Maundy Thursday Rev. Sarah Cotterill

“Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century,

spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race

on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human

circumstance, from every conceivable human need… from the pinnacles

of earthly greatness to the refuge of the fugitives… [People] have found

no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for

criminals going to the scaffold, for armies in triumph… or for a sick old

woman afraid to die… one could fill many pages with the reasons why

[people] have done this, and not tell a hundredth part of them. And best

of all, week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand

successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of

Christendom, the pastors have done this just to make the holy common

people of God.”

Lightly edited for the 21 st century, this majestic passage from Dom

Gregory Dix on the institution of the Eucharist still captures the beauty of

what we commemorate today. We come to the table of God in our state

of deepest need; we come in thankfulness for all that we have received.

The simple bread we share gives the lie to all merely human claims to

greatness; the healing cup we drink builds us up to a share in God’s

glory.

Above all, as St Paul reminds us, we celebrate the Eucharist to share

with others what we have received. We remember the suffering and

sacrifice of Christ, the body given for us and the blood shed for us, in the

supreme act of love. We proclaim Christ’s death by making this ultimate

gift of love present again in the meal that we share.

It is worth remembering, then, the context of Paul’s writing here. He is

addressing a divided people, arguing over the faith they have received,

competing for recognition, exalting themselves at the expense of others.

The Corinthian Christians’ claim to community is damaged by these

things. And when it does not take place within the context of a loving

community, their duty to proclaim and reproduce God’s supreme act of

love through the reenactment of the Eucharist is damaged too.

This connects the account of the last supper in the Synoptic Gospels,

summed up here by Paul, with the account we have heard from John

this evening. Having focused his ministry and teaching up to this point

on those who were not his followers, Jesus turns inward on his last

night, and teaches his friends the true meaning of discipleship. This

teaching covers several chapters in John, but embracing it all is this

simple but overwhelming commandment: “Just as I have loved you, you

also should love one another.”

If no commandment has been so obeyed as the sharing of Holy

Communion, we cannot say the same of this commandment that we love

one another. We all know the divisions that exist not only between the

Christian denominations, but also within our own Church of England. We

disagree about so many things, not least what loving one another

means. In the near future we may face real rupture between our

churches over who and how we love. So we should focus closely here

on the example Jesus gives us of what love really means.

“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”

In John’s gospel, Jesus’s love is shown not simply in his final sacrifice on

the cross, but also here, in the intimate one-to-one connection involved

in washing someone’s feet. Having been given authority over all things

by his Father, and living in the closest relationship with him, Jesus

chooses on this last night to take on the duties of a servant. He upends

the very idea of what authority means, and John goes to great lengths to

emphasize the scandal and challenge this action reflects, not only to the

powers of Jesus’ own time but also to our own.

Peter struggles to accept it. He utters a protest. Jesus explains to him

that “unless I wash you, you have no share with me”. Part of loving one

another, then, is accepting love, even when we feel unworthy. We love

others because we have first been loved. God draws us into the loving

relationship that exists between the Father and the Son, so that we may

share in its glory and its joy. This foundation in the gift we have received

is what gives his followers the strength to share with Christ in facing

opposition, suffering and even the possibility of death. We are drawn into

the bosom of God, where Christ is, and through this we are called to

share in the overflow of God’s love through engagement with the world.

So as we share again tonight the simultaneous intimacy and discomfort

of washing one another’s feet in remembrance of Jesus, we are

commanded not only to share in the loving communion of worship, but to

ensure that this same love overflows into lives of loving service in the

world.

This loving engagement with others is not simply a matter of seeking

unity where we can with our fellow Christians. Jesus washed the feet not

only of his friends, but also of Judas, the archetypal enemy. And he

commands us to follow his example. God’s love for the world extends to

the whole of creation, in an infinite play of improvisation and creativity.

And the loving service to which God calls us has the same reach.

So what it means to follow the example of washing one another’s feet

can take many forms, from volunteering in church or a foodbank, to a

lifetime of climate activism, of living alongside society’s outcasts, or of

working for peace in the world. Just as hard in our own time as any of

these things, it can even take the form of sustaining relationships with

those with whom we most disagree, both our fellow Christians and

others. Just as thousands of different needs bring us to the table of God

in communion, so thousands of different impulses of love send us out

from that table to engagement with the world. In all of them, we are

called to obey this commandment as faithfully as the other, that we love

one another with the same love that Jesus has shown us, right to the

very end.