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  It was true in the South in 1963 AD, true in Jerusalem in 33 AD, and true here, in our lives in Buffalo and Western New York.  That single garment of destiny is a place of thinness, where the common and the divine are interlinked, where the differences between privilege and want disappear, where the possibility of life bursting from death trails our every action.

Once again, beginning tonight with the Maundy, and continuing through tomorrow’s tolling bells, Saturday’s shocked silence, and the light on Sunday, our God wraps around us that single garment of destiny.  On this night, Christ takes the apostles with Him, and institutes the sacrament of Holy Orders: He makes them deacons by ordering them to serve in washing the feet of others, makes them priests by commanding them to offer sacrifice in his name, consecrates them bishops by forming them into a community of teachers, witnesses, and leaders.  Through the apostles and through his own commandment, Christ makes love and service the great act of the Church, Christ makes love and service to neighbor and stranger the liturgy that the Church enacts in the world.  We heard in the Gospel, Christ tells His apostles:  I give you a new commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you.  The word for commandment, Mandatum, lends itself to the name we give this day, Maundy Thursday.  The words of the Maundy remind us that we are a people consecrated for service and love to others.

On this night, the barriers between heaven and earth are revealed to be paper thin.  St Thomas Aquinas wrote a hymn to be used in this evening’s liturgy, written about the events of this night in Jerusalem.  He penned the words: cibum turbae duodenae se dat suis manibus. We’ll sing the English translation tonight: then, more precious food supplying, He gives himself with his own hand.  He gives Himself with His own hands. 

When Christ transformed bread and wine into His very Body and Blood, when He gave Himself with His own hand, He did not merely give Himself and stop there.  He shared Himself with those gathered, He shared Himself with those with Him, with the people whom He had just commanded to serve others.  As soon as He gave His commandment to serve others, Christ then gave Himself to us in the Eucharist.  Again, let the liturgy be our guide and teacher tonight: we will carry Christ, truly present in the Eucharist as our Lord and Savior, we’ll carry Christ to the altar of repose, and adore His presence among us in the Eucharist, adore the thinness by which He still comes among us in the Sacrament. 

As Christ ties the Eucharist into service, let the liturgy lead you to think how, with love,  we are to reverence and adore those we are called to serve: those in the pews next to us, those huddled in the cold outside our doors, those who struggle to find meaning in their lives.  Our Lord will be given over to betrayal, to imprisonment, and to trial.  How do we honor and reverence those in our communities who are not treated fairly, those who are imprisoned unjustly or held captive by addiction, those who face conflict and pain?

The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, is quoted as saying: The church is the only institution that exists primarily for the benefit of those who are not its members.  That’s another way of stating that the Church is part of an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. That’s another way of saying that we are to Love one another as I have loved you.  We don’t preach mission and outreach to those most in need because it’s only our personal belief.  We preach it because the liturgy compels and drives and shoves us to. 

We, as a Church, confess that Christ comes among us fully under the guise of Bread and Wine, that Christ, in the Eucharist is as fully and truly present as He was when He first broke bread with the Twelve.  We adore Him tonight, staying with Him as the disciples were unable to; as they fell asleep in the Garden, we strive to stay awake, to remain with our Lord for some time before His death tomorrow.  The thinness in that garment of destiny allows us to be as truly present in the garden as Christ is truly present in the Eucharist.  Tonight, the walls of Jerusalem are interposed on the streets of Buffalo, and the Lord who gives Himself with His own hand bids us to love others as He has loved us, to pray with Him, to watch, and to remain at His side.  Amen.