Psalm 116:1, 10-17
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Tonight is a night of love: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”(John 13:34-35) It is also a night when the Church – albeit in somber tones – celebrates the institution of the sacrament by which she partakes of the Body and Blood of her Lord, the sacrament by which St Paul tells the Corinthians that “as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”(1 Corinthians 11:26) However, what many people remember about tonight’s liturgy is its end: the stripping of the altar, the stripping of the church. What many people take with them is a sense of traumatic desolation as the lights are extinguished, the familiar elements of the church building removed. It is a visceral sense of loss, a visceral sense of abandonment, even betrayal: “How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become….She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among her lovers she has no one to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they have become her enemies.” (Lamentations 1:1, 2)
This week as we have walked liturgically through the days leading to Jesus’ passion and death, we have been doing so with the poetry of John Keble’s The Christian Year. John Keble who lived between the years 1792 and 1866 is best known as the one who by his Assize Sermon sparked the Oxford movement. Lesser known is the fact that he was for some ten years Professor of Poetry at Oxford University. It was in 1827 that he published The Christian Year, in in it he provides a focus on the Sundays and Holy Days for which there is a proper in the English Book of Common Prayer. With each he hopes to bring into sharper focus the meaning of the day in relation to the Church’s year, but perhaps more especially in relation to the reader’s own journey with God. In a sermon on the theme of “Christ’s Own Preparation for His Passion”, Keble asks: “For what is the purpose of the Holy Church Universal in appointing this particular time of the year, in which for so many days we are to follow step by step, through all the stages of his bitter passion first, and then of his triumphant victory over death?” He answers his own question, when he says that “what is meant is, that we, by the help of God’s Holy Spirit, should make what happened to him as present to us, and as near to us, as ever we can; that we should…‘have the mind of Christ’ ”. He hopes that by making those events present to ourselves and us present to them, they will not “fail to come home to us”. Holy Week is not about apprehending the passion and death of our Lord in any intellectual or even liturgically detached sense, but in a lived and experienced sense.
It is not surprising that tonight’s service should evoke for us that feeling of desolation, that feeling of loss, the sense of darkness closing in on us – that is what it is supposed to do. Through the ages, it has been the Church’s meaning to make the events of these days not just present to us, but to make us present to them; and ultimately that cannot be done by thinking ourselves into them, but by feeling ourselves in them. Tonight, through the action and language of symbol, those parts of ourselves which feel or have felt lost, those parts of ourselves which have known desolation are tapped into and they serve as the entry into an immediate experience of these days. But also through action and language, for those parts of ourselves which may feel unclean or unworthy to be washed by Christ; for those parts of ourselves that feel hungry or thirsty to be fed and tended to by Christ. We sometimes talk about the observance of Holy Week, but notice how detached that language is: observance, observe, watching. It is still in the realm of the “not there”, the realm of the separate. The Church in her liturgy provides for an emotional immediacy, provides for us to experience Holy Week, provides for a space in which the saving events of this week and their power are made a present reality. It is the difference between nostalgia and remembering. “Nostalgia” is placing ourselves into a past event, it has a sense of the sentimental and un-costly. “Remembering”, in the sense that the Church understands it, is about making past events present right here and now; but even more than that, about making the transforming power of the event a present reality also.
So tonight Jesus washes his disciples’ feet and commands his followers: “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought also to wash one another’s feet. For I set you and example, that you also should do as I have done to you….I give you a new commandment that you love one another.” (John 13: 13-15, 34) Tonight we enter into that reality, physically – water touching skin, flesh touching fleshing. Tonight Jesus broke bread and poured out wine, commanding his followers to do this in remembrance of him. And so we do – and so has the Church down since her beginning, Sunday by Sunday, day by day – breaking bread, pouring wine – thus making that sacrifice of Our Lord a present reality, its power a present strength. As we remember – make present past reality – Christ’s words in all cases are directed to us, and the effects of his actions are accessible to us in so far as we can enter into the process of remembering.
Yes, tonight Christ gives himself for us in service as feet are washed; yes, tonight Christ gives himself for us as nourishment as we take into our selves his Body and Blood. Tonight, we will go with him to Gethsemane as we walk to the chapel; tonight, we make his desolation real for us as the altars are stripped, the church made naked of its usual beauty. Tomorrow we will stand at the foot of his cross, as we make our veneration, and we will go with him into the darkness of the grave as we commemorate his burial. Saturday night we will wait with him in that darkness, wait with the whole Church – past, present and future – for the revelation of God’s purposes, for the revelation of God’s life among us. Ah, then Easter, what Keble calls “Oh! day of days” – as we make that proclamation of resurrection, flood with the light the whole Church, in action and in word, we burst forth with Christ from the tomb, we share in his resurrection; the reality of Christ’s new life made symbolically and presently available.
In his second letter to Timothy, St Paul writes: “The saying is sure:
If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
if we endure, we will also reign with him.” (2 Timothy 2:11-12) Symbolically – and believe me, this side of God, symbols are the only way to experience ultimate reality – symbolically, in these days we are doing exactly what Paul is talking about: entering into the reality of Christ’s death by remembering, making the reality a present reality. Do you feel desolation, loss as the altars are stripped? You are remembering, entering into that reality in the present moment. Do you feel Christ present with you as you receive the bread and wine of Holy Communion? You are remembering, entering into that reality in the present moment. Do you feel loved tenderly by Christ as you watch or have your feet washed. You are remembering, entering into that reality in the present moment. Remember. Pray with Christ in Gethsemane, walk with Christ along the torturous road to Golgotha, kneel as his cross, watch him die. Remember. Proclaim and share in his resurrection. In order that what “happened to him [may be] as present [to you, ] to us, and as near, as ever [it] can be”, and that in end the we may live and reign with him, both now and ever.
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