Why Eucharist?

Maundy Thursday, April 2, 2026
Ex. 12:1-14a Ps. 78:14-20, 23-25
1 Cor 11:23-32 John 13:1-15

Lectionary Link

Liturgy is the the body language ceremonial of the church.  Liturgy, like language changes over time with actual usage and contextual factors bring about innovational adaptations.

What does a communal meal as liturgy look like when it is a hosted private meal within a family home compared to being a meal convened within a large basilica, the buildings which came to house seated bishops and not seated kings?  Architectural change due to the rising popularity and Empire acceptance of Christianity forced liturgical changes, even changes such as who could be "public" ministers.  Why?  The community needed loud projecting voices in large spaces, which would disqualify the more gentle throated person.  How did a communal meal change when it moved from a private home into a large basilica with large crowds?  One can see how actual eating became more narrowly religious stylized eating with the bread and wine elements becoming less connected with the actual bread of subsistence.

As we ponder the meaning of Maundy Thursday, we ponder the commemoration of the institution of the Holy Eucharist which is the chief actual social reality of the gathered church.

Why the Eucharist?  And how has the Eucharist as a body language liturgy of the church originated and developed?

As a first observation, we would offer that the Eucharist was an anthropological sound practice in comprising a community.  It also was appropriate to the time for both Jews and Gentiles who lived in cultures with sacred meal traditions.  The first biblical account we have of the Eucharistic tradition is in St. Paul's first epistle to the Corinthian church, a church with surely a mixture of Jewish and Gentile followers of Christ.  Paul did not receive his Eucharist tradition from having been at a Passover meal with Jesus; he said he received his tradition "from the Lord."  Paul is one who also believed that he "had the mind of Christ," so he regarded himself to be channeling an authoritative Gospel of Christian practice.

The Eucharist made very good evangelical sense too within the Greco-Roman context.  It was common for the various communities of the Mystery religion cults to have guild meals, secret meals, for the initiated and the initiates.  Such guilds gave a mediating community for individual and family within the Empire; they were like extended family organizations, where people with like interests could meet and where marriage and friendships could happen.

The Eucharist as a guild meal of people coming together with the Risen Christ being the Patronal Deity of these gatherings, would not be completely unusual within the Roman Empire setting.  Not surprisingly, the Latin word sacramentum translated the Greek word mysterion.  The mystery for Paul was stated as "Christ in you."  And the Eucharistic event meant an association of the bread and wine with Christ who would be a renewed presence in the receiving of the bread and wine.  The bread and the wine becomes one with person who receives them, signifying the Mystery of Christ becoming known as one with the Christian initiated.  Surely this practice was evangelically successful in the Greco-Roman context.  But it also had connection with origins of Jesus within Judaism and the Passover Meal tradition.  One can find that the Pauline Eucharist is written within the Gospel communities as the Last Supper tradition and the bread from heaven tradition.  Just as the Pauline Eucharist and the Gospel Eucharists are teachings on Eucharistic practice, in the history of Christian communities the Eucharist has come to have varied traditions.  With the loss of the Temple priesthood after the destruction of the Temple, the presbyters or elders who presided at the Table morphed into priests who presided at the table commemorating the sacrifice of Jesus in the regularizing of the weekly meal on the first day of the week, a new Sabbath now on the day of the resurrection.  The success and growth of the Jesus Movement meant the Eucharist became more stylized with the bread and the wine becoming more removed from an actual meal for physical sustenance.  One can understand how the Eucharist in a meal context in a home could be an actual meal, where the eating together was a visible evidence of each member of the community getting enough to eat.  In this way, the early Eucharists would be closely connected with seeing to the hunger needs within a community of people taking care of each other.

As we have stylized the Eucharist to but micro portions of bread and wine, we need to remember the loss of visible connection to real eating cannot and should not be lost in our responsibility for people in this world having enough to eat.  The writer of the James rebuked his congregants for coming to pray while neglecting the poor in their midst.

And this brings us to the reason why we have the name Maundy on this Thursday.  It comes from the new commandment, the mandatum novum.  Eucharist and service go together; they cannot be separated.  The gathered church for Eucharist is also to be the foot-washing servant church.  Receiving the renewal of the Christ-identity in eating the bread and the drinking the wine, means that we are do as Christ did when he washed his disciples feet.  This does not mean carrying actual foot washing into future ages; it means embracing service as what following Christ means.  And following Christ means serving the people of this world toward each having food, clothing, shelter, and health care as the foot-washing activity that we must embrace to fulfill our true Eucharistic identities as having been initiated into the Body of Christ.

Tonight let us quit arguing about the liturgical differences pertaining to how Eucharist is celebrated; let us be united by the fact that as bread and wine become us, we are to know afresh the mystery of Christ in us.  And further in knowing Christ is in us, others will know this as we set forth to do foot-washing in our world toward equitable justice and love for all people.

Let us embrace Eucharist as Christ in us tonight, and let Christ in us be known as never-ending foot-washing service for the health and healing of our world.  Amen.

Not Missing the Point of Maundy Thursday

Maundy Thursday, April 17, 2025
Ex. 12:1-14a Ps. 78:14-20, 23-25
1 Cor 11:23-32 John 13:1-15

Lectionary Link

What is the Maundy Thursday liturgy?  It is in Holy Week, a part of the Triduum.  Sometimes we make the readings from Scriptures mainly about our religious practices.  We need to have origin explanations to certify and legitimize why we practice religion in the way that we do.

The Bible can be a book about religion and about why we do religion the way that we do religion.  And when we make God and the Bible mainly about our group identity in our religious setting, we can miss the connection with the big issues of life.

Is the Passover meal just to be an annual family meal to renew Jewish community identity, or is it to be a universal message about the degradation of slavery, and how every person who gains freedom from any kind of slavery is worth a celebration?

Is Maundy Thursday about the origin of the Christian community meal that we call the Eucharist.  It quite amazing that the Eucharist has become quite a legislative event about who can or who cannot participates, even to create the oxymoron, "closed communion."

Some groups suggest that foot-washing like the Eucharist should be a regular community religious practice, as if foot washing today is still connected with ordinary hygienic practice of people today who have regular means of keeping their feet clean.

What are the big issues of Maundy Thursday, which should relate it to the entire world?

Everyone needs to eat, and the survival of community requires service.  If we divorce Eucharist and foot-washing on Maundy Thursday from world hunger and the requirement of service for the survival of the world, then we are but a church of clanging brass, announcing that we are here but with unneeded noise.

Maundy Thursday should remind us that everyone needs to eat.  Eucharist is a strategy of open eating because in the gathering, we are to verify that everyone has enough to eat.  If we lose this connection between the Eucharist as a meal and the need for the hungry to eat, then we remove the important sign values of Maundy Thursday.

The foot-washing of Jesus exemplified service as the mode of expressing the power of our lives.  Basic service in our world includes making sure that everyone has enough to eat, wear, and a place to live.  And if that is not happening within families, there has to be people who are accountable to make those things happen.

Eucharist and foot-washing has not yet successfully converted our world, since there remains so many people still in need.  

Let us not get so hung up on just doing the liturgy and forget its connection with the great mission in our world to see that everyone has enough to eat and that we embrace the service mission to make that happen.

Let us be reminded again tonight about the mission requirements of the Maundy Thursday liturgy; feeding the people of the world through service.  Without this connection, we become but a cloistered private club with arcane and esoteric ceremonies.

Let us go forth to advocate for feeding the world through service for the truly common good.  Is there anything more Christ-like?  Amen.

Eucharist and Sign Value Crisis

Maundy Thursday March 28, 2024
Ex. 12:1-14a Ps. 78:14-20, 23-25
1 Cor 11:23-32 John 13:1-15

Lectionary Link

On Maundy Thursday, many Christian churches host "agape" meals as the context for the celebration of the institution of one of the chief sacraments of the Christian Church, the Holy Eucharist.

At such a meal, participants might observe that they are eating real food, as opposed to the "unreal" food that is the normal fare of Holy Eucharist.   We are starkly aware of how divorced the regular practice of Eucharist is from actual home cooked meals, or restaurant eating.

On Maundy Thursday, we bring out the quaint custom of washing feet.  In most of our lives "foot-washing" is not a real social function, it is a once a year liturgical ritual and not without shock factor of seeing leaders acting out humility in washing the feet of another person with a "so-called" lower and different station in life.

The challenge for us on Maundy Thursday is to over come the sign value gap between what is done in liturgy and what we actually do in life.

Part of the problem has been created by the historical success of the Christian movement, to the place of reverse fortunes.  The Christian movement was once an underground and hidden movement within the Roman Empire.  It became the preferred religion of the Roman Empire and subsequent Empires in the world.  It went from being but a few members to becoming automatic cultural membership whereby every born child was passively assimilated into this gigantic culturally tacit paradigm.  The automatic status of being Christian, culturally Christian was noted by the protesting Kierkegaard when he complained, "All of the dogs in Denmark have faith."

The challenge for us today has to do with reinvigorating the connection with chief Christ-like values of what we do in church, but more importantly with what we do when we are outside the church liturgical environment.

Why do we commemorate Maundy Thursday?  We do so because the nascent Jesus Movement thought it necessary to proclaim two prominent values of Jesus Christ, on which the community was founded and through which it would be endlessly perpetuated.

These two values of Maundy Thursday must be connected with life values which are practiced outside of the Maundy Thursday liturgy, and outside all liturgies of the church.

The two values are food for people, and service to one another.

Ponder the great imagination involved in the process of Christ being all and in all.  Jesus took bread and said, my life, my presence does not end at my epidermis, "This is my body and body," he said as he identified his presence with food and drink.  The food and drink is a Christly omnipresence for the life of the people of the world.  And why repeat and remember these words within community?  So to publicly verified that everyone in the community is taken care of in body and soul.  The Eucharistic gathering of the church is the social reality of the church and in face to face gathering people take note that care is given to all present.  One can appreciate how important this was in oppressed and poor communities, namely, seeing that all were having enough to eat.

Along with the hospitality of food provided in a public gathering, the very engine of the survival of the community is exemplified, namely, the continuous reciprocal service of people for each other, no matter what one's social or economic status is.   This is the value that is proclaimed in the "foot-washing" event.  The church, family, and society does not survive without the "ego-checking" service that each person provides for the lives of the members of the community.  As societies become pyramid expressions of lower tiered people serving the greedy and the powerful; the loss of the egalitarian sacrificial service is reduced to be the poor wages given to poor laborers to serve the lives of the powerful, the wealthy, and the greedy.  The foot-washing Jesus Movement proclaims a different kind of value

What do we need most in the churches tonight on this night of Maundy Thursday?  We need the liminal events of the enlightening and empowering Dismissal.  Let us go forth!

The way in which we add authentic connection of the values of our liturgy is when we are empowered to sew these values into the fabric of our lives outside our liturgies.  When we can make sure that the body of Christ is the ample food for everyone who needs food in our world, then we can come to achieve authenticity with our Eucharistic values.   When we can sew sacrificial service for each other into the every day fabric of our lives, then the foot washing liturgy will attain its full sign value.

Let tonight's dismissal send us forth to feed our world, and to spread sacrificial reciprocal service as the true Christly values of Maundy Thursday.  Amen.

Liturgy: Holy Play with a Purpose

Maundy Thursday April 6, 2023
Ex. 12:1-14a Ps. 78:14-20, 23-25
1 Cor 11:23-32 John 13:1-15

Lectionary Link

Prelude means "before the play."  Have you ever thought of liturgy as Holy Play?  That might seem embarrassing since as people of faith we would want to say that we are not childish in our thoughts and habits.  And we don't want to be accused of being disconnected with actual living situation.

It could be that liturgy and ritual have become disconnected from life situations and have lost their sign value for people who may be coming to church out of social habit or simply to obey church leaders.

Maundy Thursday is Holy Play and with profound connective purposes which are important for our lives.

A crucial issue for the church is being a significant community negotiating the survival of people among other communities of people.  The Jesus Movement communities of the Gospels and those presided over by St. Paul were communities threatened by the great social force of the first centuries, namely, the Roman Empire.

What are the key elements for a community of people to survive within a Empire.  One element is that they needed to stay together to provide some very basic support for each other.  If we understand the need to stay together for mutual support, then we can understand Holy Eucharist as a meal with a purpose.  The Holy Eucharist is the most concrete expression of the social reality of the church.  It shares some of the same functions as a family meal.  Why does a family have meals?  To make sure that each member is fed with the basic sustenance of life.  The family meal is not just about food; it is also about fellowship, a mutual checking in with each other to express care, concern, stories, and prayer.

St. Paul and the early church leaders understood that Holy Eucharist was a gift and command of Jesus to keep the church together as a continuing community into the future.  The early church understood Jesus to be a leadership of hospitality, the kind of hospitality which keeps people together.  And so on Maundy Thursday, we commemorate the gift of the Holy Eucharist as the gathering which is always an anticipation of the next gathering in the future with those who care for each other and for those who want to invite others to the same benefit of a mutual caring community.

The Holy Eucharist is also an evangelical aspiration of hope because it expresses the ideal desire for all the people of the world to be able to sit down together in hospitality and the care which sees to everyone having enough.

The aspiration the future fellowship of all humanity is met with reality of the differences of the egos of the people of this world.  Not only is it difficult for heterogenous people to get along and have fellowship; it is also a challenge for homogeneous people to get along and share unbroken fellowship.  People from the same society and backgrounds and from the same family still face the individual ego that demands that "it is my way or the highway."

And that brings us to the second feature of the Holy Play of Maundy Thursday: Foot-washing.  Jesus, is the Rabbi, the chairman of the board, and yet he emptied himself of exalted position and did something which no one else would do for the meal.  He perform the task which was forgotten by his disciples.  He took the role of a servant and washed their feet.  By so doing, he was showing them that is was only in service that the community and fellowship could survive and be perpetuated into the future.

Many Christians in America do not find themselves in servant roles.  Why?  Because we have so much that we can pay to get things done.  We can pay and so seeming to "not need other people."  We act as independent financial agents paying for the goods and services of our lives.

This means that we have a greater challenge.  If we don't need the Holy Eucharist for checking in or we don't need the services of others, then we miss the point of Maundy Thursday. 

The point is that we "check our egos" to comprise the community and we "check our egos" to serve to pay the community forward into the future.  In our baptisms, each Christian is an "ordained" minister with gifts for the community.

Let us remember tonight, not to forsake the gathering of the Holy Eucharist.  It is still the most concrete social expression of the church.  And let us also remember the Holy Play of foot-washing; serving and loving to serve in knowing that we are usefully beneficial to each other.

May God open our eyes to the connection of the holy play of Holy Eucharist and foot-washing to reality of community and service tonight.  Amen.

Eucharist and Service Go Together

Maundy Thursday April 14, 2022
Ex. 12:1-14a Ps. 78:14-20, 23-25
1 Cor 11:23-32 John 13:1-15

Lectionary Link

The liturgical cycles of the church and our phases of spiritual identification are tied to what might be called the transitions in the life of Jesus Christ.  And the most intense days of transition are found in the Paschal Triduum, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil.

We begin the Paschal Triduum tonight, and even though we know the end of the story, we retrace the events with dynamic memory as we hope that the power of these events will continue to affect us and influence our lives in excellence.

As a church, our identity as a community which have survived in the continuity for 2000 years are attached to the two events of Maundy Thursday.

Our identity as a church is being a Eucharistic Church; a church whose most literal social reality is seen when we gather to break bread together.  We are grateful that the Eucharist has helped to keep us together for so many years, so grateful, as to recall that Eucharist means gratitude, thanksgiving, and our very life together is built upon thanksgiving for the life of Jesus Christ.  The church, beginning with St. Paul's writings and the writings of the Gospel, believed that Jesus associated himself with the bread and wine of a meal, and gave us the gift of a ritual identity with him forever.  Do this as oft as you eat, in remembrance of me.  This ritualized presence of Christ to us is a real presence, a significant presence, a giving presence, a corporately experienced presence, and a touching and powerful presence.  The institution of this special ritualized and repeated and continuing presence of Christ in the Eucharist is what we celebrate tonight.  Holy Communion is a renewing event which we practice with Jesus Christ in our goal to be identified with his life and his values.  We are communicants in the church because together we communicate with Christ and each other in this event.

Someone one asked me if I had every excommunicated someone, that is, refused to give them communion.  I said, "no but I have experienced many excommunications."  Just begging to be asked what I meant.  The most excommunications that I have experienced are what I call "self excommunications," when people quit coming to the Mass to receive communion.  I've seen it happen more times than I would like to admit.  I think self-excommunication happens because of failing to understand the second feature of Maundy Thursday, the feature which gives Maundy its name.  From the Latin, mandatum novum,  the new commandment.  And what is the new commandment: To love each other as Christ has loved us.  And how did Jesus exemplify such love?  In the footwashing of his disciples.  The new commandment is the commandment to serve one another.  This is what happens when we are thankful for the life of Jesus.  Eucharist means thanksgiving, and when we do not understand that Eucharist and Service are tied together in an intimate way, we can be on a path of "self excommunication."

We are here tonight to hold together Eucharist and Service as chief values of the identity of our community that have derived from Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.  I thank you for honoring your communication with Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, and I thank you for every act of service, every act of footwashing that you have done to make the witness of the love of Jesus Christ a reality at St. Mary's in the Valley.

Thank you for your service in the name of Christ.  Thank you for being faithful to the real and ritualize presence of Jesus in this Holy Communion.  Amen.

Eucharist and Service are Essences of the Church

Maundy Thursday April 1, 2020

Ex. 12:1-14a Ps. 78:14-20, 23-25
1 Cor 11:23-32 John 13:1-15


When writers were writing about Jesus decades after he left this earth, as much as they might want to pretend to forget what happened in those decades, history cannot be written without acknowledging that the conditions of the writers are more prominent than the actual events in the life of Jesus.

Why?  The writers are presenting Jesus in ways that indicate why the churches came to their practices decades after Jesus was gone.

What were the churches like when John's Gospel was written?  They were groups spread throughout the cities of the Roman Empire.  They had become "social clubs, private house clubs" integrating Jews who followed the teachings of Jesus with Gentiles who also had come to have a spiritual experience of the Risen Christ by the Holy Spirit.

How did the early churches stay together?  By the meal of the fellowship.  When they met they ate together as a way of guaranteeing that all members had enough to eat, but also with the "tag on" of the sacred meal of the Holy Eucharist.  They believed that eating together in the name of Jesus and reciting the words of this is my body over the bread, and this is my blood over the wine,  was a way to keep the gathered people reconstituted in the presence of the Risen Christ.

And this practice was associated with the command of Jesus to "do this as oft as they ate and drank in remembrance of him."  Maundy Thursday, is the commemoration of Jesus instituting the Holy Eucharist as the continuing social reconstituting the church again and again in each gathering.

What did those early social church clubs of diverse people need to stay together?  They could only survive through service.  If everyone lived ego lives of being "bosses and chiefs," then the dishes wouldn't get done nor the trash taken out.  When Jesus washed feet, he was saying, "I'm you're boss and I am also your servant."  Now you too, check your egos and serve each other.  This is the secret to how you can survive and thrive as a community.

Eucharist and Service, that the essence of Maundy Thursday.  It is still today two of the key ingredients in our lives now.

Let us continue to break bread together to realize the presence to Christ who was the servant and taught us service.  Amen.

Pillars of the Church: Eucharist and Service

Maundy Thursday   April 9, 2020

Ex. 12:1-14a       Ps. 78:14-20, 23-25

1 Cor 11:23-32      John 13:1-15

 Lectionary Link

Tonight we highlight two pillars of the Christian Church.  Eucharist and service.  Eucharist was a practice very early in the church.  St. Paul said that he received instruction about the Eucharist from the Lord.  He never met Jesus.  He was not at the Last Supper.  Certainly as a Jew, he would have participated in many Passover meals.  The Eucharist includes practices which show derivation from elements of the Passover Meal, but it is distinctively different.  Passover is once a year; Eucharist is on every Sunday.  Passover is an "in the home" family meal; Eucharist is meal that unites people from many families.  As Christians we understand Eucharist to be a command of Jesus for us to do when we meet.  Since Christianity became so prolific, Eucharist lost connection with being an actual meal.  The early Christian gathered to share Eucharist as a way to be present to each other and to care for those who did not have enough to eat.  By eating together, it was a way of making sure that everyone who gathered was getting enough to eat.  The Eucharist had a very practical purpose of care for the early churches and this aspect is lost except when the Eucharist results in also feeding those who do not have enough.  Can we appreciate the genius of the command of Jesus to eat when they gathered in remembrance of him?  In our cultures of excess, we've lost some of the practical sign value of the urgency of the Eucharist for those early communities.  Most every Episcopalian has more than enough food, so we don't have to attend Eucharist to "get" food.  We should not forget the connection of the Eucharist with real food for hungry people.  Sometimes people who need to gather for their well-being are more likely to gather.  We hope that the pandemic will work some reverse psychology upon us; when we're told that we can't gather, we perhaps will appreciate the privilege to gather when permission returns.

The second pillar of this night is the mandatum novum, the new commandment.  Love one another as I have loved you.  How did Jesus exemplify that love?  By washing his disciples' feet.  Hence, foot washing has become a Maundy Thursday ritual.  And suddenly people don't go to the Maundy Thursday service because they are shy about exposing their feet.  Many will spend money for pedicures but suddenly are very modest about their feet at church.  What is symbolic about the foot washing?  Jesus, the main boss, was a servant.  Jesus was training a motley crew that sometimes makes one think about sleepy, dopey, and the other of the seven dwarves.  John and James asked to be the greatest and sit next to Jesus in his administration.  Judas was the treasurer and an embezzler and a betrayer.  Peter was a proud braggart who at crunch time denied knowing Jesus.  Thomas was a doubter.  Andrew was a skeptic about Jesus' ability to feed the crowd.  Nathanael who may have also been Bartholomew, said about Jesus, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" 

These are the guys that Jesus called his friends.  He knew they could be petty and egotistical.  Jesus washed their feet.  And by this he was saying them and to everyone, "Guys, friends, people the only way you can survive as a community is to check your egos at the door.  I'm not too good to wash your feet.  You are not too good to do anything that serves your brother or sister.  And if you are going to survive, the secret is service.

We live in the Maundy Thursday reality today.  St. Mary's was born and survives because we gather for Eucharist (even if we are hindered in the moment).  The mathematic equation for St. Mary's in the Valley is this:  St. Mary's=the sum total of all of the acts of service offered by those who have called St. Mary's their home.  It's as simple as that.  We are the sum total of our service.

Tonight, I would like to thank everyone for their service which has created the reality of St. Mary's.  You and many others have done much more than just wash feet; you have offered all of the kinds of service which comprises our existence as a parish.  We remember all who have served in the past and all who serve now to help us continue to meet and gather.

May God help us continue to be Maundy Thursday Christians by gathering to obey the Lord's command to offer Eucharist and to serve each other in the love of Christ.  Amen.

Two Chief Christian Values: Eucharist and Service

Maundy Thursday   April 18, 2019
Ex. 12:1-14a       Ps. 78:14-20, 23-25
1 Cor 11:23-32      John 13:1-15
Lectionary Link
The liturgy tonight highlights the practice of Holy Eucharist by the church.  And it highlights that service is the value that Jesus promoted for the survival of the Jesus Movement.

Even though the Eucharist is related to the Passover Meal, it is quite different.  The Passover Meal occurs once a year.  The Eucharist was recommended for each gathering of Christians.  

The Eucharist developed some of the themes of the Passover Meal.  The early church proclaimed Christ as our Passover Lamb who would take away the sin of the world, but his actual death on the Cross was the event of him being the Last Passover sacrifice.

The lamb was no longer needed for a Christian Passover meal; the meaning of the body of Jesus was transferred onto the elements of bread and wine in a meal to become the gathering meal of Christian for the ages.

Why was Eucharist to be frequent and not just an annual meal?  It was a communal eating, a public eating together.  Why?  What can be determined when people eat together?  It can be verified that everyone has enough to eat.  The early Eucharist was done within context of an actual meal, where everyone ate actual food.  The Eucharistic words were added to an actual meal to reinforce that the people who ate together were a part of the family of Christ, and those who cared for one another.

The Eucharistic words of Paul in his letter to the Corinthian church are actually words of warning and discipline.  People who gathered to eat together began to trivialize the holy significance of eating together; they were in fact forgetting the purpose of their gathering.  So, St. Paul had to give them some discipline orders for how they were to regard the special meal of the bread and wine and their association and identity with the body of Christ.  In the words of discipline about the practice of Eucharist by the Corinthian church we can find the first written Eucharistic words of the New Testament.

From the actual practice of Holy Eucharist by the early churches the Gospel were written with the account of the Last Supper to show the derivation of the Eucharist from a Meal event in the week of the death of Jesus.  The early church confessed that the practice of Eucharist derived from a command, an institution by the word of Jesus.  We commemorate this institution tonight.

If the church survives by the command to continue to gather and celebrate the Eucharist of Christ, what other value is the secret to the success and survival of the church?

Service.  The value of service was demonstrated by Jesus in the washing of the feet of his disciples.  Jesus led by example, and he exemplified service.  He had the stature to be the boss and just give commands for others to serve him; but he led by serving.  And he told his followers to do likewise.  "Check your egos at the door or you will always live in contention and division."  Service is what the living death of sacrifice looks like.  St. Paul wrote, I urge you through the mercies of Christ to present yourselves as living sacrifice which is your spiritual service."

The foot-washing that we do tonight is embarrassing for us tonight because it is not a common practice of our culture; it was common to the culture of Jesus in a time of lots of walking in sandals creating dusty feet.  A good host would provide for the relief of tired and dusty feet.  The Maundy Thursday liturgy continues the foot-washing, not to recommend this as a modern practice, but to remind us that we present ourselves as living sacrifices to God and to each other when we serve each other.

Our parish, St. John's began with service, it has survived more than 60 years because of service, and it will only survive into the future through continued service.

Where is the future hope of our parish?  In the continued faithful practice of Eucharist and in the continue practice of service by the people of St. John the Divine.

This Maundy Thursday reminds us and calls us to Eucharist and to service tonight.  Amen.

Happy Birthday, Holy Eucharist!

Maundy Thursday   March 29, 2018    
Ex. 12:1-14a       Ps. 78:14-20, 23-25
1 Cor 11:23-32      John 13:1-15
Lectionary Link
In writing a story about the past, it is very hard to pretend that we are not living in a much later time.  Perhaps some of you remember the popular movie and television show called MASH.  It was supposed to be an account of a military hospital during the Korean War, but it really reflected the attitudes of Americans about the Viet Nam War.  American reactions to the Viet Nam war were written into the MASH script.

This happened when the Gospels were written.  They were written 3-7 decades after Jesus was gone and so they represent the views and the practices of the early church more than they represent what was happening during the actual life of Jesus.

What was happening in the early church?  The early church was practicing Holy Eucharist.  When Christians met on the first day of the week, they broke bread and said the prayers, and they traced this practice and tradition back to what Jesus did with his disciple.  The account of the Eucharist in Paul's letter to the Corinthian was written before the accounts of the Last Supper in the Gospels.

On Maundy Thursday, we commemorate the origin of the Holy Eucharist as a spiritual practice that Jesus gave to the church.  It is the Christian family meal when we as brothers and sisters of Christ, hoping to be disciples of Christ, sit down and remember that our original brother Jesus Christ started this holy meal tradition.  And this holy meal tradition has undergone changes in different times and places,  but the essential elements of it have remained the same.  We can say tonight that Holy Eucharist has endured and we are proof of it tonight, even as we could sing, "Happy Birthday, Holy Eucharist."

Were the early churches made up of perfect angels who lived in perfect harmony?  Not really.  People in every age have ego problems.  We can't help it.  We want to be in control.  We want to be right.  We want to shout our correct views the loudest.  Some people even want to overthrow leadership.  And this is shown in the Last Supper event of Jesus with his disciple.  Judas was a disciple from the inner circle, so much so as to be the treasurer for Jesus and the Jesus Movement.  But Judas was one who betrayed Jesus.  In the early church, there were persons who at first followed Christ, but then left and even betrayed their fellow Christians.  Betrayal was in the beginning and it continued in the early churches.

But then there were those every day ego problems of people wanting to be the leader.  What happened at the Last Supper?  Jesus noticed that his disciples were competitive over who would hold the highest position in his earthly kingdom, which did not happen.  What did Jesus do when he noticed their competition?  He took the role of the servant; he went around and washed his disciples' feet.  And he said, "If you are going to survive as a community, you are going to have to do the same with each other."  If you want to lead, you do so by service.  Service is the meaning of love.  Jesus said, "I have loved you and I have served you and you all think that I'm the boss. Go do likewise."

Tonight we commemorate the origin of Holy Eucharist.  We also underlined the service principle of Jesus Christ, called the new commandment, the eleventh commandment.  A new commandment, I give to you.  Love one another as I have loved you with my service.  This is how the church will survive into future.  The future of the church is based upon the future of service.  That is Maundy of Maundy Thursday, the Mandatum Novum, the New commandment.  Love one another as I have loved you.  Amen.

Hospitality and Service=Christlike Church

Maundy Thursday  March 24, 2016   
Ex. 12:1-14a       Ps. 78:14-20, 23-25
1 Cor 11:23-32      John 13:1-15
Lectionary Link

Tonight we read St. Paul's account of the Holy Eucharist.  He said he received this practice "from the Lord," even though St. Paul never did see Jesus in the flesh.  So the Pauline practice of the Eucharist came to him as a mystical experience.  The Eucharist was the practice of the Corinthian church and in fact St. Paul wrote the instructions for the Eucharist because the Corinthian Christians were conducting themselves at the Eucharist in an unworthy manner.  St. Paul warned them if they did not participate in the Eucharist in a worthy manner, they were guilty of the very body of Christ.  These are rather strong disciplinarian words.

So the first writing on the Eucharist came because people were actually disrespecting the Eucharist.  How could this be?  I suggest it could have happened because there were Christians who very prosperous and had plenty to eat.

Can we appreciate the importance of the Eucharist being the religious or devotional aspect of an actual meal?  The early Christians were often nomads within the Roman Empire.  They were part of the process of urbanization.  Wars and need for employment causes social change and the migrations of people.  People who arrive at a new place where they have no family need help.

The early Christian Eucharist functioned as a hospitality meal for the gathered community.  Those who had food were like the little boy in the Gospel who gave his bread and fish for the feeding of the multitude.  Gathered Christians had brought food for the hospitality meal.  By eating in a public gathering it could be verified that all present would have something to eat.

How did things get out of hand?  Apparently, there were some who had so much excess of food and drink, that some got a little tipsy and in a partying atmosphere, the religious and devotional aspect of the Agape meal or Eucharist was not regarded or respected.  And Paul wrote them:  "Cut it out; don't you realize that the offered bread and wine represent the very provision of the presence of Christ to us?"

Was Paul doing the Eucharist as a Passover meal?  Definitely not!  As a Jew, Paul would have done the Passover meal with Jews, once a year.   The Eucharist was not a Seder; what has come to be Seder did not really exist in the time of Jesus or Paul, because the Seder had its own further development in the various traditions of the synagogue.

Since the Gospels were written after St. Paul wrote and after the established liturgical practices of the early Christian communities, the Gospels were written to show how the subsequent practices derived and the Gospels are derivation stories of the mystical practices of the early church.  Jesus was called the Lamb of God because his life and his death became regarded as a sacrifice.  Jesus was called the living bread.  In the biology of the Hebrew Scriptures, blood was regarded to be the life of the body.  In the church as the body of Christ, Jesus was regarded to the inward blood/sap of the life of the church.  The church was called the new Israel and so Jesus ate a meal with the twelve patriarchs of the church as the new Israel.  The members of the church regarded themselves to be sons and daughters of God.  People in this new family were not necessarily biologically related as flesh and blood members like what was the practice of ethnic Judaism; members of the church had the common new DNA of the Holy Spirit.  A Passover meal was not a synagogue event; it was an event done in the family home.  Jesus did not have his Passover or meal during Passover week in his family home, he hosted a meal for his new family, his disciples and friends.

All of this later theology of the church was being taught in re-telling the story of Jesus in the Gospel.

So what is the theology of Maundy Thursday?  Hospitality and Service.

We celebrate tonight the Eucharist as a gift from Christ.  Paul said that he received the Eucharist from the Lord.  That's how we receive it tonight.  It is an event of hospitality.  God receives us into the family of God and Jesus is the host.  But Jesus also says, "I am bread, I am wine.  I am everything that I perceive because everything I perceive is my world and it is me."  Tonight, you and I live within the perception of Christ.   We are known and perceived by Christ.  And just as Jesus said the bread and the wine was his body and blood, Jesus has taken each of us and declared us as his own.  And Christ lives, moves, breathes, and sees through us.  And we can't get much closer to Jesus than that.  And the hospitality of God is expressed in the Eucharist of taking Jesus deep into our lives.  But the Eucharist is just the outward sign of the fact that Christ has already become one with us.

Maundy Thursday is about Service.  Jesus, the Rabbi, the professor notices that his students are very competitive.  They all want to have the best positions in the administration.  Peter, had strong notions; if you are really important then you get exempt from doing the little things, like doing the dishes, serving food or cleaning up.  Jesus, the leader, took the towel and the water and washed the feet of his disciples.  He probably did this because his friends had come to regard themselves as too good to do the menial tasks.  Any organization that can no longer get the little things done, dies.  Any organization that does not regard little things to be important things, dies.  The witness of Jesus was this: the church will succeed because of sacrifice and service.  This is true of every organization that survives.  Any family, church or organization that tries to exempt itself from service, dies.

St. John the Divine exists and will continue to exist because of the sum total of deeds of service by our membership.  I salute everyone at St. John's past and present who have offered the variety of service to comprise us and keep us going.  I offer this Eucharist tonight in thanksgiving to Christ for the gift of the Holy Eucharist, but also for service of all of you and those who are not present who have given for the life of St. John's.

Let us pledge tonight to keep the tradition of hospitality and service alive at St. John the Divine.  We owe it to Jesus, to ourselves and to the church of the future.  Amen.

Maundy Thursday

Maundy Thursday  March 24, 2016   

Ex. 12:1-14a       Ps. 78:14-20, 23-25
1 Cor 11:23-32      John 13:1-15

 Lectionary Link

  Many people believe that the reason one becomes wealthy and powerful is so that one does not have to do the little things, like drive one’s car, take out the trash, wash dishes, clean the house, or take care of the children.

   Maundy Thursday is a night when we remember that Jesus said that our lives of faith involve being constituted by lots of little things, things so obvious that one might forget them or neglect them.

  The early Christian gathering was a table meal.  People have to eat and eating is also a good time for renewing friendship and family relationship.  The central Christian gathering is the Holy Eucharist and long before it became a stylized meal of unrecognizable bread and a sip of wine, it was an actual fellowship meal.  Jesus hosted a meal and served; he told his disciples to continue this simple practice.  “Continue to get together and eat and fellowship and when you do it as I ask, you will realize that I am there with you.  When you eat this meal which I asked of you, in this meal you will be connected with this very night when I first asked you to do it.”

  Peter and his disciple friends were often concerned about their position in the kingdom of Jesus. If Peter were thinking out loud he would be saying, “ Jesus, you are the kingly messiah and this is not just an ordinary meal among some friends.  This is like a banquet of a great king.  And since you Jesus are going to be our great king.  You can’t be putting a towel on and washing our feet.  That is not kingly work.”  And Jesus said, “Well guys we’ve set down to eat and no one has offered the basic hospitality of washing our dusty feet before we eat.  No one saw the obvious thing to do.  And there were not servants here to perform it. So I am going to set the example.  Your gathering in the future is going to be very basic; eat, discuss and fellowship together and serve each other doing the little things and the obvious things which need to be done.”  99% of life is obvious, ordinary maintenance things.  Too boring for you?  Well, if you only want to do big and heroic things you will miss doing them if you don’t do the basic things really well as a part of the formation of your character.”

   The Holy Eucharist is the continual grace of the gathered church sharing a meal, reading our family tradition as found in the Scriptures and making sure that the basic needs of the community are fulfilled.  Because if we live really well together, then that in itself will be the best evangelism.

   If we really live well together, then others will say, “I want what they have.  I want to be with them.  I want their good news.  I want their fun.  I want their peace and joy.  I want to be with them because they share it all, they rejoice with each other, they work with each other, they pray with each other, they mourn with each other, they comfort each other.”

  In 2000 years the church has become pretty good at hiding the basic stuff of the Holy Eucharist into church laws or obligations.  What we need to remember tonight is to return to the basic.  A fellowship meal together with the sharing of our best words of our traditions, prayers and encouragement and just really basic, basic fix the meal, take out the trash, do the laundry type of service.  Does it sound too boring?  Too ordinary? 

  I believe if we do the basic things of service very well we will also find that some extraordinary things will happen because we practice belonging to each other in the name of Jesus Christ.

  Let this meal tonight return turn us to basic, basic Jesus Movement Christianity.  A meal together, prayers, passing the peace, wishing each other the very best, and the basic service which will keep us together and help us to pass on these habits of fellowship to another generation of people who need to be connected to the original Last Supper.

  May God let us know that we are connected to the original Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples tonight.  Amen.

Really Big Little Things

Maundy Thursday  April 2, 2015     

Ex. 12:1-14a       Ps. 78:14-20, 23-25

1 Cor 11:23-32      John 13:1-15

 Lectionary Link

  Tonight is the night of the mandatum novum or the New Commandment, or the eleventh commandment, from which we derive the English Maundy, in Maundy Thursday.

  Yes, tonight is the night when we commemorate the institution of the weekly feast of the Holy Eucharist but it is ironic that we use John’s Gospel, because in the time sequence of John’s Gospel, it is not certain that the meal presented in John’s Gospel is a Passover Meal.  We also note that John’s Gospel does not have the words of institution which are usually associated with the Holy Eucharist.  And yet John’s Gospel has the most physical expression about partaking of the body and blood of Jesus.  Jesus is quoted as saying in another part of John’s Gospel, “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no part of me.”

  But what strikes me most about Maundy Thursday is the stressing of the importance of little things.

  Jesus watched the behavior of his friends; he noticed that no one took the role of being a hospitable host, and so he took the towel and basin and washed feet.  Peter did not want Jesus to wash his feet, probably thinking that Jesus was too important to do this.   “Jesus, you’re the messiah, you should not be bothering with washing my feet.  That’s not the way the messiah behaves.”

  Yes, Peter, that is exactly how the messiah behaves.  The little things are important.

  What keeps the world and life going are people doing the little things because the little things are important to the well-being of the community.

  Little things, begin with what Woody Allen said, “Eighty per cent of life is showing up.”  One’s intentional presence may seem like something small but it is the most important beginning to everything.  But then, buying groceries, fixing meals, cleaning, doing the laundry, running errands, fixing coffee, attending rehearsal, setting up the altar, taking it down, trimming the trees, acolyting, serving at the altar, singing in the choir, setting up for coffee hour, teaching Sunday School, doing office work, proofing bulletins, on and on the list of unsung little things grows.  And if those little things are not done things don’t happen, the trains don’t run on time, church does not happen.

  For me, Maundy Thursday is about how Jesus isolated the seemingly insignificant act of being a good host and washing dusty feet of the sandal wearers of Palestine.  No big deal; but a really big deal.

  Jesus is the most important person in our tradition and we put him on a pedestal and we make promises to do anything for him.

  But he puts us on the pedestal and asks us to take off our sandals and he washes our feet.  No big deal, but a really big deal because it highlights all of the really small sacrificial stuff that makes life go on and on and on.

   And so I salute those who have discovered the secret of the little things, even without knowing it, because when the little things are done as an expression of one’s character, one does not know that one is even doing it.

  And so tonight Jesus just whispers, “keep doing the little things.”  And if we say, “What little things?” then we are doubly blessed to know that we are in the rhythm of the new commandment, to love one another as Christ loved us.

  Yes, once in a while it may be nice to do something big and excessive and even showy, but the so called big things only have sincere meaning if we have made the little acts of sacrifice the ordinary character expressed in the routines of our community life together.

  So, tonight I say to everyone here, Thanks for the really big little things that you and others have done to make us the Episcopal Church of St. John the Divine.  Amen.