Maundy Thursday – 2006 Exodus 12:1-14a Psalm 78:14-20, 23-25 1 Corinthians 11:23-32 John 13:1-15 The Rev. J. Brian Ponder, Episcopal Chaplain The Chapel of Memories Mississippi State University In the Name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. Tonight, the tables turn. … This is the night … this is the night when all becomes different … the night before the last of tomorrows … the night of misguided betrayal … the night of unfathomable, incomprehensible reality … the night of celebration that sharply and abruptly changes course … the night of truth’s revelation … the night when all is revealed … when there’s no denying just who is this Jesus … though there will be great denial of one’s association with God’s beloved. Tonight, the tables turn. … The tables turn … as master becomes servant … as festivity gives way to the depths of death and darkness … as the one who rode into Jerusalem on the colt in triumph becomes the beast of burden … just when things seemed to be making some sense. Tonight is much more a night of juxtapositions than it is a night of ironies … a night of institution … and new commandment … and new ways of being … that only make sense through death. … These things could only make sense through loss and death. … It’s the night when the common is made holy—when elements like bread and wine become flesh and blood … when the honored one honors … when the very God who descended to earth, offering a beloved child, now condescends to the earth to wash the feet of those he loves before returning to the earth from which all of us were created. Tonight becomes a night of equalities. Food is shared amongst friends, co-equals in companionship, where all have place and responsibility within the story … the journey that has been and is yet to be … as food is taken, blessed, broken and given … distributed amongst all—even the one who would put the three-day domino effect into play … even those who would never have thought to allow their leader to bow before them, let alone wash them. Tonight is a night of humility … when all come off high horses, so to speak … when the pomp and the pageantry and the majesty all fall away, and nothing is left … except what’s real, what’s at the crux of relationship … of discipleship … where all enter into humbleness … where all choose humility … he who washes … and those who allow him to do so. … Yes, tonight the tables turn. … … This past fall … the tables turned for many in Mississippi and the surrounding region in ways that were unexpected. … Bill, Diane and I have taken a number of opportunities from this pulpit to talk about the incredible work taking place on the Coast … the amazing stories of service and the outpouring of love … glimpses into the great work that is taking place there. But there’s another aspect to all of it, too … another truth to what’s being done on the Coast, and in Louisiana, and which must happen in any and all places of disaster response, or in places of continuing want and need and necessity and loss and sacrifice and hardship and struggle and turmoil and depravity … if the process towards true wholeness is to work, if the process of real healing is to begin, if the opening up of reconciliation and the piecing together of broken lives, shattered by every lack or need or loss imaginable, is to take place. There must be room for humility … room for humbleness to enter the scene, space carved out … for the common to become holy. And again, this is not just true for the situation on the Coast, though I have most recently experienced this truth in that place. While on the Coast, I can’t tell you the number of people I encountered who never thought they’d be in a situation where they’d need to ask for assistance—help with money to get back on their feet, or for clothes to go to an interview because the business they had worked at for 20 years will never reopen, or for some little something just to get by—just for today, for food … to feed their children, for the luxury of hand lotion to soothe raw and aching hands, or you name it. … These folks know humility. … And it was the ones, many of whom in the shortsightedness of a number of the volunteers who thought they’d come in to save the day, it was these who in a number of cases were accused of hoarding—stockpiling food and water and blankets and toiletries and clothes—it was these who were…are the ones who when you actually talked to them, who when you were invited to and you chose to enter into and become a part of their story, that you learned something else about humility, through the stories of others who they were shopping for, even in the midst of their own needs—the ones they were assisting who couldn’t come to relief stations during operating hours, like: Petra down the street who has no family and couldn’t leave her house unattended; or Julius who lost his van in the hurricane along with it’s wheelchair access features; or Phyllis and Andrea, retired sisters who opened what’s left of their home to take care of the neighborhood’s infants and small children since there’s still no daycare—and others like them … Humility … humble acts of service … even in the midst of despair, and harsh reality, and facing the unknown … a two-way-street kind of humility in which one is as open to receiving as another is open to giving without pretense, without condition, without expectation … where all see face to face and eye to eye. … This is what Maundy Thursday is all about. This is the night when all are called to see with their own eyes, when all, if they choose to, walk in humility by example, when there is room enough, and all participate, and all are invited … when all have choice. Tonight begins the sacred three-days liturgy of the Triduum—a single liturgy which spans the days. Tonight we eat his body and drink his blood. … In so doing, Christ lives in us and we in him. His life becomes our life and so his love becomes our love. Tonight we celebrate the Eucharist, and we remember Jesus’ washing of the disciple’s feet … two acts … both done as example … both acts that invite us into participation … but not merely to copy them, or to replicate them, or to mimic them, … but to delve into their meanings, to fathom the depths, to live the very reality and new ways of being we’ve been called into by Jesus’ example. … In so doing, we are sons and daughters of God, created in God’s image and likeness. We are fed with Christ’s body and nourished with his blood. We are filled with God’s life-giving Spirit. And in all of it, we do not copy Christ from the outside, … rather it is by him and with him and in him that we are able to do what he does, for it is Christ who loves and forgives and serves and suffers and dies and rises to new life in us. So tonight, we give thanks for the Eucharist, and for Baptism, and for the Church and for one another; and we pray that we may become more fully the Body of Christ as we do all of this in remembrance of him, this one who died and rose for us. Amen.   Wording in the last two paragraphs of this homily were taken directly and/or paraphrased from Abbot Paul’s (The Abbey of St. Michael and All Angels, Belmont Abbey, Hereford, UK) 2003 Maundy Thursday homily found at: http://www.belmontabbey.org.uk/news%20items/Holy%20Thursday%202003.htm as it appeared on said website on 4/11/2006.