Maundy Thursday
Exodus 12:1-14
Psalm 116:1, 10-17
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Austin

Holy Week offers us a rich tapestry of images. We began on Palm Sunday with the triumphal entry of Jesus into the city of Jerusalem, with his followers waving palms and crying, Hosanna, save us, Lord. Tonight, of course, we dwell on the images of Jesus’s last supper with his followers before the agony in the garden of Gethsemane, which we will commemorate later at the Night Watch after the service. Tomorrow brings us the violent and upsetting center of the story: Jesus’s trial and torture and execution. A little bit of quiet on Holy Saturday as Jesus’ body rests in the tomb while he descends to hell to break open the prison cells of the dead, which we will then celebrate at the Vigil on Saturday night, recalling the whole scope of the story of redemption beginning with the waters of creation through the passage through the Red Sea and Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones, and the cry of victory at the empty tomb, a revelation that all is not lost, that there is a love stronger than death. If you want to understand the Christian story, the images of Holy Week lay it all out for you to dwell upon, long after the words and the music have faded.

For many years Maundy Thursday has been my favorite day of this week. It is the coziest image. There’s something almost sweet about it. Jesus cares for us, his followers. He does this very caring, nurturing thing by washing our feet and feeding us, and not just with any meal. As one writer put it, he gathers “with his faltering friends for a meal that tasted of freedom.” Every year on this day we hear this passage from Exodus describing the first Jewish Passover. The story of the Exodus is the key to Holy Week in a lot of ways. The events of these three holy days are about Jesus taking the same act of liberation that God performed for the Hebrew people and flinging the doors of God’s family wide open, offering that freedom to everyone in every generation. 

In the story of the Exodus, God liberates God’s chosen people from a particular oppressive system: a particular king, a particular history of enslavement and abuse. But the kings and the false gods of Egypt are very much still with us in leaders and systems who demand tribute in blood and warfare, who demand the stripping of human dignity, who demand labor and production at any and every cost. In the story of Holy Week, Jesus very consciously reenacts the liberation of the Hebrew people on a much larger scale: liberation from the power of Death for all of humanity and the creation itself. It is not accidental that tonight we remember the story of the first Passover and on Saturday we will remember the story of the Hebrews crossing of the Red Sea. That is the emotional core of what is going on in these stories, in these images. I often come back to the line from the theologian Stanley Hauerwas when he reminds us that “God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead, having before raised Israel from Egypt.” So yes, Maundy Thursday is a very cozy, nurturing, warm scene. And it is not only that. It is Jesus showing us the ways we live in our own lives the freedom that he is about to secure for us. It is the beginning of our own exodus, our own raising as Jesus begins to bring us with him out of the graves of our lives.

In Exodus Moses instructs the people about the Passover lamb and the sacrifice that is required for them to be saved from the judgment that is coming. Throughout scripture God is very clear about where God stands in relationship to the systems of the world that bring death and oppression and captivity. It begins here in Egypt. The first thing that God does for the Hebrews, the first thing that God does for God’s people in every time and place, is to free us. But the story of the first Passover reminds us that freedom does not come simply for the asking. It does not come without a cost. It does not come without commitment. In this story, the commitment and the cost is a life, a sacrifice. God institutes the sacrifice of the Passover Lamb as a counterpoint, as an answer to and a negation of all of the unholy sacrifices that Egypt had taken from the Hebrews, all of the lives unwillingly crushed and ended in the course of their enslavement. God looks at that and answers with a death that changes and ends all that. On the night of the Passover, Jesus shows us that he will become that sacrifice for us. His body will be broken, his blood spilled and spread over us as a sign that we no longer live under the power of gods who are not our own. God raises us up and sets us on a new path, not to serve the agenda of powers that have no care for us, but to serve and be served by one another in a community of mutual care and flourishing. Through his death Jesus brings life, and that abundant.

The sacrifice that frees the world has been accomplished once for all, and all we have to do is to remember it with thanks, as we do every time we gather at this table for a meal that tastes of freedom. The only commandment that Jesus has ever given us is to love each other. Our response does not have to be complicated: it is simply to remember what God has already done, set our misgivings and suspicions aside, and serve one another as he has served us, giving thanks all the while. The psalmist gives us language: How can we possibly repay the Lord for all the good things that God has done for us? Let us offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call upon God’s Name. 

We gather this night to begin—begin the great reenactment and remembrance of the stories of our liberation and of the liberation of all humanity from the power of death, from the gods of Egypt. Cast off the shackles of pride and shame, and serve one another here at the foot washing. Wait for even one moment with the sacrament of Jesus’ Body and Blood in the chapel later tonight. Let your reflection and your thanksgiving be manifest in your actions. That’s why we do this. That’s why you’re here.

This tapestry of images that Holy Week offers us is more than any one week can hold. That’s what makes them beautiful and worth revisiting year after year. But we do not walk this way again because they are beautiful. They are for living. They are for showing us a new way to be. They are for our liberation. And tonight, Jesus shows us how.