Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve all have had to get used to the disruption that’s been caused and limits that have been placed on our lives due to the coronavirus lockdown. None of us, I’m sure, are particularly happy about the situation we now find ourselves in but, as I’ve spoken to people during this time, one thing that virtually everyone has said to me, is that they hope something will good will come from it. So many people have said to me that they hope that the care and concern for each other that people are showing now, will carry on when life returns to normal, and that when the present situation is over, a more caring society will have emerged from it. I think we would all say ’Amen’ to that.

Care and concern for one another, of course, lie at the very heart of the Gospel. Although it’s not the passage we read on Maundy Thursday, the Gospel  according to St John tells us that it was on this night that Jesus gave his disciples the new commandment to love one another as he had loved them. And the things we remember and celebrate in our Maundy Thursday liturgies, are two very good examples of just how much Jesus loved his disciples.

Maundy Thursday, of course, is the day when Jesus shared his last supper with his disciples, so the main thing we celebrate on the night is the institution of Holy Communion. But we also remember that before supper, Jesus washed the feet of his disciples.

In Jesus’ day, when people walked long distances on dusty roads, it was customary for the host of a meal to provide water for their guest’s feet to be washed when they arrived for the meal. The actual washing though, was a task reserved for non-Jewish slaves. So, for Jesus to wash his disciple’s feet was an act of incredible humility and servanthood, made all the more remarkable because, as Jesus said a short time afterwards, he was their Lord and Master. But in doing this, Jesus not only left an example of humility and service for his disciples to follow, he also left an example of unconditional love. Jesus washed the disciple’s feet before supper which means he also washed Judas’ feet, even though he knew Judas was about to betray him to his death. So, Jesus example, the example we, as his disciples, are called to follow, is of humility towards and loving service of all people, whoever they are, whatever they may have done, no matter how undeserving we think they are. That is what it means to love one another as he loved us.

When Jesus gave his disciples that new commandment, he said that the greatest possible act of love is to lay down one’s life for one’s friends, and of course that is exactly what Jesus did for us on the cross. And he left us a perpetual memory of that great act of love, in the Eucharist.

The earliest record we have of the words spoken by Jesus at the Last Supper are those we read in the Epistle for Maundy Thursday, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26. The words recorded by St Paul here make it very clear that Jesus intended his disciples to share in this meal in the future, to eat and drink in remembrance of him and of his great, sacrificial act of love and service on the cross, the breaking of his body and the pouring out of his blood for the forgiveness of our sins. St Paul says that every time we do this, we proclaim the Lord’s death, and that this is something Christians will continue to do until the Lord returns.  

So the Eucharist is more than simply a memorial of the last meal Jesus shared with his disciples. But it’s also more than a memorial of Jesus’ Passion and death. The Eucharist is a perpetual reminder of the new covenant that Jesus’ death initiated between God and human beings. We read in the Old Testament about covenants between God and Israel being sealed by the death of an animal and the sprinkling of it’s blood, and Jesus’ words confirm that the bread and wine of the Eucharist, which in some mystical way are his body and blood, are the signs that seal the new covenant.

Not only that, in Jesus’ own Aramaic language, the word we translate as ‘body’ is the equivalent of ‘I’ or ‘me’, and in the Scriptures, blood is explicitly equated with life. When Jesus spoke of the bread as his body and the wine as his blood then, he was saying, in effect,  that the bread and wine were him and his life. So, when we take and eat and drink the bread and wine of the Eucharist we are, in some way we can’t really understand admittedly, partaking and sharing in Jesus’ life, and his life is entering into us. And indeed, this is what we read in St John’s Gospel, in Jesus’ own words, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.”

So the Eucharist is a another sign of Jesus great love for us. It’s a reminder of the sacrifice he made for us, a reminder of the new relationship with God his sacrifice has made possible, and it’s a way through which we can be with him and he with us. And of course, in our present circumstances, just how important being with those we love, and who love us, has been brought into very sharp focus.

This Maundy Thursday will be a strange one because we can’t be in Church to remember and celebrate Jesus’ great example of humility and service in the washing of feet. We won’t be able to eat his flesh, nor drink his blood in the sacrament of Holy Communion. But we can still remember all he has done for us, and proclaim his great, sacrificial act of love on the cross through the Act of Spiritual Communion which I know many of you have found helpful in these difficult times. We can ask Jesus to enter into us and unite us with him, spiritually. And we can look forward to and pray for the day when we can once again share in his life, and with one another, in his body and blood in the sacrament of Holy Communion.

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You’ll find the Propers for Maundy Thursday here.

One of the things that life teaches us is that we can never really be certain of what the future will bring. Life is full of ups and downs as they say, we can be on top the world one minute and the next, because of something completely unexpected, we can down in the dumps, and vice versa.

And that’s something Jesus’ disciples must have experienced during the last week of Jesus’ earthly life. We can perhaps imagine their excitement as Jesus entered Jerusalem to cries of ‘Hosanna’ on Palm Sunday. Jesus himself knew what was going to happen just a few days later, but the Gospels tell us that his disciples didn’t understand this. So, as they went into Jerusalem with Jesus on that Sunday, they must have thought that all their aspirations were about to be realised. Jesus would enter Jerusalem, be acclaimed as the Messiah and his reign as God’s anointed king would begin. And they, of course, as his closest followers, would have a big part to play in the new order. They must have been ‘on top of the world’.

If we can imagine that, then we must also be able to imagine their crushing sense of disappointment as, just a few days later, all their hopes and dreams came crashing down when Jesus was arrested, condemned and put to death. It must have seemed to them like the end of the world. Certainly, it was the end of the world as they hoped and imagined it was going to be. So really, it’s not surprising that, when Jesus was arrested, they panicked and ran away in fear and confusion. Nor that Peter, who just a short time earlier had said he would die before he denied Jesus, did that very thing and denied, not only that he was a disciple of Jesus, but that he even knew him.

Of course, all this was completely turned on its head three days later when Jesus rose from the dead. The disciples were still confused and afraid, but who wouldn’t be if they saw someone who’d been executed, who’d been seen by some of their own friends and companions, dead and buried, and yet now they could see, unmistakably, this very same person alive again. But their confusion and fear would be replaced by a certainty and courage as they came to realise that Jesus’ reign had indeed begun and that they did have a big part to play in the new order and in what was a new world in which sin and even death had been defeated by the very things that had left them feeling so crushed with disappointment a short time earlier, Jesus’ arrest, condemnation and death on the cross. It wasn’t the new world they were expecting, but Jesus’ resurrection left them, not only on top of the world, but over and above the world; people whose minds and hearts were no longer set on worldly things but on heavenly, eternal things; people who were still in the world, but no longer of the world.

Perhaps we can liken our present situation to that of the disciples during those few days that we now know as Holy Week. A few weeks ago, whilst we may not have necessarily been on top of the world, we were , at least, leading our normal lives, doing the things we usually do and no doubt beginning to think about Palm Sunday and Holy Week and, beyond that, looking forward to Easter and our celebration of the Lord’s Resurrection. Then, quite suddenly all that changed. The outbreak of coronavirus has drastically changed our lives and we can’t do the things we usually do. We can’t go to our churches and so our plans for Holy Week and Easter have been stopped in their tracks. Many of us will have had other plans thwarted too as holidays and family get-togethers have had to be cancelled. Many people will have been looking forward to sporting events, but they’ve been cancelled too. And we’ve had panic, confusion and fear too; panic buying at shops, confusion about what we’re supposed to do and about the advice we’ve been given, and a fear of infection that’s led to a fear of getting too close to other people, even our own family members and our friends. So, this is a very difficult time for us, a time when many people, I’ve no doubt, will be feeling down in the dumps. And for some, whose loved ones fall ill and succumb to coronavirus, it will be the end of the world, both as they have known it, and expected it to be in the future.

But, whilst we go through this time of fear and uncertainty now, we need to keep our minds and hearts fixed on the future and look to the future with hope. We can’t be certain what that future will be because we don’t know what changes the outbreak of coronavirus will bring to our lives, whether that’s individually, as a nation, as a world, or as a Church. But one thing we can be sure of is that the God who turned the disciple’s despair to joy, their uncertainty to steadfast faith and their fear to courage, will be with us. And He who turned the sorrow and agony of the Good Friday into the joy and blessing of Easter Day, never ceases to offer us a future that is full of hope and promise, both in this life, and the next.

Amen.

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You’ll find the Propers for Palm Sunday here.