‘Do this in remembrance of me…’: A sermon for Maundy Thursday

This is (a lightly edited, less local variant of) my sermon for the Maundy Thursday Eucharist and washing of feet in my benefice. The readings were Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10), 11-14; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 and John 13.1-17, 31b-35 

I.

‘Do this in remembrance of me…’

We hear these words every time that we come to participate in the eucharist. In churches around the country and the world they are said every week, often every day. I wonder… what are the things that you remember every day, every week?  Things that you might not consciously recall in full, but that are there in the background? Are there happy memories, of moments that bring joy? Are there sad or painful memories—the things we wish we could forget, or that we wish had not happened? These, I have to say, are the memories that often arise unbidden for me.  

Memory is a complicated thing. It doesn’t completely belong to us, as individuals, and it’s not something we can fully control. And yet our memories are a massive part of making us who we are—as you, and me, and as us.  We remember this gift, that playground taunt, this turning point, that word of encouragement. As groups, communities, even nations, we remember events as successes or failures, sources of joy or pain. And we think and behave, act and react, for good and ill because of the things that our memories of encounters and experiences have taught us to expect of the world. Memories will have shaped our understanding of how things work, our senses of identity and our values, our hopes—and our fears. The conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza have their roots in memories that are hundreds and thousands of years old.

Memory is not wholly conscious; not wholly intellectual. We carry memories in our bodies, made manifest in the things that we instinctively do, the ways we respond to people and places—even if our explanation for these reactions is fading.  And of course, to lose memory, to watch those we love losing memory, in mind or body, is one of the most wrenching of experiences, because of this deep, deep connection between memory and identity.

And yet—we are not only formed by our own memories, but also by the memories that others have of us. How they understand us and remember us, who they know us to be. We feel a a gravitational pull towards those who remember us well.  We are who we are, and we know and are known as ourselves in these loving relationships.  We hold each other for each other in this way, even as it can, sometimes, be unbearably painful.

And in this, I believe, we are echoing God’s ongoing loving remembering of us, as people made in his image.  Who we are is something that God holds in God’s memory.  Something that we are reminded of—as well as actively remembering—in the events of that first ‘Last Supper’ and on every occasion when we repeat them: in communion and in the washing of feet that takes place on Maundy Thursday.

II.

So, let’s reflect on this a little this evening. Who is God reminding us that we are? How is he reminding us how to be?

The eucharistic prayer, which we will come to soon, tells us the story that we are remembering each time that we take communion. It rehearses for us the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and reminds us that it is Jesus’ way of life that leads to his death. It is his solidarity with and care for those who are marginalised and isolated, his willingness to challenge the norms and rules that contribute to such isolation, his refusal to seize and wield power in the ways that the rulers of his day understood it.  

It reminds us, too, that this death—the breaking of his body and the spilling of his blood that we remember in this meal—was not the end. For we also proclaim his resurrection and his ascension and remind ourselves of the promise of his kingdom. It is a meal that remembers and celebrates this liberation and love even as it remembers Jesus’ pain and death. It is a meal that sustains us through these next three days and through our lives in world.

For as we remember this story in our words and in the movements of our bodies, and as we are reminded of this story as we watch, as we listen, and as we eat—and as some of us may have our feet washed tonight, we are reminded again, in the words of the canticle that we just said together: this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his son…

Tonight, we’re reminded of this twice over, in the eucharist, yes, and also in the washing of feet—which is a reminder that is both practical and symbolic. 

It’s practical because God loved us enough to strip down to the clothing of a slave in order to wash 12 pairs of feet that were, I imagine, pretty grubby and stinky. Feet that belonged to 12 slightly strange outsiders, not, perhaps the people who would have been expected to be first on the Messiah’s agenda.  It reminds us of what this love looks like in the daily life of the world. Of how humans made in God’s image, people following Jesus are called to love and serve, in very physical ways. 

But it’s also symbolic because it is another way in which Jesus brings all his disciples into his life. As he says to Peter, unless I wash you, you have no share with me. It echoes the washing that we experience in baptism. It reminds us that in Jesus, God enters into our human lives in the world so that we can enter into God’s life for all eternity.  That God always remembers the love that he has for his creation, always remembers who we are, and is always ready to prompt us to remember it too—despite the pain of watching us forget it so often. I think God knows and shares that pain too. 

III.

It’s important, I think, to pay attention to the reality of the ways that memory can weaken or warp or fail in our world, to sit with the pain of this and the problems it causes. This evening first happened because the world is not all that we would want it to be—not what God made it to be.  It reminds us of a reality that Jesus came to heal and a healing that is assured, even if we cannot yet see its fulfilment.

In remembering who God made us to be by looking at Jesus tonight, as he washes feet and breaks bread, we receive an invitation to share in a love and work that is deep and rich and profound, and that will hurt. It is not fluffy, or fair-weather, or ‘lovely’.  We are made to love and serve in ways that will, at times, feel a little bit gross and that will cause us pain in multiple different ways.

Over the next three days we will remember Jesus’ betrayal, his death, and the grief of his disciples on that first ‘holy Saturday’, and it is important that we sit with this pain before the celebration of Easter Sunday. In the same way, it is important that we sit with and accompany people through the pain that continues to exist in the world until Christ’s return, that we face it rather than hiding from it. We trust the promise of hope—but we do not do so passively.

At the end of this service, we will thank God for this meal, asking that we may know within ourselves and show forth in our lives the fruit of Christ’s redemption. In that moment we will be asking God to help us to love like Jesus and to serve like Jesus. To show this fruit in the world around us.

In the last few weeks and months, I’ve had the chance to get see more closely some of this fruit in the ways that our two churches in follow Jesus in loving and serving, attending to some of the pain that is in the world. And I know that other pains—local and global—are seen, known and deeply felt here. So, I want to encourage us all this evening to take a moment to make this prayer one of commitment and desire: a commitment to attend to the pain of the world this weekend and beyond and ask God for the desire and ability to go further and deeper in love and service, as we hope in the future. As we do this tonight, let us ask again what we are called to do every day and every week, in remembrance of him.