Homily for Holy Thursday, Christ the King, 2006
Holy Thursday, 2006
Tonight we begin the longest Liturgy of the church year.
It begins tonight and continues through tomorrow and concludes with the Easter Vigil.
This is the Easter Triduum -the holy three days.
In this three day Liturgy, measured sundown to sundown,
we celebrate one great event, our salvation,
One Christ, through suffering and joy,
through cross and glory,
through life and death and life again.
One great event – the Paschal Mystery.
As this Liturgy began, the season of Lent ended.
We approach the hour of his glory.
We place our humanity, with all its mortal weaknesses
confidently before the mercy of God.
Yes, confidently!
For look what kind of God we see in this Gospel.
This scene of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples
at the Last Supper stands out as one of the most significant and extraordinary events in his life.
Until that moment the whole point of things
had been for someone to get to the top, and once they’d gotten to the top, to stay on top or go even higher.
But here was Jesus, a man already on top,
rabbi, teacher master and what did he do?
He took off his outer garments
and bent down to wash the feet of his followers.
In that one act of humility,
Jesus symbolically overturned the whole social order.
His disciples were horrified.
It was a shocking thing to do.
They didn’t understand it. They wanted no part of it.
You see in the Holy Land the environment is dry and dusty.
In Jesus’ time, people wore sandals.
The streets were mostly unpaved
and heavily traveled by beasts of burden.
There were no street cleaners or garbage pickups.
Feet were most often covered with dust and filth.
When it rained, feet and toes were caked with who knows what.
It was a common sense thing to keep a pitcher of water by the door of every house to wash the feet of those who entered.
It was the task of a slave or a servant to do this and always before one reclined to eat.
There was no servant in the upper room that night – except Jesus.
The disciples certainly weren’t going to wash each other’s feet.
So Jesus did what needed to be done,
and in that one decisive act
he taught us that Christian greatness is not determined by position, or prerogatives or education or title…
Christian greatness is measured by a willingness to meet the need of the moment with a deed of service.
The Lord, Jesus showed us the true nature of glory by washing the mud off the feet of common, ordinary, laboring people.
He did it out of love.
He was telling his disciples how much he loved them
cherished them
cared for them.
He washed their feet gently, tenderly
as a loving mother would wash the feet of her children.
We must not forget the occasion.
It was the Last Supper,
the first Eucharist,
which speaks volumes about what our Liturgy is
and is not.
We are not here just to remember,
for if the love of God is not somehow manifested to the world by what we do here then it is not an authentic Eucharist.
The food we receive here is food for action;
not just contemplation or adoration.
We get Jesus
and we get to BE Jesus for others.
We get his body
and get to become his body and his church.
We get to be bread for the world’s hunger.
This evening, as we consume the Eucharist, let us pray that it consumes us as well.
