If we had to choose one word to describe what tonight, Maundy Thursday, was about, I don’t think we could choose a better word than ‘life’. Because if we think about what we remember and celebrate tonight, the institution of the Eucharist, of Holy Communion, our Lord’s washing of his disciple’s feet, and his agony in Gethsemane, all these things are about the life that Christians are called to live; a life lived in communion with one another, a life of service of one another, and a life of self-sacrificial love for one another.

Our Gospel reading tonight marks the start of a section in St John’s Gospel that’s known as the Farewell Discourse, the final teaching and instruction that Jesus gave to his disciples before his Passion, his arrest, trial and execution. Later in the Farewell Discourse, we find Jesus’ great prayer for unity amongst his disciples as he prays to the Father that his disciples, both those present with him and all those who will come to believe in him through them,

“… may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

It’s a great prayer for Church unity, a prayer offered by our Lord himself on the night of his arrest, that his Church, his disciples, may be one, and a great symbol of that unity is the Eucharist which our Lord instituted on that night.

We call the Eucharist by many names, but Holy Communion is perhaps the one that best expresses what it should signify for us. It’s where we come together in communion, in fellowship, to share the communal meal our Lord gave us, and where, through our sharing in the bread and wine, which is Christ’s Body and Blood, we come to share in his life.

Unfortunately, as we’re all only too well aware of, the Church is not one, and one of the main causes of our disunity is our disagreements about the Eucharist. The fact that the Church has ignored Christ’s prayer for unity is the greatest tragedy, and I would say the greatest sin, of the Church. And perhaps the most tragic thing about it, is that our disagreements about the Eucharist have made the very thing which is supposed to unite us, and should unite us, one of the things which most divides us. 

I’m not going to go into the various understandings and disagreements about the Eucharist, I’m simply going to say this. In the Aramaic language that Jesus spoke, the word we translate as ‘body’ is the equivalent of a personal pronoun, in the case of the speaker, ‘me’. And in the Old Testament, blood is explicitly equated with life. So in the Jewish understanding of Jesus’ day, blood is life. And our word ‘remembrance’ , meaning a mental recollection, doesn’t have the same meaning that a ritual remembrance such as Jesus’ command to “Do this in remembrance of me” had for those he first said those words to. For Jews to this day, for example, the ritual recounting at Passover, of the story of the first Passover, makes that first Passover real, present and active for them in the here and now. So regardless of our disagreements and divisions about exactly how Christ is present in the bread and the wine of the Eucharist, in their original language and context, what Jesus’ words mean is that, when we celebrate the Eucharist, when we receive Holy Communion, he is here with us, now, and we are with him at supper on that first Maundy Thursday. And what we receive and share in, when we receive Holy Communion, is nothing other than Jesus himself and his life. But what does it mean to share in Jesus’ life?

Our Gospel reading tonight tells us that sharing in Jesus’ life is sharing in a life of service towards each other, and we see that in his example of washing the feet of his disciples. But, whilst we may be perfectly happy to receive and share in Jesus’ life in and through the sacrament of Holy Communion, how willing are we to share in his life of service?

One of the great traditions of our Maundy Thursday liturgy is the Washing of Feet, that time during the liturgy when people come forward to have their feet washed by a priest. But if we think about Jesus’ words when he did this for his disciples, I think we have to question whether we’ve actually got this right. After washing his disciples’ feet, Jesus said,

“If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.”    

Despite what Jesus himself did, he didn’t set an example that one person should wash everyone else’s feet, but that we should all, each and every one of us, wash one another’s feet. And yet when I’ve put this to the test, which I have done on a few occasions in different churches, it seems that this is an example of service that hardly anyone is willing to follow. In the past, in different churches, when I’ve asked for volunteers for the Washing of Feet, hands have shot up all over the church. But when I’ve said that instead of me washing everyone’s feet, I will wash the first person’s feet, who will then wash the second person’s feet, who will then wash the third person’s feet, and so on along the line, the hands have  gone down. And when I’ve asked again for volunteers for the Washing of Feet, very few hands have gone up, and on more than one occasion, no hands have gone up at all. And yet this is surely more in keeping with the example to “wash one another’s feet” that our Lord set for his disciples than the way we usually do the Washing of Feet in our Maundy Thursday liturgy. So it seems that for many people, their willingness to share in the life of Christ is limited by the extent to which they’re willing to serve and by what kind of service they’re willing to give to one another. Washing feet, for example, isn’t a pleasant job, it’s probably seen as a menial job, and it seems that many people, whilst they’re quite happy to let someone else wash their feet, aren’t prepared to serve others in the same way.

This willingness to do the difficult and unpleasant  for the sake of others is, of course, what our Lord’s earthly life was, ultimately, all about because it’s this self-sacrificial love of others that led him to his Passion and Cross. And tonight we remember the start of Jesus’ Passion; his agony in Gethsemane, and his betrayal and arrest.

One thing we always have to remember about Jesus’ Passion and Cross is that it’s something he didn’t have to go through. It’s something he chose to do out of love for others, including for you and for me. Jesus may have been called to drink from this cup, as he put it, but he was just as human as everyone else and so he had a choice. He had a choice to either follow this calling or not to follow it. He had a choice about whether to go to Gethsemane, a place it was his custom to go, as St Luke tells us in his Gospel account of this night, and so a place where he knew he’d be found by those looking to arrest him, or not to go there. He had a choice about whether to stay there and pray, knowing Judas and his cohorts were on their way to arrest him, or to leave and go where he wouldn’t be found. But Jesus chose to go to Gethsemane and wait for what he knew was inevitable in the circumstances he’d chosen to put himself in, to happen, because this was the life he’d been called to live and chose to live.

We know from his agony, his agonising over the choice he had to make, that  it’s something he really didn’t want to do; we see that in his prayer;

“Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” 

It’s very, very unlikely that any of us will ever have to make such a life and death decision on account of our faith but, nevertheless, we are called to show that same self-sacrificial love in our lives that Jesus showed in his. Jesus showed that love most clearly as he allowed himself to be arrested in Gethsemane, knowing that it would lead to his death. He showed it by being faced with something he really didn’t want to do but doing it, willingly, for the sake and good of others. How we might show that same kind of self-sacrificial love will depend on what we’re faced with in our own lives. Whether we do show that love will depend on whether we can face up to what we’d rather not do, and do it willingly, for the sake and good of others just as Jesus did. And if we can’t do that, then we can’t fully share in Jesus’ life.

Tonight is about life; Jesus’ life and our life. It’s about giving thanks for our Lord’s institution of the Eucharist and of the receiving and sharing in his life that Holy Communion allows us. It’s about giving thanks for the life of service and self-sacrificial love that Jesus led for our sake. And it’s about committing ourselves to following that life after his example. We know that we can receive and share in Jesus’ life through our receiving and sharing in the bread and wine, the Body and Blood of Christ, in Holy Communion. But the extent to which we can truly share in his life will depend on how closely we can follow his example in our own lives. It depends on whether we, when we’re faced with things we’d rather not do, but as disciples of Christ know we should, can say, as he did,     

“Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”

Amen.

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Propers for Maundy Thursday can be viewed here.

Today is Palm Sunday which marks the start of Holy Week in the Church’s calendar. But today is also the second Sunday of the season of Passiontide, a season of the Church’s calendar that runs from the fifth Sunday of Lent until the eve of Easter Day on Holy Saturday. The reason for the season of Passiontide, the reason it’s given that name, is that as we go through these two weeks, and especially as we go through Holy Week, the readings in the Church’s lectionaries describe the last days and hours of our Lord’s earthly life and ministry and so they turn our thoughts towards what we call our Lord’s Passion, his suffering and his death on the Cross.

As I’m sure we all know, the word ‘passion’ refers to intense emotions and feelings and so it’s a very good word with which to entitle the last days of our Lord’s earthly life because, as we go through the Gospel accounts of these days, there’s no doubt whatsoever that Jesus did show some very strong emotions. In doing this, what comes very much to the fore is Jesus’ humanity. But that’s only to be expected. As this morning’s reading from St Paul’s Letter to the Philippians tells us; Jesus,

‘though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.’

Or, as we read in the Letter to the Hebrews,

‘…he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.’

We acclaim Jesus, and worship him, as our Saviour, our Lord, and our King. But, as these readings make clear, he was also every bit as human as we are. We see Jesus’ humanity very clearly in the Gospel accounts of his last few days and perhaps where we see it most of all is in Jesus’ passion, the deep emotions he showed as he went through his last days and hours of earthly life. And so what I want to do today is to reflect on some of the emotions Jesus showed at this time which show that he was like us in every respect because they’re emotions we all show in our lives. And I want also to offer some reflections on how we, each in our own way, cause Jesus’ Passion to be re-enacted today through the way we might cause others to go through their own passions.

In the three-year cycle of readings we use in the Church, this year is Year C, the year of Luke, and so I’ll begin with Luke’s account of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

We’re not really told much about Jesus’ state of mind as he approached Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday, but it’s hinted at in his refusal to silence his disciples who were acclaiming him as,

“…the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” 

That’s an acclamation with clear Messianic meaning, and Jesus wasn’t about to refute it. For one thing it was true, but it must have pleased Jesus that some people at least did recognise who he was, he wouldn’t have been human if that hadn’t pleased him. So the first passion we see in Jesus is joy, happiness, and isn’t that just like us when we’re praised? We all like to be valued by others and we like to be given recognition and praise for what we’ve done; it makes us happy. But how willing are we to make others happy by praising them? How willing are we to give others the recognition they deserve? Isn’t it often true that we can be more ready to criticise people for their failures than to praise them for their successes? How often are we like those crowds on that first Palm Sunday, ready to praise someone one day, only to criticise and denigrate them the next?

The next passion we see in Luke’s account of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is great sadness. Luke tells us that Jesus wept for Jerusalem because the people didn’t recognise him for who he was. As this was just before Passover, Jerusalem would have been filling up with pilgrims, so Jesus was crying for Israel as a whole, not just for Jerusalem. He was crying for the people he came to save but whom he couldn’t, because they wouldn’t listen to him. And aren’t we the same when people we love don’t listen to us when we’re trying to help them? Don’t we feel sadness when we can’t make people see sense and see the error of their ways? Don’t we sometimes feel like crying for them, and perhaps do cry for them? But how often have we made people cry for us because we wouldn’t listen to them? How often do  we make Jesus cry today because we still won’t listen to him?

The first thing St Luke tells us Jesus did when he entered Jerusalem was to go to the temple and there we see another great passion of Jesus – anger. This anger of Jesus’ was a righteous anger, a justifiable anger. He was angry because the temple traders had turned God’s house into a “den of robbers”. And it was an anger directed not just at the traders but at the temple authorities too. They allowed this crooked business to go on, perhaps even taking their ’cut’ from the profits. And we can get angry at this kind of thing too, can’t we? Angry at being ‘ripped off’, to use the modern term, because that’s undoubtedly what the temple traders were doing to people. We can be angry when we see corruption in high places, the corruption of those in authority. And how many of us have been and are angry when we see the Church being turned into a business with money making and money saving as its overriding goal? We can be angry at all these things and with good reason. But how often do we make people angry, and rightly angry, by our own corruption? We might not think we’re corrupt but we are all selfish in so many ways and what is selfishness other than another word for corruption? How many times have we been in a position, for example, to take more than we should, and have done, without thinking, perhaps not even caring, that our taking what we want has been at someone else’s expense? At those times, couldn’t Jesus’ righteous anger be directed at us?

The next great passion we see in Jesus is his ‘agony’ in Gethsemane. Luke tells us that Jesus’ was in such anguish that

‘…his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.’

This may be taken as a literary device to show the extreme torment Jesus was in but there is a medically recorded condition in which extreme anguish or physical strain can cause small blood vessels to burst and for blood to then mix with sweat, so whichever way we want to take this, Jesus was experiencing great passion at this time. We may not have gone through such extreme passion in our own lives, but we will all have gone through times when we’ve been in mental and emotional turmoil, times perhaps when we’ve been faced with decisions we didn’t want to make or times when we’ve known that we’ve had to do things that we didn’t want to do, so we do know something about the passion that St Luke calls Jesus’ agony. We know how terrible a passion it is. But how many times have we put others through this kind of passion? How many times have we asked or expected others to do something difficult or unpleasant simply because we didn’t want to have to do it ourselves? How many times do we put Jesus through this agony again because of our sinful ways?

Jesus’ agony in Gethsemane ends with his arrest. But then we see another kind of passion in Jesus, a very important passion, but one that’s often not recognised, and that’s the passion of inactivity. Throughout his ministry Jesus had been a man of action. He went here and there preaching and teaching, healing the sick and proclaiming the kingdom. But from Gethsemane onwards Jesus isn’t active, he’s passive.

He changes from the one who does to one who is done to. He changes from a man of action to a man of passion. We all know what this kind of passion’s like because we experience it every time we have to wait on others. We experience it when we’re on hospital waiting lists, when we’re waiting for someone to come and repair our washing machine, or whatever else it might be. We even experience it standing in a queue at a supermarket checkout. And on the whole, this is a passion we don’t like because we all want to be in charge of our own lives and run our lives to our own schedule, don’t we? But how often do we force this passion on to others by making them wait on us? We do it every time someone is relying on us to do something for them, and we delay in doing it. We don’t like it ourselves, but we can do it so often to others. And we turn Jesus into a man of passion again too because whenever we don’t do in our lives what he asks us to do, we make him wait on us. 

In Luke’s account of Jesus’ death on the Cross, there is no cry of, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me’, but I’m sure we all know the passion of feeling that we’re alone and have no one to turn to for help. The passion Jesus felt at that moment the sins of the world that he was carrying for us on the Cross, separated him from his Father. This is a terrible passion, perhaps the worst that we can ever experience because included in it is the pain we feel when death separates us from our loved ones. It’s a passion I hope we wouldn’t wish on anyone but isn’t it a passion we do visit on others when we don’t do what we can to help them? If someone asks us for help and we don’t help, don’t we make them feel abandoned as Jesus felt abandoned on the Cross? And if we do that to others, don’t we put Jesus through this passion again?

In these Gospel accounts of Jesus’ Passion, we see just how human Jesus was because in them, we can see the same passions we experience. And just as Jesus had to battle through these passions, we have to battle through them too. Jesus had to go through his Passion to experience the glory of the Resurrection and that’s true for us too. But if we can go through our own passions in the way that he did, without losing faith and without losing sight of the glory beyond the passion, and perhaps in particular, if we can go through our passions without inflicting such terrible passion on others, like Jesus, we can look forward to the glory that lies in wait for us, beyond our own passions.

Amen. 

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The Propers for Palm Sunday can be viewed here.

This morning we have two different Gospel readings in the benefice. The rest of the readings are the same, but the Gospel readings are different. At St Mark’s, the Gospel is the story of the woman taken in adultery who’s brought to Jesus by the scribes and Pharisees to test him, to see if he agreed that the woman should be stoned to death. At St Gabriel’s, the Gospel is the story of Mary anointing the feet of Jesus with very expensive perfume and in the process earning the disapproval of Judas Iscariot. So we have two very different Gospel readings in the benefice this morning, readings which at first glance perhaps, might not seem to have much in common. But are they really so different?

One obvious similarity of course is that both stories are about a woman who, either because of her actual sin of adultery in one case, or her perceived sin of profligacy in the other, earn the disapproval of others, the scribes and Pharisees in the first case, Judas in the second, who then bring their disapproval of what the women have done to Jesus. The second obvious similarity is that in response, Jesus rebuts their accusations against the women. But as well as these obvious similarities between these two Gospel stories, if we look at them a little deeper, and especially if we take them together, what these two seemingly different stories do have in common is in having something to tell us about fulfilling the Great Commandment to love God with all our heart and soul and mind, and to love our neighbour as ourselves. And as both Gospel readings are about accusations made about one person by another or by others, I’ll start with what these stories have to tell us about loving our neighbour.

In the Gospel story about the woman taken in adultery, I think there is one glaring omission; where is her partner in crime? As the saying goes, ‘It takes two to tango’, so where is the man who must have been involved in this sin? Why was he not also brought before Jesus? So the first thing we can say about this Gospel story is that it’s about double standards, it’s about seeking to punish one person for doing wrong whilst letting another person get away with doing the very same thing. And how often do we see that in the world? I think double standards of this kind are perhaps one of the most common ways we fail to love our neighbour as ourselves because it’s something that happens so often in the world.

We don’t know anything about the man involved in the background to this Gospel story so we can only speculate about him. Was he was a man of some importance in his community whom the authorities wanted to keep out of the affair, if you’ll pardon the pun? Or perhaps it was simply a case of sexual inequality; it was OK for a man to have a bit of fun in this way but not for a woman. What we do know is that these things have and still do go on in the world. We also know that using double standards is something that we’re all tempted to do at times, and do at times. How often have we criticised or condemned another person, or other people, for doing something wrong but then turned a blind eye to, or even excused the same wrongdoing if it’s been committed by one of our family or friends? Indeed, how many times have we ourselves done wrong and tried to excuse or justify it in some way? But have we or do we ever stop to think about the way in which the wrong we do, or excuse, affects others, our neighbours? Because it always does and so if we do these things, if we use double standards, we can’t love our neighbour as ourselves.

Both of these Gospel stories are also about hypocrisy. The hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees in the story of the woman taken in adultery is quite obvious from their response to Jesus’ challenge,

“Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”

They all went away and left the woman alone, with Jesus. It’s also clear from this story that Jesus doesn’t condone the woman’s sin because he tells her not to sin anymore, but neither does he condemn her for her sin. Quite the opposite in fact, he forgives her:

“Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

The implication of this is that Jesus is more critical of hypocrisy, of sinners who condemn sinners, than of the individual sinner and their sins.

Hypocrisy is quite easy to see in this Gospel story, but we can also see hypocrisy in the  story of Mary anointing the feet of Jesus, in this case, the hypocrisy of Judas.  

When Judas saw Mary anointing Jesus’ feet with expensive perfume, he said,

 “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?”

And at first reading, Judas seems to have a valid point. Three hundred denarii was about a year’s wages for the kind of day labourer Jesus mentions so often in his parables. So it was a lot of money to spend on something to pour on someone’s feet, even Jesus’ feet. So surely this was a sinful waste of money, money that could have been put to better use. But we’re then told that Judas

‘…said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the money bag he used to help himself to what was put into it.’ 

So what we have here is someone criticising the sin of profligacy to mask a sin he wanted to commit himself, that of getting his hands on some money so that he could steal it. And to make matters worse, trying to cover up his intended sin by telling lies about his motive. And how often do we see this happen in the world? How often do people shout about other people’s wrong doing or falsely accuse others simply to cover up their own sins? How often do we hear about corruption amongst those who run charities, people who raise money for good causes but then take vast sums of that money for themselves ? Jesus’ fiercest criticism was of the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy. The hypocrisy of people who criticise and condemn sinners whilst turning a blind eye to their own sins. But it’s something we all do because we all want and try to take the moral high ground in arguments about who’s right and who’s wrong. But we can’t do that and love our neighbour as ourselves because we’re all sinners. In fact there are only two ways we can speak about sin and still love our neighbour as ourselves; one is to be sinless ourselves so that we can condemn sin, and the other is to condone our neighbour’s sins just as we condone our own.

The Gospel story of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet also tells us something about loving God with all our heart and soul and mind. Jesus defends Mary against Judas’ criticism by saying,

“Leave her alone, so that she may keep it (the perfume) for the day of my burial. For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”

Jesus’ words leave us in no doubt that far from being a sinful waste, Mary’s use of the perfume was right and proper. He acknowledges the poor and, in the context of the conversation with Judas, his words confirm that it’s right to help them. But that’s something that can always be done, at any time. In the context of Jesus’ own situation, this anointing is something that had to be done now because, in the context of his earthly life, Jesus wasn’t going to be with his disciples and friends for much longer.

In our context of course, we believe that Jesus is always with us, as he promised he would be. We believe that we meet him in other people, especially in the poor and needy, and we believe that in helping them, we help him, again as Jesus himself said we do. But we also meet Jesus when we come to church to worship God, and it’s in this context that this Gospel story speaks to us most vividly about loving God.

How the Church spends its money is, and for a long time has been, a controversial subject. For many people, Judas’ criticism of Mary’s profligacy is one that could be levelled at the Church. Over the years I’ve met quite a few people who’ve been very critical of the Church for spending vast sums of money on magnificent buildings, and lavish furnishings to go in them. I’ve met people who’ve said that the Church ought to be ashamed of itself for filling churches with gold and silver, expensive vestments and the like when there’s so much poverty in the world. I’ve heard the Church accused of hypocrisy for doing this. But our churches aren’t just buildings; they’re not just places where we happen to meet to sing a few hymns and say prayers. Our churches are holy spaces, they’re places dedicated to the worship of God; they’re supposed to glorify God, and the things we put in them and use in them are not just things, they’re holy things that’ve been blessed and consecrated to God to help us glorify him in our worship. And as holy places full of holy things dedicated to God, our churches should be places in which only the very best will do because only the very best of what we can give is a right and proper offering to God.

Perhaps we can put it like this. If we we’re told that Her Majesty the Queen wanted to join us for worship one Sunday, I’m sure we’d do everything we could to make that Sunday a very special occasion. We’d do a deep clean of the church, we’d sort out any problems we had with the building, a touch of paint here, a bit of replastering there. We’d have the vestments we were going to use cleaned, we’d use the best chalice and paten and make sure those were sparkling. We’d clean and iron all the altar linen. In short, we’d spare no expense to make sure the church was fit for a queen to come in to. And when it came to the liturgy, we’d practice and practice and practice again until it was spot on so that it would be fit for a queen too. But if we’d do that for our Queen, shouldn’t we do that much for God and Jesus too who, no offence to Her Majesty, are far more important than the Queen? The answer can only be, ‘Yes, we should’. Our churches, what we put in them and use in them, and what we do in them in worship should be the very best we can offer and the very best we can do, because only the very best is good enough for God and for Jesus. We need to remember that every time we use our churches for worship, we come into them to meet God and Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit and that is our chance to be with Jesus and it’s our chance to do as Mary did, to pour out the very best that we have to offer on and at his feet.

Jesus gave us a Great Commandment to keep. It’s a commandment in two parts; to love God with all our heart and soul and mind, and to love our neighbour as ourselves, and we need to keep both parts if we’re going to be true to Jesus’ teaching and example. This morning’s Gospel readings teach us a great deal about keeping both parts of that commandment. They teach us about how difficult it is to love our neighbour as ourselves if we use double standards and are hypocritical in our dealings with others. They tell us how difficult it is to love our neighbour as ourselves if we can’t see ourselves as sinners. But they also tell us that offering the very best we have to God in worship doesn’t mean that we’re failing to love our neighbour. It’s simply showing that we love God with all our heart and soul and mind when we have the chance to do that. And it’s simply giving to God and to Jesus the honour and glory that they’re due and that we owe them in return for their love of us. 

Amen.

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The Propers for the 5th Sunday of Lent can be viewed here.