Maundy Thursday
April 9, 1998
What is a birthday without a cake? What is the Fourth of July without fireworks? Without the outward trappings, it is hard to celebrate the occasion. Yet gazing past the trappings, we often find the meaning beyond the symbol. Birthdays are really about the gift of life, not simply time. The Fourth of July is about freedom, not the birth of a nation. So beyond cakes and fireworks, beyond the surface manifest& Lions, there is always something more.
Tonight, we have communion without a lot of the outward trimmings. At the end of the service, we completely strip the altar, which symbolizes that we’re down to rock bottom, down to the bare bones, down to the simplest of meanings. Tonight we are invited to participate in a meal without any of the usual additions, without the frills. We are being asked to go back to the basics. Go back to what the meal originally meant.
This is no ordinary meal, and we have no ordinary host, nor is this an ordinary table. This table, this meal, doesn’t belong to us. Someone else calls you to it. You don’t deserve to be here. You don’t have a reserved seat.
Many of you have come with the thought that you have chosen to be here. That you have made the choice among other choices. (You could be home right now with your feet up, watching TV, or a video.) But let me dissuade you of these thoughts. If the truth were known, you didn’t choose.
You were chosen to be here. “You did not choose me,” said Jesus, “but I chose you. I called you to my table, I made a place for you.”
One further note about the table. It is expandable. There is no limit to its size. We often try to confine it, to fence it in – make it open to only people who believe. But the host said, “Come unto me, all you who are hungry and thirsty.”
So to this meal come all sorts and conditions. The woman taken in adultery, the thief on the cross, the prodigal son, Judas, as well as Peter, Mary the mother, as well as the one called the Magdalene, Vestry people, as well as nonmembers. The pompous and the guilty and the gutsy, the simple and the sincere, the faithful and the foolish, the helpless and the hopeful. This is no ordinary table. This is no common meal we are having.
If the truth were known, we would wish our host were more important. A person of substance, with a grand title like Messiah, or King, or doctor, showing power or influence. My Judas mind suffers with a sense of outrage. The host is an underachiever (using Woody Allen’s metaphor). Jesus appears not in glory, but in weakness. Not as the gracious host, but as a servant; a waiter if you will. Not even as the matre’de, but more. like a busboy, and I am shocked.
At the conclusion of this sermon, we are going to act out in symbolic form what Jesus did to dramatize his role. He washed the feet of the disciples. It’s a strange ceremony. One that I would like to avoid, but it’s been repeated for 2000 years on this night to remind us that we who follow in the footsteps of Jesus are called to be servants.
The problem of the church today is that many of us think we are entitled to enter the main entrance. We expect to be ushered into the living room or the dining room. But the meaning of this night suggests that we understand that Jesus comes in by the servant’s entrance. If we are to follow, we too must come as servants. We, too, must wear a towel, and not a title.
Here we are in a simple meal, with a simple message. Our Savior has said, “You call me teacher and Lord. If I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet.” So come to the table and come as servants, not hosts.
Amen