Homily for Thursday, 28 March 2024– Holy Thursday, Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper

Readings of the day: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; Psalm 116:1-13, 15-16bc, 17-18; 1 Corinthians 11:24-26; John 13:1-15

There is a legend surrounding Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of “The Last Supper.” Da Vinci took many years to find people to be subjects for the painting of Jesus and each of his apostles. First he found a young, handsome man in his late teens to paint as Jesus.

Seven years later, Leonardo da Vinci had finally found enough subjects, out of hundreds of possible people, to have painted Jesus Christ and eleven of his apostles. The only apostle who remained to find a subject and paint was Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed Jesus. After another long search, da Vinci was told that his ideal subject for Judas Iscariot was a wretched prisoner in a dark dungeon of Rome. So, da Vinci went down into the dungeon and met the prisoner. Da Vinci had made a deal with the authorities that the prisoner could be released from prison and into da Vinci’s care if he agreed to be the figure of Judas Iscariot in the “Last Supper” painting.

When da Vinci finished painting Judas in the likeness of the haggard prisoner, he showed the prisoner his Judas in the “Last Supper.” The prisoner, taken aback, said back to da Vinci, “You don’t recognize me, do you? I’m the man you painted seven years ago as Jesus Christ. O God, I have fallen so low”!

Sisters and brothers in Christ, who has invited us to tonight’s Eucharistic memorial of his Last Supper: Even if our sinful state weakens our ability to recognize another person, or maybe even ourselves—to recognize the likeness and dignity of God with which God created us—God will never fail to recognize us. God will always and forever recognize God’s own image and likeness, God’s beauty as in the young man Leonardo da Vinci first painted as Jesus Christ in the “Last Supper,” in each of us.

God will always welcome us, tonight in a special way and every time we gather to celebrate the Eucharist, to his table in memory of Jesus’ Last Supper. Our God in Jesus Christ once welcomed twelve very imperfect men to eat his final meal with him before he died. One of those Twelve, the head of the apostles Simon Peter, would go on to deny even knowing Jesus, three times, as Jesus was being led to his crucifixion. Another, Judas Iscariot, would betray Jesus to the authorities to have him killed. All the others except “the disciple whom [Jesus] loved”—who stood by Jesus’ cross with the three Marys: Jesus’ mother, “the wife of Clopas,” and Mary Magdalene—would flee the scene of the cross.

All except one of Jesus’ Twelve apostles would fail to recognize Jesus as he was arrested, condemned, crucified to death. But God, in Christ, would recognize them for who they truly were. God recognizes us for who we truly and fundamentally are, sisters and brothers, even when we do not recognize the God-given dignity in one another or sometimes in ourselves or in all creation; even if, like the prisoner Leonardo da Vinci painted as Judas Iscariot, we “have fallen so low” into the wretchedness of sin.

Sin, and the blindness toward the image and likeness of God in each of us that sin causes, is not our original state of being. Our original state of being is one of beauty, blessing, dignity as God intended: “God blessed them and gave them dominion” over creation, the Book of Genesis says of the first people God created, Adam and Eve. This “blessed” state of being is the state God will always recognize in us, even if or when we obscure it, corrupt it by sin. This blessed state is the figure our Lord invites to share his Last Supper, this Eucharistic memorial of his Last Supper, with him.

But what about our sin? Jesus’ Last Supper; Jesus’ Passion, death, and resurrection that follow his Last Supper show us two main ways in which God responds to our sin, our “fall” from the state of divine grace and blessing in which God first created us. First, the events of Jesus’ Last Supper, Passion, death, and resurrection that we will commemorate over these next three days show us that God’s response to our sin will urge us to confront our sinfulness, our woundedness, our betrayals, our denials, our fleeing the scene of the cross. Jesus’ first disciples who confronted their sinfulness would be the first to be restored to God’s grace through these Paschal events: Peter, who would weep immediately at his denial of Jesus and later be able to confess, three times, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you”; Mary Magdalene, who would be the first to tell the beloved disciple and Peter of the empty tomb on Easter morning; the other disciples upon whom the risen Christ would breathe the peace of the Holy Spirit and ask that they forgive as they had been forgiven; Thomas, who would overcome his doubt to make an astounding profession of faith, “My Lord and my God”!

Second, these events of Jesus’ Last Supper, his Passion, death, and resurrection are a continuation (and a fulfillment) of how God has always acted in history toward us, especially in response to our sin, our lack of recognition of our original state of divine blessing. Whenever we have sinned, God has not waited to begin the process of restoring us to his grace and friendship.

From the moment Adam and Eve first sinned by eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, God did not wait to promise that the woman’s offspring would crush the serpent, the Satan, the prince of deceit and evil. God would put an end to all evil, all corruption from our original state of divine blessing.

We have heard tonight from Exodus part of the long epic of how God guided the people of Israel through forty years of wandering through the desert wilderness, from slavery under Pharaoh in Egypt to the land God promised them. These people of Israel were so often not exactly worthy to be delivered from slavery, from wandering through the wilderness, as God did for them many times. The people of Israel would sin. They would complain about everything. They would test God. They would worship false gods, not the God constantly working to save them. Yet today we hear the high point of the Exodus story, Israel’s deliverance story: When God struck down the firstborn of Egypt but (literally) passed over the people of Israel, allowing them to live and continue their escape from slavery.

And tonight we have heard the fulfillment of the first Passover through the second, which began with Jesus Christ gathering his disciples for a Last Supper before he died. Jesus gives us in this renewed Passover a new commandment, “an example,” a mandate for us that gives this celebration its old name of Maundy Thursday, mandate Thursday: “That you should also do as I have done for you.”

What has Jesus done for us that is so radical, such a fulfillment of the first Passover, and why has he done this for us? He has started by washing feet, which we will remember in a few moments by replicating in this celebration. John’s Last Supper account starts with Jesus taking the place of a slave before his disciples. This act is startling to his disciples, to Peter, who refuses at first to allow Jesus to lower himself to that level.

But this is only the beginning. Jesus will go so far as to take upon himself all our sin, everything that obscures our view, our recognition of the beauty, the grace, the blessing with which God first created us, and have it nailed to a cross with him on Calvary. Tomorrow we will hear the prophet Isaiah’s foretelling of how, on Good Friday, Jesus accepted being made as one “despised and rejected… as one from whom others hide their faces” and who hold “him of no account.”

Jesus would do none of this for us, for our salvation, because we are worthy. On the contrary! But Jesus once gathered his disciples together for a Last Supper. The next day, “he was crucified, died, and was buried… And on the third day he rose again.” Jesus did all this because, no matter whether we recognize our blessedness, our beauty, the image and likeness of God that we all bear, how much God loves each and all of us (so that he, God in Jesus Christ, would die for us!), God will always recognize all this in us. To Jesus, we will always be like the figure Leonardo da Vinci painted as Jesus. We will always be, as maybe one of my favourite Psalm in the Bible (Psalm 8) begins by describing us, “little less than gods.”

And, through this celebration of Holy Thursday of the Lord’s Supper, Jesus only asks of us two things: First, remember what he has done for us on this night. And, second, do as he does: “Do this in remembrance of me”… “You should also do as I have done to you.” We remember and we do for one another as Jesus has done for us when we remember our blessedness, God’s love for us. We remember and fulfill Jesus’ Last Supper commandment to us when we recognize ourselves and one another as Jesus recognizes us perfectly. We remember and fulfill Jesus’ Last Supper commandment when we act on what we recognize, most fundamentally, in ourselves and one another: A people blessed from the first moments of our creation; a people created in and bearing God’s image and likeness (as in a da Vinci painting, but much more beautiful!); a people called to take, eat, and drink of this Last Supper of friendship, of salvation, of God’s self-emptying, of the blessing of our Lord.

Homily for Thursday, 2 April 2015– Holy Thursday, Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper

Readings of the day: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; Psalm 116:1-13, 15-16bc, 17-18; 1 Corinthians 11:24-26; John 13:1-15

When have we ever felt vulnerable; at the mercy of one or more other people? How many of us, if we think for a moment, realize that we enter the world as vulnerable; at another’s mercy? We begin in our mother’s womb, and we are born weak and totally dependent on others’ care. Who here has held a newborn child, and so knows very well of what I speak? We grow from newborns to older children, and then we become… teenagers: Again, an extremely vulnerable time!

And then who here remembers their first love? Who here is married? When you were married, you made yourself vulnerable; put yourself at the mercy of a person you love, for life. Other sacraments and rituals of our Church also celebrate our making ourselves vulnerable to others; to God. At baptism, we were entrusted to a community of faith, the Church, and to our parents and godparents to be examples to us of the love of Jesus Christ for us. Who here has been confirmed, “sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit” by sacred Chrism oil; made vulnerable to the love of the Holy Spirit? If we think of confirmation in this way, is this not almost scary? My sisters and brothers in religious life; my brother priests and deacon here tonight, who have received the sacrament of orders: Do we not all have stories of being made vulnerable; having to trust other members of our religious communities; priests; families; God at critical times?

Who here has been anointed with the oil of the sick? Illness and age again put us at the mercy of others; at the mercy of God. Who here has received the sacrament of reconciliation? We entrust our darkest moments; our suffering; our sins to a priest, a human being, standing in place of God and the Church, yes, but still a frail, vulnerable human being; a sinner. Is this not making ourselves deeply vulnerable? Are not the sacraments and rituals of our Church all profound acts of courage; of making ourselves vulnerable to another?

Tonight’s celebration of the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, Holy Thursday, is a celebration of this most profound vulnerability. Only it is God; the Son of God, Jesus Christ, making himself vulnerable; entrusting himself completely to us. “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me… This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians and our Gospel reading, from John, celebrate two different instances of Jesus Christ making himself completely vulnerable to us. First Corinthians speaks of Jesus giving himself to us under the form of bread and wine, now Christ’s body and blood, our “new covenant” in “remembrance of” him. And John speaks of Jesus’ washing the feet of his own Apostles and then asking us to do the same: Wash one another’s feet; make yourselves vulnerable to one another. Put yourselves completely at one another’s mercy, as I have done for you, Jesus says.

And so we will, in just a few moments, remember and follow Jesus’ “new model” for us, a “model” of action that makes us vulnerable; perhaps unsettles us. This was an act of humiliation for Jesus, even before his ultimate humiliation for us on the cross. The washing of the feet was so unbecoming of the Son of God; the Savior of the world, that Jesus’ first Apostles, led by Peter, the Church’s “rock,” protested: “You will never wash my feet”! And yet tonight we will witness the washing of feet of twelve people chosen from among us, in remembrance of that first act of complete vulnerability by our Lord.

But why would Peter and the Apostles have been so unsettled by Jesus’ washing of their feet? Why would Jesus, God’s Son, choose willingly to wash their feet, as a slave would do for a master? In short, Jesus did this out of love. And Jesus’ Apostles were unsettled at this act because they had never quite experienced this depth of love before.

Jesus “loved his own who were in the world, and he loved them to the end.” In the words of John’s Gospel, this is why Jesus chose to put himself at his Apostles’ and our mercy in this way. This is why Jesus gave himself to us the night before he suffered and died for us, saying, “This is my body… This… is the new covenant in my blood. Do this… in remembrance of me.”

“He loved his own who were in the world, and he loved them to the end.” Indeed, God has loved us, “his own… in the world,” from the very beginning. God has loved us into being. We are all here because of an act of God’s love for us. God’s chosen people were brought out of slavery in Egypt. They were assured safe passage that first Passover if they marked the doorposts of their houses with lamb’s blood, we hear tonight from the Book of Exodus. All this was made possible because God loves us. God loved us from the beginning and will love us “to the end.” Still, the first Passover was without doubt an unsettling experience for God’s people in the Egyptian desert under Moses, an encounter with God’s love deeper than they had ever experienced before.

And then Jesus washes our feet. And he places himself completely at our mercy in this Last Supper: “This is my body… This… is the new covenant in my blood.” This is no longer lamb’s blood, but the blood of Christ; the body and blood of God made every bit as human as we are.

This kind of love; this kind of intimacy with us is unsettling. Are we willing to let Jesus enter into every aspect of our lives: To share in our joys and sorrows; our wellness and our illness; our prosperity and also our poverty? Are we willing to let Jesus be the very source of “all that is good” in us, but also to take upon himself our sins and have them nailed to a cross? Are we willing to allow Jesus to be both meal and sacrifice in this celebration? Are we willing to let Jesus wash our feet: All the grit, sweat, and stink (since I do not believe pedicures were readily available in Jesus’ time)? Are we willing to be loved more deeply than we have ever been loved before?

If not, Jesus’ answer to us is stark: “Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.” But, if so, we are invited to do as Christ does: Put ourselves at one another’s mercy; make ourselves completely vulnerable to one another out of love; sacrifice ourselves in daily, small ways, out of love. Love one another “to the end”; love one another more deeply than we have ever been loved before.