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A sermon preached in Salisbury Cathedral on Maunday Thursday by Canon Edward Probert, Chancellor
Exodus 12.1-4, 11-14, I Corinthians 11.23-26, John 13.1-15
"MAUNDY THURSDAY"
Exodus 12.1-4, 11-14, I Corinthians 11.23-26, John 13.1-15
There are many strands of reflection on the events on which we concentrate in these days from Maundy Thursday till Easter, and some of those strands emphasise the personal meaning of these events. Among these reflections are many as profound, heartfelt, long-lasting and important as the arias in Bach’s St John Passion, or Charles Wesley’s wonderful hymn ‘And can it be?’:
‘And can it be that I should gain
An int’rest in my saviour’s blood?
Died he for me? Who caused his pain….’
Nonetheless, what I want to pick out in each of the readings we have heard tonight is that the ‘you’s’ in all 3 readings are plural not singular, and so the stress is not on us as individuals, but on what you might call households. Moses is told to speak to the whole community of Israel, who are to prepare the Passover sacrifice in each household; and it’s not the individual Israelites who are smeared with the blood, but the door posts and lintels of those households. Jesus shares the meal of his body and blood with his household come together for the Passover; and he goes round the table, washing feet and telling those he has washed to do the same. The household of the Exodus has become the household of Jesus, the group gathered together within doors to eat a meal, conscious of the transience and fragility of their situation, aware that in a moment they will be going out in faith, on a journey to some kind of promised land.
That collective insecurity of the Passover meal is at the heart of Jewish life, and all too often collective insecurity has been the bitter experience of Jewish people - which no doubt accounts for a lot of the collective psychology of the modern state of Israel. It is harder for us here to grasp the mind of a household come together in the face of persecution, the threat of destruction, and in a perpetual readiness to decamp together to a new place. Maybe this is one reason why we’ve translated the Bible’s collective insecurity into a kind of personal spiritual insecurity: we cling to Christ as ‘my Lord and Saviour’, because it’s only in individual terms that we can envisage that kind of vulnerability.
But the person around whom we focus for these few days, and indeed for the rest of our lives, is utterly vulnerable. Betrayed, alone, abused, beaten, killed. And in anticipation of these experiences come the breaking of bread, the pouring out of wine, and the washing of feet. Prepared to die, he was prepared also to be vulnerable to the people of his household: their twisted, calloused and filthy feet were preparations for the metaphorical kick to the guts he would receive through betrayal by a dear friend.
This household is one where everything is back to front. Role, status, prestige, achievement - the things to which we are inclined to cling because they make us secure – these are not just ignored, but actually reversed. That’s why Peter found it so difficult: if Jesus has become a servant, what on earth might that make Peter?
To paraphrase Luther’s translated words, our God may be still ‘our safe stronghold’; but the household of Jesus is neither like an Englishman’s proverbial home, his castle, nor like some of Mrs Alexander’s bright and beautiful things, ‘the rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate’. To be at tonight’s table, and so to be of the household of Jesus, is to find all our false security overturned, and to make ourselves ready to go out in the paradoxical insecurity of faith: the way of the cross.
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‘And can it be that I should gain
An int’rest in my saviour’s blood?
Died he for me? Who caused his pain….’
Nonetheless, what I want to pick out in each of the readings we have heard tonight is that the ‘you’s’ in all 3 readings are plural not singular, and so the stress is not on us as individuals, but on what you might call households. Moses is told to speak to the whole community of Israel, who are to prepare the Passover sacrifice in each household; and it’s not the individual Israelites who are smeared with the blood, but the door posts and lintels of those households. Jesus shares the meal of his body and blood with his household come together for the Passover; and he goes round the table, washing feet and telling those he has washed to do the same. The household of the Exodus has become the household of Jesus, the group gathered together within doors to eat a meal, conscious of the transience and fragility of their situation, aware that in a moment they will be going out in faith, on a journey to some kind of promised land.
That collective insecurity of the Passover meal is at the heart of Jewish life, and all too often collective insecurity has been the bitter experience of Jewish people - which no doubt accounts for a lot of the collective psychology of the modern state of Israel. It is harder for us here to grasp the mind of a household come together in the face of persecution, the threat of destruction, and in a perpetual readiness to decamp together to a new place. Maybe this is one reason why we’ve translated the Bible’s collective insecurity into a kind of personal spiritual insecurity: we cling to Christ as ‘my Lord and Saviour’, because it’s only in individual terms that we can envisage that kind of vulnerability.
But the person around whom we focus for these few days, and indeed for the rest of our lives, is utterly vulnerable. Betrayed, alone, abused, beaten, killed. And in anticipation of these experiences come the breaking of bread, the pouring out of wine, and the washing of feet. Prepared to die, he was prepared also to be vulnerable to the people of his household: their twisted, calloused and filthy feet were preparations for the metaphorical kick to the guts he would receive through betrayal by a dear friend.
This household is one where everything is back to front. Role, status, prestige, achievement - the things to which we are inclined to cling because they make us secure – these are not just ignored, but actually reversed. That’s why Peter found it so difficult: if Jesus has become a servant, what on earth might that make Peter?
To paraphrase Luther’s translated words, our God may be still ‘our safe stronghold’; but the household of Jesus is neither like an Englishman’s proverbial home, his castle, nor like some of Mrs Alexander’s bright and beautiful things, ‘the rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate’. To be at tonight’s table, and so to be of the household of Jesus, is to find all our false security overturned, and to make ourselves ready to go out in the paradoxical insecurity of faith: the way of the cross.