In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
 This evening begins the Sacrum Triduum, the Great Three Days of the Paschal Mystery, the Passover of our Lord Jesus Christ: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil of Easter on Holy Saturday. Once again let us refresh ourselves in the meaning of these beloved rites. All three may be seen in one.
The meaning is love, self-giving sacrificial love. As Saint John describes the night of the Last Supper, “Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” (Jn 13:1-15)
Jesus illustrates self-giving love in two vivid forms on this night. While the air is thick with a plot that will kill him by means of a betrayal within their very fellowship, Jesus interprets what is happening by taking bread and wine, blessing it, and distributing it to the disciples with the words, “This is my Body which is broken for you; this is my blood which is shed for you.” There is a murderous plot afoot, but it is overcome by and within God’s good providence for Jesus’ mission. Jesus is the priest; he presides even over his enemies and their doings which would make him their victim. “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and power to take it again; this charge I have received from my Father.” (Jn 10:18)
So that we understand the nature and purpose of Jesus’ sacrifice, the Lord girds himself to wash the disciples’ feet in an act of humble service. The giving of his Body and his Blood on the cross and in the Sacrament of Holy Communion are shown in action by the Foot-Washing. Maundy Thursday means “mandate” Thursday. We are not only to “Do this” in remembrance of Christ in the Eucharist. We are to express what we have received in Communion by “foot-washing” in all its forms. That is, we are to do specific works and deeds of kindness to our fellow disciples, our neighbors, our friends, and, yes, our foes; that is what Jesus himself mandated this night. It is significant that Judas Iscariot, before he went out into the night, was present at the supper and the foot-washing.
Judas departed from the apostles to betray the Lord, and then Jesus, along with Peter, James and John went to the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus went through his Agony. It was agony because he could have fled; because he could have called down a troop of angels to help him; because he had to consent to face and be taken by the plot that had gathered against him. Painful as the cross would be in its public, physical brutality, what Jesus suffered in the garden before Judas led his captors there must have been just as painful. It is no wonder Saint Luke says Jesus sweat blood; but also that angels ministered to him. Our Procession to the Altar of Repose in the Chantry commemorates Jesus’ move from the upper room and his agonizing watch in the garden. Then we strip the altar in preparation for what comes next: the dereliction of our Lord.
Remember that this is Easter. Christ is risen from the dead. We perform these ancient ceremonies because the Church wants us to understand the depths of the love of Christ and the extent of his victory. There is no suffering that he does not himself embrace; no sin against himself that he cannot forgive. His is a complete triumph over what ails us; namely sin and death. Whether we are suffering or sinning or both, he has done this for us. Love is his meaning – self-giving, sacrificial love.
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.
I begin with a word about the many references to “the Jews” in the Passion according to Saint John. First and foremost, our Lord was most certainly a devout first century Palestinian Jew, the first-born son of a devout Jewish mother. Saint John the Evangelist, a relative of Jesus, was likewise a first century Jew, as were most all of the first disciples of Jesus. Many of “the Jews” referred to by John believed in Jesus; many also did not, as John makes clear in both instances. When the Evangelist uses the term “the Jews” to describe those who rejected Jesus as the Messiah, he first means the religious authorities who condemned Jesus. Second, his use of the term “the Jews” also reflects the experience Saint John and his fellow disciples had in controversies with the synagogues which rejected them as they attempted to uphold Jesus as the Jewish Messiah within those synagogues. The emergence of many of the earliest Christian communities occurred with this conflict.
The conflict between the first century synagogue and church over the Christian claim for Jesus as the Christ can be seen not only in the New Testament. There are first century synagogue condemnations of those who deviate from Orthodox Judaism, and the followers of Jesus are on the list.1 It is a fact of history that Jesus was condemned by the leaders of his fellow Jews and executed by their Gentile Roman overlords. It is a fact of history that Jesus’ Jewish disciples were expelled from (split from) their synagogues in the first century birth of the Christian Church. But we are not in the first century. Subsequent centuries of persecution of Jews by Christians (absurdly as if responsibility for Jesus’ crucifixion adheres to the Jewish people) represent serious misunderstandings, actually terrible betrayals, of the Gospel of Jesus and certainly of Jesus, our Jewish Lord himself.
If responsibility for the death of Jesus Christ needs to be located, we must try to be clear about it. Even as we believers in Jesus are moved by and attracted to the innocence, integrity, and love of our Lord, remember that there is nothing very “other” or different from us, nothing especially sinful, about the religious authorities, the scribes and Pharisees, the Jews in various groups or a multitude, the Samaritans, the Syro-Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans or any of the other actors in this drama. For that matter, Saint Peter denied Jesus (three times) just as surely as Judas Iscariot betrayed him. The disciples of Jesus, those who wrote the first Gospels, do not seem to have distinguished themselves. Saint Mark appears to have run away for his life, at the time Jesus was arrested, as did others. The women, such as Mary and Mary Magdalene, did better. There were some men, disciples under cover who had to come out in the open for Jesus, such as Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, who sat on the very council that voted to condemn Jesus. None of these people, from Pilate to Peter, are different human species from us.
For the fact is that Jesus’ death tears down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile, just as it tore the temple veil from top to bottom at the moment of Jesus’ death. As the Church grew, Gentiles poured into the Church, overwhelming by number the Jewish followers of Jesus. The Apostle Paul, that strict and particular Jew who once persecuted the Church, after his conversion and several ejections from synagogues due to his preaching of Jesus Christ as Lord, became the missionary of Christ to the Gentiles. The death of Jesus and his resurrection from the dead, writes Paul, makes it possible for the Gentiles, in Christ, to participate in what is truly now an international Israel which he calls the Body of Christ -Israel according to the Spirit, Jerusalem above which is the mother of us all-of whom all the People of God are elect members.
The barrier between Jew and Gentile has been torn down in Jesus, and we are all one in two crucial ways. First we are all one as sinners. We have, every one of us, fallen short of the glory of God. We are all implicated in the death of Christ. The cross of Christ was not Jewish or Roman. It was made out of sin, our sin. Jesus was nailed to the dead wood of this cross of sin, incorporated into it; so that truly “he who knew no sin was made sin for us.” Each one of us has the possibility of playing the part of condemning our Lord. Like the first disciples, we can ask with concern, “Is it I?”
We are, every one of us, in great need of forgiveness and grace. This brings us to the second way in which all of us, Jew or Gentile, are one. We are loved by God. We are, whether we believe it or know it or not, the objects of the love of God manifested in the person and work of Jesus Christ, nailed to the cross, and laid in the tomb. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” That love is stronger than death. The grave cannot hold it.
Consider this all personally, for it personal. Jew or Gentile, high or low, rich or poor, male or female: It is intended for you. He who knew no sin was made sin for you. He died for you because he loves you. His love is stronger than death. The grave cannot hold him. That is why the day Christ died is called Good Friday.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. 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.
This Great Vigil of Easter connects us to the worship of the earliest Church, to the very earliest Christians. Most of those first Christians were Jewish believers in Jesus as the Messiah of ancient Israel, and tonight’s service grounds the death and resurrection of the Messiah, the Christ, on those Jewish foundations.
Those first Christians, those Jewish believers in Jesus, observed the Sabbath, and then, on Saturday night, the eve of Sunday, the day of the Lord’ Resurrection, they kept vigil. They rehearsed for themselves the great prophecies of the Scriptures, the stories of God’s covenant with his people.
Tonight we had five of the principal stories: the Creation, the Flood, Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, the Exodus at the Red Sea, and the Prophet Ezekiel’s vision of the Resurrection of the People of God, the “whole house of Israel” in the Valley of Dry Bones.
As the vigil progressed, new believers in Jesus were added to the community by Baptism. Then, the Eucharist was celebrated, they “broke bread,” to show forth the Lord’s death and resurrection.
Those early Christians had a very keen sense of keeping watch with Christ, especially on this particular night. They realized that just as they were observing the Holy Sabbath on Saturday and keeping vigil into Sunday, so they were marking the death and burial of Jesus, his descent to the dead, and his resurrection. I want to read you a small portion of an ancient homily preached at this moment on Holy Saturday.
“Something strange is happening...a great silence and stillness. The King is asleep. God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear. He has gone to free from sorrow...those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death.
“[Tonight God says] ‘Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.’ ...I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise, let us leave this place...the kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you.” Liturgy of the Hours, pp. 495-496.
What we do tonight connects us not only to those earliest Christians but, more to the point, to Jesus’ death and resurrection. First of all, Holy Baptism unites a person, whether an adult or a child carried by the love and prayers of parents and godparents, with Jesus’ death and resurrection. Just as Jesus died for our sins, so we die to the old life of sin. Just as Jesus was raised from death, so we are raised with and in him to everlasting life. By baptism we are born again, from above, in Christ.
Secondly, we break the bread and share the cup of Christ’s Body and Blood in the Easter Eucharist. We are in the Communion of Jesus Christ, our crucified and risen Lord. We eat and drink Christ as our food. He is our Bread of Life. His Blood infuses life into our souls and bodies.
Those first Christians, so many of whom understood the glory of the ancient Jewish Passover and the Exodus from bondage in Egypt, now kept a new Passover. It began sometime toward dawn in the night between the Sabbath and the First Day of the Week, the third day after Jesus’ death. As Saint Matthew’s Gospel just told us, there was an earthquake; an angel descended from heaven, rolled the stone away, and sat upon it. The angel’s appearance was like lightning, white as snow, and for fear the guards became like dead men. The tomb was empty. “Do not be afraid,” said the angel to the women, the first witnesses; “I know you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has risen as he said. Come see the place where he lay.” They ran for both fear and joy to tell the other disciples.
They ran - and Jesus met them. “Hail!” he said.
They worshiped him, and so do we. Jesus is raised from death, and so are we. United to him by Baptism, now let us receive his Body and Blood in Easter Communion. Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast. 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.
The third day he rose again from the dead. - Apostles Creed; Gospel: St. John 20:1-18
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Welcome. No matter who you are, no matter what is the state of your faith or your doubt, welcome.
Have you kept a devout and observant Lent, even though this year it seemed to start a week after Christmas? Then this feast is certainly for you. Have you barely remembered that it is Easter, one of the two or three times you get to church in a year? Well, this feast is for you too. Are you a faithful communicant, an occasional attendee, a visitor, a curious inquirer? You are all welcome. This is not just my personal welcome as Rector. This is not just the policy of Saint Thomas Church. This is the policy of Gospel of Jesus Christ himself: we welcome you and one another, as Christ has welcomed us into the grace and love of God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
We would not be here at all if were not for what happened on the night between the Sabbath and Sunday, toward the dawn of the first Easter Day. Christ’s Resurrection created the Church. We simply would not be here, if the first disciples of Jesus, returning to his tomb at dawn on that first Easter Sunday morning, had found - as they expected to find - his dead body. Because of the onset of the Sabbath at dusk on Good Friday, they had only been able to lay him in the tomb. Being good Jews, they could not finish his embalming; they had to wait until the Sabbath was over. But what they found on Easter morning, instead of his dead body, was his empty tomb. At first, they thought someone had taken his body away. Then the angel spoke to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”
Then Jesus met them. He appeared first to Mary Magdalene, but the apostles didn’t believe her when she told them. Later, he appeared to Peter and the other apostles, the leaders of the Church. The Church ever since, including this one, stands on that testimony which turned the world upside down - with the result that Jesus of Nazareth, who never wrote a book or held an office or had great possessions or used weapons of war, is the best known human being on earth. Jesus is best known, but more to the point, most loved and therefore, strangely, the most powerful.
What’s his secret? You may have the answer in yourself. Let me speak to those who may doubt, remembering that doubt is part of faith, which is a leap. Why are you here? Is it Easter music, the liturgy, the architecture, the whole dramatic event put together? Is it a longing dating back to your childhood, going to church with your family? Is it an association with people you love, who are somehow made present to you by this day? Are you lonely, discouraged; are you or someone you love ill? Do you miss some loved ones - and has something about Easter, about Jesus, drawn you?
What is it about Jesus? As a child I was shocked by his crucifixion as I thought all he ever did was good. As I grew up, my faith in God waxed and waned (for a while in college it seemed altogether gone) yet there was Jesus, and I could not get over his drawing power. Whatever else I believed or didn’t believe, Jesus attracted me because of his incredible freedom to live fully: because of his love and mercy for the outcast and the people on the margins: because of his power to heal the sick and afflicted, to bring peace and sanity to the disturbed and the even the possessed: because of his loving honesty that afflicted the powerful, the comfortable and the self-righteous: because of his security and peace and fearlessness in the face of all the things that disturb my peace and make me fearful. Because of his faith in God; even if I didn’t have much faith, I felt I could bank on Jesus. I could trust him.
Let me assure you of two things about our Lord. The first is that it was necessary for him to suffer and die. It was necessary for the world to gather up its fallen powers of religion and politics to condemn and to get rid of Jesus. What he embodied was another world entirely, too threatening to the way things are. Jesus himself was perfectly aware of this conflict and the necessity of death it posed for him. He spoke of it, and he faced it; so much so that he referred to it as “his hour.” It was his finest hour.
The second thing is that, though he was crucified, died, and was buried, it was impossible for Jesus to be held by death and the grave. He was condemned by the world and died a sinner’s death, but he knew no sin at all. He and God, whom he called his Father, are one. He is the Son of God. He was judged for being an imposter and for blasphemy on this score, but God raised Jesus from the dead. His tomb was empty. He appeared to his disciples, who staked their lives on the truth of his Resurrection.
Whatever the accidental reason any one of us thinks brought us here to church, may we be surprised by the same joy that overtook those first frightened, doubtful disciples. Jesus spoke Mary Magdalene’s name, and she replied, “Dear Lord.” He knows us by name too. If we confess with our lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead, that he lives, we are saved: we have eternal life.
Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Sermons preached by
The Reverend Andrew C. Mead
Rector of Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue
in the City of New York
for The Triduum and Easter Day
March 20 -23, 2008
1. Raymond E, Brown, A Crucified Christ in Holy Week, pp. 15-16, pp. 62-63.
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