Maundy Thursday
1990 (Year A), 12 April, Maundy Thursday
St Peter de Beauvoir Town
Christ, whose feet were caressed
with perfume and a woman’s hair
you humbly took a basin and a towel
and washed the feet of your friends.
Wash us also in your tenderness
as we come together;
so that embracing your service freely,
we may accept no other bondage
than your name, in whom there is perfect freedom.
And so God in infinite graciousness performs the task of a slave. God in an action of love moves round the disciples one by one and washes their feet. Giving, in the process, an example of how they must treat each other for evermore. On this, the last evening that they will be together, they share a meal. It’s the final thing they will do together before one goes off to commit an act of betrayal and the rest run away in fear as they desert their friend.
It is, above all, a night of contrasts – the tenderness needed to perform this act of service and the brutality of betrayal. For this sacramental meal the group is united. In a few hours they will be divided and isolated, running for their lives. It is a night of extreme business for those determined to do away with Jesus but for him, at the beginning anyway, a time of stillness and prayer. A night for certainty as the mob are convinced of the rightness of their action and a night for doubt as the disciples leave the man who only a few days ago was acclaimed a king. A night where the will of the people is contrasted with the will of the divine. It is a night when the mortal and worldly is embraced by the divine.
This night is a focus, a central point, where the events threaten to run madly out of control. Nobody seems to know what’s going on or what the end might be. Everything seems to be in a state of turmoil, and God who gave his only son to the world to save it seems in imminent danger of having the whole thing overtaken and defeated by the anger and hate of this world.
It is a night of emotion, and the darkness compounds it. Tonight there is the apprehension of waiting, the silence of it all. It is a night for hoping in a situation that has almost lost all hope.
Night-time paradoxically, always seems to make things clearer. We either relax into the security and peace which sleep brings or those things which frighten us become almost too much for us to bear. There are few shades of grey.
This night brings amazing simplicity – things in a mysterious way become much clearer. There is certainty, not doubt. Judas knows what he has to do, the chief priests know what they want, Jesus knows that he must do the will of the Father. The disciples, after a first show of strength, know that they must flee if they are to protect themselves.
The end approaches and with the end comes decision. It is a time to choose to do the will of God or not. Judas chose and the crowd choose one way, Jesus, with the pain and suffering we know only too well, chose another.
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It is a night for God, for the darkness and the light are both alike to him, for He is God of All.
That night reaches out to us through time, through the repetition of the meal and the washing of the feet, and it speaks directly to us. And it brings a clarity often lacking in our lives and asks us to choose again to wait and watch with Jesus.
All things come from God. And He embraces and heals all things. All things. And so to our world, caught in turmoil often without future and close to despair there comes stillness and hope. Into our own worlds where people seem increasingly able to live only for themselves, comes the Christ who is still prepared to die for everyone. Into our world characterised by doubt and unbelief comes one, who when faced with death, is willing to commit everything into the hands of his divine father.
This night, is truly the night of God, for in him there is no light, there is no darkness, both are alike to him. Let us go forward with him into the stillness and find God waiting for us. AMEN