Texts: Exodus 12:1-14a; I Corinthians 11:23-32; St. John 13: 1-15
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
 Tonight begins the Triduum, the Great Three Days of Holy Week, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil of Easter, which really are one continuous liturgy. The liturgy is theater with a difference. These ceremonies reach back over two thousand years, and they shine with contributions, especially in art and music, from the Christian ages. The difference is they reach all the way into the Upper Room in Jerusalem to Jesus. They come from Jesus, and Jesus, who lives, uses these rites to be present in his Church. The difference, in a word, is Jesus.
The Passover and its rites that commemorated the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt by the hand of Moses and the forging of Israel into a nation were the background of Jesus’ Three Great Days. Jesus and his fellow Jews realized that their very existence was a continuing miracle of God’s grace and favor, from the Red Sea down to the present moment. But what Jesus did was new, and we enact this newer rite tonight, tomorrow, and on Easter Eve.
Tonight Jesus washes his disciples’ feet and institutes the sacrament of his Real Presence in the Last Supper. Our good friend Bishop Taylor, the Vicar Bishop for New York City, will wash the feet of twelve chosen representatives of the congregation; it is good to know that the bishop is in an apostolic succession that itself takes us back to the twelve apostles with Jesus in that Upper Room. The foot-washing reminds us that just as the Lord gave himself for us, so we are to humble ourselves in loving service to others, especially to one another within the fellowship of Christ’s Church.
Next, Jesus institutes the Sacrament of his Body and Blood, his living, life-giving Presence in the Church. This Sacrament has many names – the Eucharist, Holy Communion, the Mass, the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Mysteries, the Divine Liturgy; each name reflects a dimension of this many-faceted Sacrament. The Eucharist is as profound as the Cross and Resurrection which it represents and communicates. What Jesus does with the bread and wine he also does with us as we eat and drink them in faith; that is, just as he transforms bread and wine into his Body and Blood, so he also makes us living members of his Body and preserves our bodies and souls unto everlasting life.1
Since this is the Liturgy of the Lord’s Supper done on the very night it was instituted, after Communion we will carry the Blessed Sacrament in solemn procession to the Altar of Repose in the Chantry, which is decorated to evoke the Garden of Gethsemane. There, after the Last Supper, Jesus took Peter, James and John with him while he underwent his agony in prayer to the Father: “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not my will but thine be done.” Just as Jesus asked his disciples to keep watch with him, so we will keep a watch for one hour before the Sacrament in the Chapel. I invite you to join in this Watch.
But before the Watch begins, we will strip down the high altar for Good Friday in a ceremony designed to make us think of the destruction of the Jerusalem temple as well as the physical dereliction of Christ as he was abused and humiliated before his judges. And we may recall that one of the charges laid against him was that he said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
If the Jews realized, and even now realize, their continuing life ever since the Exodus to be a continuous Passover miracle of God’s grace and favor; so we who follow Jesus Christ can say, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” Jesus has extended God’s grace and favor to all people through his death and resurrection. Just as the Lord saved the Hebrews from Pharaoh’s army at the Red Sea, even more has the Lord Jesus saved all of us from sin and death.
But here is a word of caution. We just heard it in Saint Paul’s First Letter to the Church in Corinth. He said: Let us be sure that as we take part in these Passover rites, especially as we receive Holy Communion, that we examine ourselves. If we eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, we are guilty of profaning the Body and Blood of the Lord. If we eat and drink without discerning the body, we eat and drink judgment upon ourselves, says the Apostle. He means discerning the body of Christ, not only in the consecrated bread and wine; but even more especially he means discerning the body of Christ in the persons of our fellow communicants! Discerning the body means reverence towards the Sacrament and love and charity towards our neighbor.
Christ our Passover is indeed sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast. But the sentence continues and suffices to finish the Apostle’s cautionary word: Let us keep the feast, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.2
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Tonight’s solemn liturgy is the second day of the Triduum, The Great Three Days of Holy Week, comprising Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil of Easter tomorrow night; that is Jesus’ Last Supper, his Crucifixion, and his Resurrection from the dead. The three days, and the events they commemorate, are connected. They lead into one another. Each day sheds light on the others; they are in fact one whole liturgy which celebrates one whole mystery.
Everything we do tonight takes us to the abyss of Christ’s death, its finality and completeness. The Liturgy of the Word has the three traditional lessons. Isaiah’s vision of God’s Suffering Servant reveals a figure whose suffering and death purges and redeems us from our sins. The Epistle to the Hebrews, referring to the Day of Atonement ceremonies of ancient Israel, asserts that Christ’s death is an absolute reconciliation of sinners to God, once and for all. And the Passion according to Saint John tells the details of how that Suffering Servant actually died, and how that Day of Atonement actually happened, as Jesus underwent his Passion and Death. In Christ’s own last words, “It is finished,” meaning, it is accomplished.
We receive Holy Communion tonight, yet we do not celebrate the Eucharist on this day. Communion is from the Reserved Sacrament which was consecrated yesterday at the Liturgy of the Lord’s Supper and kept at the Altar of Repose. Instead of celebrating the Eucharist, we venerate the Cross and hear the Reproaches. In the Reproaches, the Lord’s love, using the words of the ancient scriptures, rebukes and overcomes our unfaithfulness in the Cross. Then we confess our sins and receive Christ’s Body and Blood, consecrated the night he was betrayed and poured out for us on Calvary. Now, tonight, we all see what Jesus meant when he took the bread and the cup and used those disturbing words, “This is my Body which is broken for you. This is my Blood which is shed for you.”
We will leave tonight having received Communion and spent time on our knees hearing a sublime motet to the words, “He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried.” Today shows the depths of God’s love and care for us. The cross embodies, actually far exceeds, everything we fear. Rejection, scorn, public humiliation. Physical abuse and pain, deprivation, helplessness. Abandonment by associates and friends. The inner sense of abandonment by God himself. Finally death. And what lies beyond that? All these were realities undergone by Jesus.
We don’t talk about these things very much; we talk around them, which is why I suspect they lurk in the corners of the mind of every thoughtful person. They are the fears and dreads that come with life lived in the dark regions into which we have been taken by sin.
“Behold the wood of the cross whereon hung the world’s salvation.” Christ’s death encompasses our death and takes us with it. He who knew no sin was made sin for us. All the dead weight of the sin of the world, including yours and mine, is nailed to that cross and goes down into the dust of that death. It overwhelms the mind and impoverishes our language to comprehend this death.
“He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried.” From this final, complete, all-encompassing death, God raised Jesus on the third day. Join us tomorrow in the darkness at his empty tomb and in the light of his mighty Resurrection. He is our Good Shepherd, who has gone ahead of us through the valley of the shadow of death. Fear not; he is with us. Amen.
Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Fire is kindled in the darkness and the Paschal Candle is lit. A very ancient hymn, the Exsultet, is chanted when the great candle, sign of the risen Christ, is put in its place: “Rejoice now…this is the night, when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell, and rose victorious from the grave.”
This is the night of the living God, the God who in the beginning spoke, and even now speaks, his creation into being, from the galaxies to the molecules, angels and spirits with the glory of free will, including human beings who bear his image. This is the God who saved Noah from the waters of the flood, who gave Isaac back to Abraham with a blessing beyond all imagining. This is the God who brought the children of Israel, Abraham’s and Isaac’s offspring, out of bondage in Egypt through the Red Sea on dry land. This is the God who, when all seemed dead and gone, a valley of dry bones, saved Israel time and again. This is the God who raises the dead, and this is the night when he shows his power.
When we were baptized, we were immersed in this power, joined to Christ in his death and resurrection, and so this is the night when we renew the promises and vows of Baptism, when we renounced the devil and all his works, gave our allegiance to Christ, and promised to serve the Lord. Having renewed those promises, we asked the saints of every generation to pray for us as we prepared for the Easter shout and the Easter Communion.
So now, having shouted the news of Jesus Christ’s Resurrection, we take, bless, break and receive his Body and Blood, given for us on the Cross, raised gloriously on the other side of death, reigning in heaven yet also present on the altar and residing in our hearts.
The evangelists all tell us that Mary Magdalene and other women disciples went to Jesus’ tomb after the Sabbath very early in the morning. They went to finish the embalming of the Lord’s body, work which was interrupted on Friday evening by the onset of the Sabbath. So on the third day they came to complete his burial. They worried about how they would move the great stone at the tomb’s door, but, as Saint Matthew just told us in tonight’s Gospel, the angel of God moved it, immobilizing the guards set by Jesus’ enemies. The stone was rolled back so that the disciples could see that Jesus was risen; the tomb was empty. And Jesus met them: “Hail!” he said, from the other side of death.
Those disciples came to life too. Those frightened, sad little people were transformed into the bold witnesses of what they had seen, and they turned the world upside down with their testimony. They staked their lives, their new lives, on the truth of Jesus which had changed them. They won their way not by violence or coercion, but by the persuasion of love in the service of the truth; it was they who suffered violence from this world’s powers as they bore their witness to Jesus. The best of them, the most inspiring, always follow the pattern of Jesus himself: they love others as he has loved us. Two millennia later, we are the beneficiaries, as are two billion fellow Christians around the globe. The Church, for all its human and historic weaknesses and failures, lives and grows by the power of Christ’s Resurrection.
May that very power, the power of the living Christ, be ours. May the new fire and light kindle in our hearts. May the ancient prophecies of Holy Scripture ring true in us. May our Baptisms be sources of living water for us. May the communion of saints be the company of our friends. May the Easter shout be our own good news, and may our Communion with the risen Lord transform us into living members of his Body.
Now once more let us raise the roof with the Easter shout, as though we ourselves were at the empty tomb. Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Sermons preached by
ndrew C. Mead
Rector of Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue
in the City of New York
delivered
on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and
at the Easter Vigil
at 5:30 p.m.
April 5 - 7, 2007
1. Thanks to my good colleague Fr. Robert Stafford for insights on this parallelism.
2. I Corinthians 5:7
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