Maundy Thursday Sermon

Here in the midst of Holy Week we remember the last time Jesus gathered for dinner with his disciples. It was a very intimate opportunity for Jesus to share his final teachings. In this sermon I explore why he chose to break bread, bless wine and wash feet. May you deeply experience Christ's love during this holy season.

Maundy Thursday Sermon

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Holy Week 2010

Rev. Valerie Hart

Whenever I am in a pine glen or a pine forest where the pine needles are on the ground and it’s warm and the sun is shining on them, there’s a certain smell.  It’s not the same smell as a Christmas tree.  That smells green.  This is the dry brown pine needles with the sun on them in the summertime.

There’s a certain smell, and whenever I smell that smell, I remember the place where I spent my summers in Ontario, Canada.  It was on a lake where there were lots of pine trees.  In the summertime, that smell triggers that memory.  It feels like I’m standing right there. - Scientists have found that the sense of smell is the sense that most clearly triggers memory. 

Do you have any memories that get triggered by smell?  Maybe a certain food that when you were a child was made at the holidays.  Maybe your mother’s perfume or the smell of your father when you gave him a hug.  Do you have any of those kind of memories?  Sensual and vivid?  Those kind of memories are not of words.  You don’t think about that memory.  You relive it. 

On the last night that Jesus had with His disciples, He could have done a lot of different things.  We all know about someone who’s dying and may want to pass something on to their family and their friends.  Sometimes you might even think about what it is you would want to pass on.

There are lots of ways that Jesus could have spent that last night.  He could have written out instructions.  He could have written a whole book like Mohammed did.  Or He could have told a scribe to write it for Him.  He could have told His disciples a clear set of beliefs, spelling out in great detail the nature of The Trinity and the relationship between the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Don’t you kind of wish He’d done that instead of us trying to figure it out ourselves?  But He didn’t.

He could have given them a list of rules, something like the Torah.  If you’ve ever picked up Leviticus, you know that there’s a whole set of rules of how you’re supposed to do things.  On His last night He could have said, “These are the things that I really care about, so make sure that you do this, this way and that that way”, but He didn’t. 

He didn’t choose to do it that way.  Instead He had dinner with then.  He ate with them.  They tasted.  They smelled.  They touched.  Some of us had dinner before this service where we had some of the parts of what a Passover meal might have been like, and it would have had bitter herbs.  Horseradish is what we usually have.  And then a sweet thing made with honey and apples and raisins, bitter and sweet.  There was bread and lamb, unique textures with different flavors. And, of course, the flavors of the wine.  And the smells would have been rich, sensual, material, incarnate.  A very human experience.

Then He took this dinner, and He used it to teach.  Not by giving a grand explanation, not by talking theology, not by setting up rules, but by taking the bread and adding to the blessing when He broke it, saying, “This is broken for you.  This is my body, broken for you.”  And He gave it to them to all eat.  And as they ate it, they tasted, they savored, they consumed it, they chewed it in their mouths and swallowed it.  And that bread that Jesus had blessed became a part of them and fed them.

And then after dinner He picked up the cup of wine.  The smell of wine.  One of my memories of church as a child was that on those days when there was communion I could smell the wine.  It’s a unique smell.  And, of course, there was the taste.  Wine is such a wonderful image.  Back then wine was what you drank all the time.  You didn’t drink water without putting some wine in it because you had to have something to kill all the bugs that were in the water. 

Bread and wine was what you subsisted on.  It’s what you survived on.  That was the main part of every meal.  And here He took the wine and He blessed it.  And He said, “This is my blood, which is shed for you.” 

Now, that is a very powerful statement for us, but for a Jew at that time, that is an extraordinary statement because, you see, the blood of animals was considered to contain the life force, the spirit of that animal. So when a Jew had meat, the animal was sacrificed to God, and the blood was poured out on the altar because they felt that they had no right to consume the blood.  When an animal is killed according to kosher rules, it is hung upside down and its throat is slit so all of the blood can be drained out of it. Jewish people don’t consume blood.  Blood is offered to God.  It is the spirit.  So for Jesus to say that this wine is my blood and that you should drink it must have been an odd experience for his disciples. 

But wine also has another thing about it; it’s an intoxicant.  It’s called a spirit because, you know, when you drink a little bit of wine, you feel different.  You drink a lot of wine, you feel a lot different [Laughter].  You drink too much wine and it’s not good.  But it changes your consciousness. 

He didn’t give them grape juice.  He gave them wine.  And He said that that’s how we should remember Him, by breaking bread and sharing it among us, and by blessing wine and sharing it among us.  He didn’t give the disciples a lot of rules.  He told them to do something - to break bread and bless wine.  Then He did the most remarkable thing of all.

Now this dinner, this Passover dinner, was a really great meal.  At that time they ate in the style of the Greeks, so people are not sitting in chairs.  They were lying on their sides on their left elbow and eating with their right hand.  In John’s Gospel it says that the head of the disciple that Jesus loved was on Jesus’ breast.  This just meant that He was to the right of Jesus, and his head would have rested right there. 

So they were lounging, eating, enjoying the Passover together.  And then Jesus just got up for no particular reason; he got up and took off in his outer garment. It would be sort of like Mr. Rogers taking off his jacket when he gets home.  He took off His jacket, and He just had on His simple garment.  Then He took a towel and a basin of water, and He began to wash the disciples' feet.

Now, washing feet was something that only servants did.  And, according to the law, according to Torah law, you couldn’t force a servant to wash peoples’ feet.  It was against the law to tell them they had to do it because it was considered that demeaning.  And He washed their feet.  What a sensual thing to do.

A friend, for my birthday, took me to go get a pedicure.  You sit in a chair, and someone comes and soaks your feet and then massages them and washes them.  And it is extraordinary to have someone fuss over you like that. 

Now, imagine that it is the teacher that you have been following for months, who you have seen walk on water and bring people to life and preaching with strength, the person you think is the Messiah. This is the person that you walked down the hill from Bethany with. You heard them cheering for the king of kings, yet here he is kneeling there washing your feet.  No wonder Peter said, “No.  Don’t do that.”  Hard to let that kind of love in. 

Jesus did give one command that last night.  He didn’t write it down, but it was simple enough that it could be remembered.  He said, “Love one another as I have loved you.”  “Love one another as I have loved you.”  He said that after He had washed their feet.  Love one another in humility.  Love one another with compassion.  Love one another in service and in action. 

Jesus didn’t talk about what the disciples should think about.  He wasn’t concerned about what they believed.  He was concerned about what they would do.  And He was very visceral and material and incarnate.  This was not an abstract teacher of ethereal knowledge.  This was about bread and wine and dirty feet.  This was here in the body, and it was about action. 

So what Jesus left His disciples with as the last thing was to do.  Do.  Act.  Act in the material world.  Be with one another.  Love one another not in some abstract sense of oh, yeah, I feel a warm fuzzy feeling about everybody in the world.  “Love one another as I have loved you”, on my knees washing your feet.  Love with your actions, as well as your heart. 

That’s what He taught the last day of His life.  That’s what we’re to remember.  And that’s how He wants us to remember Him.  And so we gather on this Thursday night as we remember each year the last week of Jesus’ life.  As we get prepared for tomorrow, for Good Friday, when we’ll remember His crucifixion, so that we can be ready on Easter to receive the great grace and gift of His resurrection. 

Tonight we do.  We do in a very material incarnational way.  We will wash feet, we will break bread, we will share wine, and we will remember the one who told us that we are to love one another as Christ loved us.

Amen.