Maundy Thursday

By Rev. Heather J. Blais, Rector

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How do we live and work together as a faith community?

Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians is directed to an early Christian community undergoing some growing pains. His letter offers clear instructions on how to correct many aspects of communal life. At the same time, his letter begs certain questions still relevant to Christian communities today, such as:

• What are the norms of our community?
• How do we treat one another? 

• What does sharing the eucharist look like in our context?

In today’s passage, he is especially concerned with the community’s practices around the eucharist. 

In the early Church, the eucharist was more than a simple meal of bread and wine. It was an all out feast, that was more akin to the Dinner Church services led by Jimmy this Lent. People brought what they could, and the food was equally available to all. The eucharist has always been grounded in a theology of God’s abundance, generosity, and love. 

Except, something had gone awry in Corinth. The Corinthian community had been following Roman and Jewish dining customs of the time, which involved reserving the best seats and finest foods for the most esteemed guests.* This resulted in the poorest and least influential members of the community receiving inferior treatment.* In the verses that precede tonight’s lesson, Paul actually says, 

“Now in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse” (11:17).

In other words, if that’s how you are going to celebrate the eucharist, it would be better if you didn’t bother at all. He goes on to say, 

“For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own 
supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you!” (11:21-22). 

Ouch. 

Paul argues that the social stratification happening in Corinth is corrupting the very meaning of the eucharist. This is particularly offensive to him, as he was the one that initially instructed them on the practice of the eucharist. Clearly, they had not understood. 

In the section of his letter that we heard today, Paul is offering a correction. The practice of the eucharist comes from Jesus himself, when on the night he was betrayed, he took a loaf of bread, gave thanks, and said to his disciples:

“This is my body, that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me” (11:24)  

Then in the same way he took the cup, saying:

    “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, 
in remembrance of me” (11:25).

Paul is reminding Christian communities that each time we share in the eucharist, we are sharing in God’s story of love and redemption as made known to us in Christ. He also tries to help the community understand there is a difference between a shared communal meal of the eucharist and eating because we are physically  hungry.  He tells people if they are so hungry they can’t wait for everyone to have some food, they should eat something at home before coming to worship.  In other words, have a snack if you must.  

Paul also reminds us that prior to sharing the eucharist, we are meant to be examining our conscience, our behaviors, and our relationships. It can be easy to let this element of sharing the eucharist slip our minds. Because this aspect is hard.It’s one reason why this Lent, we’ve been regularly using one of the alternative offertory sentences prior to celebrating the eucharist together:

“If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your 
neighbor has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your neighbor, and then come and offer your gift.” - Matthew 5:23, 24  

Everytime we celebrate the eucharist at Saints James and Andrew, we say:

“This is God’s table, and all are welcome here, no exceptions.” 

What we do not say so straightforwardly is:
 
“This is God’s table, and walking the Way of Love is the hardest work we will ever do. So come; come and be spiritually nourished in our shared communal meal, so we might go out into the world to keep growing, and striving for reconciliation, for justice, mercy, and kindness in God’s world.”

Yet another reason why eucharist is not a private meal, but rather a communal meal. We need one another as a community to walk this Way of Love. 
It’s easy to see why Paul was so upset about the social stratification at play in Corinth, for the ways it disrupts community and creates inequality at God’s table. It’s equally easy to scoff at another community when they make this kind of mistake. What were those foolish Corinthians thinking? Well, probably the same thing churches thought when they started selling pews. Likely some committee in some church looking to raise capital had the great idea that if we sold pews to members, it would help balance the budget. It would allow members to choose their own pew, and to fuss over who might be sitting nearby. But what about those who couldn’t afford a pew? Well, the solution was a poor man’s pew. 

Our church once had such a pew, located in what is now the Littles’ Corner. While churches eventually began to realize selling pews was bad form in Christian communities, the culture of owning pews persisted long after payment ceased. Many lifelong church goers have had the misfortune of accidentally sitting in ‘someone else’s pew’ and receiving a rude glare or unkind words in return. I’d like to think that kind of behavior has largely gone by the wayside, as we do not actually own pews anymore. (And if this is new information for you, I am sorry to be the bearer of such difficult news this evening.) But I have to say, thank God we stopped such foolishness. Because holding a special place at God’s table for the wealthy and prominent is exactly what Paul is so worked up about in today’s passage. 

Social stratification can sneak into communal life in all sorts of ways if we do not keep God’s Love as our North Star. Which is likely why Paul makes a long and beautiful speech about love a few paragraphs beyond today’s passage. While 1 Corinthians 13 is often read at weddings, it’s not actually about romantic love. It is about the communal love that guides our life together as the body of Christ. 

It’s no mistake that the creators of the lectionary choose this reading for Maundy Thursday. This passage helps Christian communities as we walk through Holy Week to remember that the Eucharist grounds our common life together, and that it actually matters how we go about breaking bread as a community. Whatever our social status may be out in the world, at God’s Table, we are siblings in Christ, cherished and beloved children of God, equally welcomed. Because the Eucharist is inherently about God’s love:

• God’s love for creation, and the covenant she made with the Gentiles following the flood, as we see in the sign of the rainbow. 

• God’s love for the Jewish people, and her covenant with them throughout the ages. 

• God’s love for humanity, as made known in the incarnation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

God sent Jesus to teach us what it means to love. The eucharist was one of the primary tools that Jesus gave us, to guide and ground us in God’s love as a community; sustaining us as we strive to love and serve God’s world. As was, the footwashing. 

I’ve been your priest long enough that y’all know I love the foot washing ceremony. I know we all have insecurities about our feet, and our bodies in general. These insecurities make us uncomfortable, and the thought of others washing our feet can leave us feeling vulnerable in ways we’d prefer not to feel vulnerable. But that was Jesus’ point. In community, we are meant to be vulnerable with one another, to take risks, and help one another to grow in love. Doing so strengthens the body of Christ and our mission. There is a reason, this is the action focused on in John’s gospel on the eve of Jesus’ arrest. Jesus was teaching his disciples that loving one another means serving one another. But we can’t serve one another if we are not willing to be served. Many of us are eager to jump in and do the serving. We will get our hands dirty. We will go where God sends us. At the same time, the idea that God may be sending us to have our feet washed may make us deeply uncomfortable. 
The idea of allowing our feet, with all the insecurities and vulnerabilities they represent, may leave us wanting to say thanks, but no thanks. 


And again, that is the point. To walk the Way of Love, we need to be willing to serve and be served. I’m not saying we need to be there today, tomorrow, or the next day. If you are not ready to partake in the foot washing this evening, that is okay. What I am saying is that God longs for us to know what it means to serve and be served in community. We will spend our whole lives growing and being changed by God’s reconciling and redemptive Love.  

So, this night, this particular worship, is especially for the Church. To gather in our local worshiping communities, and reflect on our communal life:

• Are we loving and serving one another?

• Are we willing to be served? 

• In what ways are we claiming ‘this is my pew’, or ‘my ministry’, or ‘my way’ in our community that we need to lay down on God’s altar? 

• Where may there be social stratification within our communal life that we need to address?

• Who is missing from God’s table tonight and what might we need to change in our communal life to create space for them? 

Amen. 


* Jewish Annotated New Testament, p. 341. 

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