Maundy Thursday: April 5 2012, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin
Sermon preached by the Archbishop of Dublin,
Most Reverend Michael Jackson
Readings: Exodus 12:1–14; psalm 116:1, 10–17; 1 Corinthians 11:23–26; St John 13:1–17, 31b–35.
… If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them. St John 13:17.
Somehow, with this devastatingly simple statement, we are back in the early chapters of Genesis. You might rightly argue that, in St John’s Gospel, we have never really left the early chapters of Genesis and I’d be inclined to agree with you. I say all of this because it is in Genesis that we see the interplay, the combination of meaning and of expectation which is offered by the single Hebrew word (DBR).
At the same time it means word and deed, talking and doing. This combination is all the more life–giving now that Jesus is about to give up his life as the Word of God made flesh, by doing something radically new and radically different. That something is, in fact, self–sacrifice in the face of his understanding of his need to save the world from evil and death by giving his life back to his Father as the gift of himself. There are so many descriptions and definitions of The Passion within the pages of Scripture.
I simply want us to live with this one in the quiet of this particular Maundy Morning for a little while.
As in so many other ways, the disciples are woven into this giving and implicated in this self–giving. Through them, we are faced up–front with the reality that knowing about it simply will not do. We need also to want to do it and to go ahead and do it, if there is to be the life–giving connection of discipleship between Jesus Christ the Word and us the followers of the Word made flesh.
With Jesus stripped to the waist, holding out a towel to wash our feet, there simply is now no escape route. We may be profoundly embarrassed but he certainly isn’t. We have to get on with it and let him do it.
There is no way back. Jesus is doing what he says: Love one another.
We should, however, have been expecting this since Palm Sunday at least. On that day we heard that classical Epistle Reading from Philippians 2:5: Let this mind be in you which also was in Christ Jesus … the self–emptying which characterises the word and deed of Jesus in the understanding of Paul as it did, in different language, in the understanding of Mark10:45: The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.
Like that much misunderstood concept – judgement – the signs are all already there, had we only the patience with ourselves to look out for them. What Jesus is offering to the closest 12 disciples is the opportunity for a change of mind, for a shift in focus in which service gives shape to leadership and giving sweeps to one side any sense of entitlement to take. Jesus is doing what he says.
As those who exercise ministry in the name of God, through the church to the world, we together on this day remember and represent the example and the opportunity of service as a way of life shared generously and strategically with others, without strings attached.
The self–emptying may indeed embarrass others but it must not embarrass us if we are to walk the Way of the Cross and to be found by God and accompanied as we walk. Each of us brings specific and individual gifts and talents. Today we lay them before the altar of God and ask for blessing and anointing.
St John 13:35: By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.