Maundy Thursday - April 17, 2025

Maundy Thursday

Luke 22:7-30

The Rev’d Charles Everson

The Church of the Atonement

April 17, 2025

Over three thousand years ago, a lamb was slaughtered, and its blood painted on doorposts to mark a people for salvation. Tonight, we gather to keep the same feast—not in memory only, but in the very presence of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Here’s the setting. The Jewish people were slaves in Egypt.  God raised up Moses as their leader, and the Passover marked the beginning of Israel’s exodus out of Egypt and into the Promised Land.  God commanded each Israelite household to slaughter a spotless Lamb.  The instructions are quite detailed, just as any good liturgical customary is.  “Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs.”  It reminds me of the some of the fussy liturgical traditions we observe around here at Atonement, such as “Bell ringing [is] forbidden from the end of the Gloria on Maundy Thursday until the priest intones the Gloria at the Easter Vigil on Saturday night.”[1]  This is why you’ll hear a wooden clacker – a crotolus in Latin – in place of the bells throughout the rest of tonight’s Mass and during the Good Friday liturgy.

At the Passover, the head of the household smeared some of the blood of the lamb on his doorposts as a signal to God to “pass over” his house when God destroyed the firstborn of the Egyptians, thus paving the way for their escape back to Israel.  The passage ends with, “This day shall be a day of remembrance for you.  You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.”[2]

Thirteen hundred years later, as good Jews, our Lord and his disciples kept the feast in their time.  Jesus said to his disciples, “I eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer,” using a term that his disciples would have immediately recognized a play on words: the Greek word Passover (pascha) and the verb “to suffer” (pascho) are almost identical.  In the story of the Last Supper, Jesus foretells his own suffering that will happen tomorrow on the cross, and links his own Passion with the Jewish Passover.  Just as Israel was delivered from the bonds of slavery in Egypt and sent into the land of promise by the Passover, so is the Church delivered from the bonds of sin and death into an everlasting life with God in the Passion of our Lord on Good Friday. 

Jesus goes on to say to his disciples that “he will not eat [the Passover] until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” In some ancient manuscripts, it is recorded that he says “he will not eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God,” as if he’s celebrating the Passover in that moment at the Last Supper.  Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross is the fulfillment of the Jewish Passover.  And tonight, as we celebrate the Eucharist, we celebrate the fulfilled Passover in this great sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.   In the Passover, a lamb is sacrificed to give God’s chosen people what they need to avoid the devastating effects of God’s judgment.  At times throughout the year during the liturgy, we sing, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us!  Therefore let us keep the feast!”  Each time we celebrate the Eucharist, we are united to the once-and-for-all sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. It is through Jesus’s sacrifice that we are brought into the Promised Land and freed from the bonds of sin and death. Each time we celebrate the Eucharist, we step outside of time into eternity and are joined with each Eucharistic celebration throughout history and each future Eucharist that is to come, along with all of the saints who have ever come to the altar rail throughout history and those who will in the future. 

Tonight, dear friends, we celebrate the fulfillment of this festival of our freedom that our spiritual ancestors kept in Egypt so long ago.  But before we do, we will observe another ritual that has been around since at least the year 694: the washing of the feet.  In John’s gospel, just before the Passover, Jesus washes the feet of his disciples.  Peter initially responds, “You will never wash my feet,” utterly appalled at the thought of his Lord washing his feet.  In washing his disciples’ feet, Jesus takes the place of servant to his own servants.  Beyond inverting the image of leadership, Jesus performs a very intimate act in this moment.  Exposing one’s feet to another was just as unusual in the 1st century as it is in our culture (which is why, like some of you, I’m sure, I got my one and only pedicure of the year this afternoon). In this humble act of service, Jesus is modeling what the Christian life is all about: just as he washed his disciples’ feet, so are they to go and do likewise.  For “servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them.”[3]   He then continues, “I give you a new commandment [Mandatum novum in Latin for which we get Maundy Thursday], that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Despite having experienced this intimate moment with his Lord, tomorrow, we will hear Peter deny his Lord three times.  He’s not the only one – Judas not only denies him, he betrays him.  But there’s a significant difference between Peter and Judas which the late Pope Benedict XVI explores in his book, “Jesus of Nazareth.”  For Peter, there is true mourning and sorrow, as Peter’s eyes meet our Lord’s after denying even knowing Jesus three times. Peter—who was full of arrogant confidence—has now come face to face with his own weakness and infidelity. And this confrontation with the truth hurts. But Peter’s mourning—while painful—brings him to the truth and ultimately repentance. For Benedict, the key difference between Peter and Judas here is that unlike Judas’s desolate despair, Peter’s mourning includes a glimmer of hope and a sense of God’s infinite mercy. And this gives Peter the chance to start over.  Moved by God’s grace and having come face to face with his own weakness, now he is ready to let God work through him in an even more powerful way. Benedict writes: “Struck by the Lord’s gaze, Peter bursts into healing tears that plow up the soil of his soul. He begins anew and is himself renewed”.

This night, dear friends, we celebrate with great joy this perpetual memory of our freedom from the bondage of sin, just as Jesus commanded us to do.  Tonight, we come as Peter did—full of bravado, yet painfully aware of our frailty. But even in our weakness, Jesus meets us at the basin and at the altar. He gives himself to us not because we are worthy, but because he loves us. May the glimmer of hope we find in this great feast give us the strength we need to face the darkness and despair of Good Friday, and remind us that that our ultimate freedom from sin and death is just around the corner.

[1] My paraphrase of Ritual Notes, 9th edition, paragraph 358(b), p. 151.

[2] Verse 14.

[3] John 13:14.