Sermon preached by The Rev’d Neil Fernyhough, Maundy Thursday, 2008 (March 28).
Readings: Exodus 12:1-14; Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31-35.
“For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” – 1 Cor 11:26
Maundy Thursday is a remarkable day in Holy Week – it is a little pinprick of light in the darkness of the messiah’s show-trial, his mocking and torture, his protracted execution, and his death as a bandit and criminal. In the midst of this week of pain and sorrow, we have this one day of grace. It is a day on which we commemorate the last of Jesus’ “teachable moments” – episodes in which he modelled the love he commanded would be the hallmark of his followers until his coming again.
One teachable moment came when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. This act of service and hospitality we reproduce every day as the band of his followers in this place. We all wash one another’s feet in the many countless acts of love we perform – such as preparing parish meals, visiting the sick, or lovingly maintaining the church buildings and grounds. Of course, we don’t literally wash one another’s feet, but many of us do things just as humble, and far more useful. Whether it’s a work party, a sewing circle, supervising the coffee hour, caring for the altar, teaching the children and youth, keeping the books, counting the offering – in these and so many other ways, we embody the mutual service taught to us by our Lord and modelled by our forebears in the faith.
The second of Christ’s teachable moments is the one I want to focus on tonight. It is the institution of the Lord’s supper. The meal we share at this table is the meal around which all other opportunities for fellowship revolve. It is the meal that makes fellowship itself possible. But it does so much more than that. The Communion signifies and establishes the presence of Christ in the company of the faithful, both here at St. Hilda’s and all over the world, and both here among the living and in fellowship with that great company of the faithful, that cloud of witnesses above, our forebears in the faith.
One of the great privileges of being a priest is being able to offer others this holy sacrament. It is particularly poignant for me when I offer it to the dying – this food of eternal life strengthening inwardly those who are outwardly passing away. The knowledge that their next taste of the heavenly banquet will be with our Lord Christ is something so awesome it makes me literally tremble. It is also poignant when I offer it to those in prison, as I did as a curate – this sacrament of liberation freeing inwardly those who are outwardly captive. The fact that this holy food can transport the one who receives it to a place unbounded by time or space is one of its miraculous qualities.
But an even greater privilege than offering the blessed sacrament is receiving it. And for me, there have been many remarkable occasions, beginning with the first time I participated in the Eucharist. I was 26 years old, and it was a cold, clear winter’s day at the Church of St. Michael and All Angels in Prince George. I had been drawn back to the Anglican Church by its emphasis on the mystery of God, exemplified in the sacred mystery of Christ’s body and blood in the bread and the wine. But I also knew that participating in this mystery would have to wait. I knew from my boyhood visits to our local church – when my father would go up to take Communion while my mother, my sister, and I sat in our pew – that it was something only for the initiated, that is to say, those who had been Confirmed. And so I sat, alone and uncomfortable, while the rest of the congregation advanced forward to receive the sacrament.
The Anglican Church of Canada had changed since my childhood, and the rector of St. Michael’s, David Ellis, soon corrected my misconception. The following Sunday, David came up to me before the service and asked if I was baptised. “Yes,” I replied, somewhat startled. He smiled. “Well, then, why don’t you join us for Communion?” “But…but,” I sputtered, “I wouldn’t know what to do!” David smiled again, and said, “That’s okay. We learn best by doing.”
Another snapshot, another locale, several years, thirty degrees of latitude, and a huge culture shift away from Prince George. An occasion I shared with you in an earlier sermon…that sultry summer day when me and another theological student, interning in the Caribbean nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, brought Communion to two housebound sisters in their tumbledown shack. Sitting around the table of their single room, saying the familiar prayers. And these women, impoverished and infirm, offering up to God those prayers of thanksgiving, along with a precious dollar coin in gratitude for the gift of Christ’s body and blood.
A final snapshot: Victoria, just before I began seminary, attending a conference at the Cathedral sponsored by a group with whose views I and some other attendees disagreed strenuously. Following an afternoon of heated exchanges and bickering, Bishop Barry Jenks, a former rector of this parish, came forward to celebrate a closing Eucharist. His calming presence, those familiar words of institution, “On the night he handed himself over to suffering and death…,” the response to the invitation, “The gifts of God for the people of God,” with a resounding “Thanks be to God!” the silent lining up and kneeling side by side as we partook of the one body and the one cup – all these things filled me with a feeling of the essential peace and unity that flows from such intimate fellowship. That intimate fellowship being our shared sacramental meal.
The spiritual nurture, renewal, and energy we experience when we take, eat, and drink these holy mysteries are a source of love. In them is the secret of our fellowship. In this meal is the source of our community, binding us as one family with those sisters in St. Vincent, with a congregation up north, with those Christians of like minds and those with whom we profoundly disagree, with the sick and the dying, prisoners and captives, Christians everywhere, of all stripes, of all times, past and present. It binds us with our ancestors and with our descendants. And it binds us to one another. The secret of these holy mysteries is Christ. Christ’s spiritual body is present in the bread and the wine, and that spiritual presence comes to us as divine love.
Unrequited love is love squandered. Let us pledge to return that love we have been freely offered. As we share this meal once again, let us recall the awesome nature of this gift as a memorial of Christ’s passion, as a foretaste of the banquet we will share with Him in heaven, and, above all, as food for the journey of love. Amen.
© Richard Neil Fernyhough, 2008
