Sermon by Marjorie Brown for Maundy Thursday, April 9th 2009

We all know that at his Last Supper with his friends, Jesus took bread and wine and blessed and shared them and told his followers to do this always in remembrance of him. And yet on Maundy Thursday, the night we particularly remember this event, our reading is from the one gospel that does not tell the story of Jesus giving this instruction. John’s gospel instead tells a different story of the Last Supper, the one that we will shortly enact as we wash one another’s feet, and the command he gives is not “do this in remembrance of me” but rather “love one another as I have loved you”.

Very often the New Testament tells different stories about the same event, and some Christians then feel driven to tie themselves in knots trying to fit them all together. This is what happens, for instance, when a sermon is preached about the seven words from the cross. In fact the four gospels tell us three different stories about what Jesus’ very last words were. Matthew and Mark say that he uttered a loud cry following those desperate words, “Why have you forsaken me?” Luke ends very differently, with the prayer of trust, “Into your hands I commend my spirit.” And John has a sort of cry of triumph and relief, words which are literally translated, “It has been accomplished” as if the task God gave him has now been completed and he can lay his burden down.

Now it is impossible for these different accounts all to be literally true in a news-reporter sense. Yet each one has immense weight and meaning and inspiration for us. In a similar way, the Last Supper either was or was not a Passover meal – Matthew, Mark and Luke say it was, and recount the words that Jesus said over the bread and wine in the course of the very familiar seder ritual. John, on the other hand, says it was the eve of the Passover, making Jesus himself the Passover lamb who was sacrificed on the following day, Good Friday. John’s version of the Last Supper focuses not on what Jesus did with the bread and the wine but on the action of washing his disciples’ feet.

But just as all the so-called last words from the cross have meaning for us, so do the rather different and even conflicting accounts of the Last Supper. What if “do this in remembrance of me” is actually the same command as “love one another as I have loved you”? What if solemnly calling to mind Christ’s death and resurrection as we bless, break and share the bread is theologically the same thing as washing each other’s feet? By that I mean that the religious significance of the sacrament cannot be separated from the outward-looking loving action. To eat and drink the Lord’s body and blood without offering humble service to our neighbour would be not a blasphemy but an impossibility – we would be failing to discern Jesus’ presence in our neighbour and therefore would be unable to receive his presence on the altar.

I have spoken often of the Lent book that some of us read and discussed this year, Why Go to Church? by Timothy Radcliffe. The author puts great emphasis on this two-way action of the eucharist. In communion we receive the sacrament of what we are, and that is the Body of Christ, including the gift of the poor. Serving those in need is not a painful duty but an opportunity to encounter Christ. If we shut our eyes to the needs of our neighbour then we will be unable to recognise Christ in the eucharist and it will be merely an empty ritual.

Once a year on Maundy Thursday we bring these two aspects of the Lord’s Supper into focus by literally obeying both of Jesus’ commands: “eat my body, drink my blood” and also “wash one another’s feet”. In both actions we are the receivers, not the givers. We are fed by God in the eucharist: it is the Lord’s supper, not ours. But we are also the beneficiaries when we wash one another’s feet: it is a privilege to be allowed to serve. The song we will sing in just a few minutes reminds us of that: Brother, sister, let me serve you, let me be as Christ to you. And we then need to go on to pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant too, because of course we all like to be the active giver, conferring benefit and obligation on someone else. It is much harder to recognise our own need to be served and helped. But everyone, including the ministers, must receive this service from another: we cannot help ourselves. We can’t wash our own feet, at least liturgically!

Our action tonight is a sign of our solidarity with one another and with Jesus. We do not stand alone before God. Wherever two or three are gathered, they shouldn’t be dotted around an empty church as far as possible from each other, because what they are is a prayer cell. If you have ever attended prayers in a mosque you will know that as each new worshipper arrives, he or she lines up next to the previous arrival, so that those praying are literally standing shoulder to shoulder. There are no gaps, no comfort zones that protects us from contact with the stranger. And in my old neighbourhood of Stamford Hill, orthodox Jewish men could not actually begin to pray until a minyan of ten men had gathered. Without the company of the faithful, there could be no prayer.

The paintings of the Last Supper famously show thirteen men sitting around a U-shaped table, as on the front of tonight’s pew leaflet. Of course there would have been others – who did the cooking, for instance? Were there really no women at this most important family ritual of the Jewish liturgical year? But however we picture it, it certainly wasn’t Jesus and one pious communicant. It was a crowded room, with all sorts and conditions side by side.

I am sorry that tonight’s gospel reading from John leaves out of the middle of the passage the significant verses where Jesus dips the bread in the dish and gives it to Judas, who receives it and then goes out into the night to betray him. Jesus has just given communion to his betrayer, and it is immediately after this action that he says “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.” It is in his service to every one of his motley crew of sinners, including the one who has fallen away completely, that Jesus glorifies God.

We may worry that we aren’t quite the sort of disciples that Jesus would have called. We’ve led pretty imperfect and unfocused lives. Our relationships are messy. Our attempts at prayer are inconsistent. Our faith may be shaky on a good day and need a microscope to find it on a bad day. Yet Jesus welcomes us, serves us and invites us to eat. His command to us is not believe more, pray more, get your life in order, but simply this: Love one another as I have loved you.

That is the one criterion by which we will be judged – not the length of our prayers, the punctiliousness of our religious practice, the correctness of our doctrine, the purity of our sexual morals, but whether or not we discern the face of Jesus in the least of his brothers and sisters, the poor who are God’s gift to us.

We start at the altar, by recognising Jesus in the sacrament and in one another as we share the peace. Tonight we enact his parable of loving service by washing each other’s feet. But carrying out these actions does not completely fulfil Jesus’ commands. We come to the eucharist in order to be sent out from it to love and serve the Lord wherever we may find him. As we keep the watch tonight, perhaps as sleepily and reluctantly as Peter, James and John, let us ask him to show us where our service lies.