The 3 Grace-Gifts of Maundy Thursday

Not long ago, I was sending an email to a friend of mine. He is a young Reformed minister, and for him, the whole occasion of Maundy Thursday is foreign – at least to his branch of that tradition. So I sent him an email describing a little bit about what we would normally do when we gather for this special service. 

I said, “This is a solemn, holy and sometimes invasive time. Solemn because we proclaim the Lord’s death. Holy because it is set apart in time to ponder and give thanks for the extraordinary mysteries of Christ’s sacrificial atonement. And invasive because I am never invited to ponder these things at a distance; I am drawn in.”

Let’s look at three grace-gifts Maundy Thursday brings us.

A Sense of Intimacy 

In fact, if there were ever a time when this Episcopalian would ever believe in Calvin’s irresistible grace, it would be on Maundy Thursday. And it’s because I have almost no power to say no to God’s invitation. Even though it can feel almost frightening, I want to be drawn in all the more. 

Yes, God, get between my toes, when my feet are washed. Touch with your tenderness those very sensitive places in me, bringing peace and order. Create resting places between the unanswered questions. And above all, show me yourself.

The good news which, like a strong rope pulls me into Maundy Thursday, is that I know in advance that I will be welcomed by God to his table. As the hymn says, “Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross, I cling.” But knowing that doesn’t necessarily carry enough draw to open all of my heart in the way I just described.

You see, the temptation here is to enter into the meaning of Maundy Thursday only partially. And of course, that’s better than nothing at all. But the intimacy of what typically happens here (different this year in our season of social distancing)  in the washing of the feet and even in the receiving of the bread and wine, where we ingest into the deepest part of our system that which we say literally communicates to us the very mystery of the presence of Christ, well, that’s invasive, isn’t it? And yet what will we miss the most this year? That sense of invasiveness, that intimacy.

It’s certainly more intimate than almost anything we even begin to know about human relationships. So it’s a leap to go from that place where I feel like a part of my heart is protected and to come into a place where I’m being invited to lay down my arms, to lay down my guard. 

Christina Rossetti, the famous Christian poet, puts it this way: “Am I a stone and not a sheep/ That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross/ To number drop by drop/ Thy blood’s slow loss, And yet not weep?/ Not so those women loved / Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee/ Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly/ Not so the thief was moved/ Not so the Sun and Moon/ Which hid their faces in the starless sky/ A horror of great darkness at broad noon — I, only I/ Yet give not o’er/ But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock/ Greater than Moses, turn and look once more/ And smite this rock.

A Time of Stillness 

“This rock”: That place inside of me that still keeps God at a distance. And I don’t know how about you, but the way I know that place exists in my life is because of the absence of stillness. 

You see, if there is within me the capacity to be still, that means there is within me the capacity to contemplate, and if there is within me the capacity to contemplate, that means there is within me the capacity, by God’s mercy, to receive a guest into that silent place. The guest, of course, being a permanent resident: God. 

And because there is a part of me that actually really likes having that onslaught of information, that sense of “It’s all right here.” And even in this season of the coronavirus (maybe especially because of this season) there’s multitasking, and there are things to do — the very nature and character of my life. And I’m sure many of our habits are actually cultivated against developing that kind of inner stillness, that contemplation. It becomes, in fact, a defense from the deepest things that God might desire to reveal to us, to impart into us, to allow us to begin to experience a kind of inner, still tranquility that makes room for the companionship of his presence. It’s the experience of, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Henri Nouwen writes it this way, in a little book of devotionals called “Bread for the Journey.” He said, “We may think about stillness in contrast to our noisy world. But perhaps we can go further and think about an inner stillness, even while we carry on business, work, music, construction, the organization of meetings. It is important to keep stillness in the marketplace and not just in the monastery.”

This still place is where God speaks. It is the place from which also we can speak in a healing way to the people that we meet in this very busy world. Without that still space, we start spinning, we become driven people, running all over the place without much real direction. But with stillness, God can be our gentle guide, even in the midst of the high demand of life, and the realization that I don’t have all the stillness I so desperately need.

A Place of Security 

And so, as the Rosetti poem says, “strike this rock.” Because what I’m actually being invited into is a deep place of security, to come to the table and to receive “the sacrament of his body and blood,” as the collect says, as a rightful pledge of our inheritance. In other words, the Eucharist is meant to communicate, to impart into us and allow us to experience a tremendous place of inner security, where we know that we belong and that God is committed to never letting us go. And out of that, even a place where our conscience is eased. Because all of us have things we do wrong, even if it’s in the spending and misspending of the things God has given us. It is here that we are reaffirmed again not just as welcomed, but actually cleansed, forgiven people. 

It is here that in that place of knowing that we are his that we gain new boldness in prayer because we know we have access to God, and that access is not somehow qualified or quantified based on what I do. Grace opens the door for me to come in. I can come as I am to that table and know it is in that place that God needs me, even though metaphorically, or perhaps even literally, my hands are dirty. And it is in that deep place of security that I am reminded that I am literally kept, protected, in the power of God. As Paul writes, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus” (see Rom. 8:38-39). 

You see if all I know is this, I don’t have an actual experience of much of any of it, much less a day-to-day belief in it. And so I need more than ever to be able to come and, in essence, allow God, once again in the era of social distancing, to remind me of the willingness of a brother or a sister to wash between my toes. I need him to show me by that action that even as Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, knowing that they would betray him, so also sisters and brothers in Christ have that willingness to wash each other’s feet. We do this knowing that we belong to Jesus, knowing that there will be times when we betray him, knowing that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord, knowing we need his work in us to strike the rock of our hearts. We do this knowing he will give us whatever is necessary to pull down the defenses at least long enough that we might again be refreshed, reminded of whose we are and that we are more than the sum total of our mistakes, and that his love will never let us go.

Will you enter into that? Would you pray for God to pull down those places of protection that you have created, that I have created, that we might commune with him, not just receive from him, but commune with him? And allow Maundy Thursday, perhaps especially this year when circumstances prevent us from gathering as his disciples, to remind you of the pledge, the pledge that God makes to us and reminds us of again and again, the pledge of eternal life: that we are his, and he will never let us go. Amen. 

What does Maundy Thursday mean to you? How has that changed in the era of social distancing? Share this blog and your response on Twitter. Please include my username, @revgregbrewer. 

(This post is an adaption of Bishop Brewer’s sermon on March 29, 2018, at St. Luke’s Cathedral, Orlando, Florida.) 

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.