Sermons

Sermon preached by The Reverend Paul Burrows

Preached by The Reverend Paul Burrows on Maundy Thursday (Thursday, March 24, 2005)

"This month shall mark for you the beginning of months."

Exodus 12:1

Welcome to the New Year – the beginning of the new life in the new kingdom of God. This Liturgy begins the observance of the Paschal mystery – something that changes our relationship with God and is the way in which we come to be reborn.

Maundy Thursday is one of those days that were added rather late to the calendar of the Christian year and so has had all those things that could not be fitted in elsewhere added to it. The blessing of Holy Oil for the coming year, the reconciliation of penitents in time for Easter and the washing of the feet of either the poor or the junior members of a community by the superior are just the most notable. All these things are all well and good but they cannot help but shift the emphases from the most important celebration that we make this night; the institution of the Eucharist as a memorial, an anamnesis, of the events that we celebrate in this Holy Season.

Here, tonight, we will recall how Jesus prefigured his laying down of his own life and interpreted that act as a part of salvation history. Here, tonight, we will take bread and wine as he did and through them receive the Body and Blood of Jesus. Receive them, yes; and offer them also as he did on the Cross. For here is the sacrifice prefigured by the offering of the Pascal Lamb; here Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; here humanity is made one with God in the communion of the Body and the Blood of Jesus. This is the first of the rites that we offer to symbolize and to remember the sacrifice of Christ, this is the beginning of the long “day of remembrance” that comes to its climax with the Great Vigil of Easter and ends with setting of the sun on Easter Day. And so our Liturgy today does not end but takes us from this Altar in a procession, honoring the Holy Sacrament, to the watch of prayer in the Chapel. As the disciples went from the Last supper to the Garden with Jesus singing hymns of praise so we go with the Body of Christ singing in praise of the anamnesis in which the Cross of Christ is made present to us.

Tonight begins the Passover of the Lord. The observance that we begin today is a part of the greater whole that spills over into that Great Eighth Day, the vindication of Christ, the Day of the Resurrection. Together we will tread the path of pain and sorrow that leads to the glorious birth of life. May this “day of remembrance” lead us all into a closer union with God and bring our lives and our wills into conformity with God’s will for us.