Maundy Thursday John 13:1-17, 31b-35 April 9, 2009

Maundy Thursday 2009                            John 13:1-17, 31b-35                                 April 9, 2009
Welcome to the Triduum – the three day feast!  One might ask why we call it three days when Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday seem to add up to four.  The three is after the Biblical counting, where a day begins at sundown the night before. We begin tonight and go through Saturday night which includes Easter morning. These three days are as one day.  And for those who come to all three, it becomes like one amazing day and you sleep really well Easter night. 

Keeping Easter is “probably the most significant identity-marker for Christians.” (see Gail Ramshaw, The Three-Day Feast, 28, Augsburg Fortress)  In olden days, people knew they had to at least go to church on Easter to avoid being excommunicated.  Yet, if all we see of church is the glory of Easter, we miss how Christianity transforms the daily-ness of living and dying. 

As to why the three days – it’s much like why watch the whole movie.  Why not just the ending? The three days moves the story beyond head knowledge to heart and life knowledge. What we participate in, enact, observe, hold close, shapes and keeps us.  If we don’t “keep” it, then the competing interests and demands of our lives may very well begin to “keep” us.  Like, once we stop celebrating someone’s birthday, anniversary, death-day, they move further away from our remembrance. Truly “keeping” the feast gives it a better chance of overflowing into how we live.

Tonight is the first of the nights – Maundy Thursday, (not Monday, but Maundy from mandatum, meaning commandment – Jesus’ new commandment that we love one another).  We begin with corporate confession.  It used to be that those who had grieved the community were put outside throughout Lent for penance and were brought back in on this night to be joyfully received anew by the community.  Today we know we all grieve each other – we all fall short – so we gather to enact starting over.  Hearing the words of forgiveness, we trust we are set free to again give our best to being a healthy community and people.

We then enact a footwashing – as Jesus did – to call us to a topsy-turvy servant-hood as the body of Christ.  Jesus, the Christ, washed his disciples’ feet – throwing out a hierarchy of value and status.  Serving isn’t the lot of the lowly.  It’s the opportunity we all have to love our neighbor.  Footwashing is a symbolic expression of doing for another that which best helps them enter most fully the feast of life.  In Biblical times they washed feet before their meals just like we wash hands today, but the lowly did it for those over them.  Jesus made serving an act of love rather than servitude and empowered all to participate equally in that loving. 
Nurses’ aides caring for residents in rest homes are engaging in a footwashing.  Hospital care-givers, Eucharistic ministers, people who pray for others, Stephen Ministers, all who serve on Teams and facilitate what is needed to keep this community growing – everyone of the Teams is really engaged in footwashing.  Our Church Council doesn’t gather on third Tuesdays to be served, but to be loving servants of this community – washers of feet in many and various ways. 

Our staff joins in regular footwashing – as do Sunday Morning Live teachers, and musicians, and everyone who brings soup or bead for dinners and refreshments for coffee hours and funerals and all who clean up after events and prepare for and serve at worship.  All these are footwashing tasks.  Including the 1st – 3rd grade Sunday Morning Live children who last Sunday beautifully modeled for the adult class how to reverently walk the labyrinth.  And they drew pictures, including the one Leahana drew that welcomes people even now at the labyrinth’s entrance.

But footwashing is also what we are sent out into the world to do, as several of our youth have been doing this week on a mission trip to Mexico, and as more youth will do this summer at the National Youth Gathering in New Orleans, and as you do every time you serve dinner at the Torres Shelter or breakfast at the Jesus Center and provide canned foods for our Joseph Pantry and resources for our companions in Rwanda and all the other ways you serve in the world. 

Footwashing is central to our identity – and so we enact it during this most central of weeks.  Then we gather at the meal.  In Matthew, Mark and Luke, the Last Supper is a Passover meal. In John, the meal comes the day before the Passover. Jesus is crucified about the time the lambs are sacrificed in the Temple in preparation for the Passover meal. Jesus is our Passover lamb.

In every culture, significant occasions are marked by shared food.  The rehearsal dinner, the wedding reception, birthday parties, housewarmings, baptismal parties, funerals, festival days…  Jesus tapped into this when he established the simple meal of bread and wine as a permanent remembrance of him. Through the bread and wine we become Christ’s body in the world as we say in the Eucharistic prayer: “Raise us up as the body of Christ for the world. Breathe new life into us. Send us forth, burning with justice, peace and love.”

Maundy Thursday ends with a stripping of the altar, preparing us for Good Friday where we join Christians of every time and place in praying at the foot of the cross. We and our world need prayer, and Christians gather to do just that on Good Friday, knowing our prayers are not in vain because God’s self-giving love has overcome the world.

Then at the Vigil – Easter Eve we celebrate the grace of baptism – our being brought through the Red Sea into the Promised Land.  We begin outside with a bonfire from which the Paschal candle is lit.  Everyone carries hand-held candles into the sanctuary where we recognize the power of light shining out of darkness.  Perhaps children of all ages can bring their favorite stuffed animals to the Vigil – all of us creatures entering the safety of the ark once again.  And to send us home we share Hot Cross Buns and cider in anticipation of the full joy of Easter morn.

So tonight we are at the beginning of this great three-in-one day.  And tonight we especially rejoice to welcome Abby, Brian, Courtney, Hannah, Jordan, Justin, Leahana, and Spencer to come to the Table, no longer for a blessing, but now to be blessed as you receive Christ himself. And when they receive, they will each say “Amen,” which they know means: Yes! Let it be so.  May it be so, that we become Christ’s body – just as he said – loving others as he loves us. Amen

Amen

   +Pastor Peg Schultz-Akerson, to the glory of God
Faith Lutheran Church, Chico, CA