'Maundy Thursday' Holy Thursday, 17th April, by Fr Jack

Families and roles within them come in all shapes and sizes. But I grew up in a home where mum was at home for the first 10 years of my life before going back to nursing. She did (and does) most of the cooking and cleaning. Recently, after 40 years of marriage, my dad had to ask where the stuff to clean the bathroom was, when mum was poorly. It was a very revealing moment, and we have mocked him for it ever since.

Anyway, I was lucky, my mum was loving and kind (not all are). And as a family we were in no doubt of the dignity and importance of her work at home, (as well as her work as a nurse for the 30+ years she nursed either side of that). 

Tonight the saviour of the world, the King of Kings, in lots of ways does for his friends what my mum did for us three kids: he provides the meal, prompts and arranges the setting and what will be eaten, and even tenderly washes the feet of the attendees. There are no women named in tonights events. We must notice and lament that, for they were surely there. 

Indeed, as we’ve said already this week in our series of sermons on ‘Women of the Passion’ for Holy Week: St Luke’s Gospel clearly tells us that it is the women - Mary, Joann and Suzanna and others - who bankroll Jesus’ ministry out of their own means (St Luke 8). These women may well have paid for this Passover meal!         Just as Valentine’s Day and New Years Eve menus tend to come at inflated prices because restaurants are busy, it is easy to imagine finding a place for Passover in Jerusalem must have been a difficult and pricey business. By custom, every Jew needed to be in Jerusalem for Passover, to join the crush in the Temple to sacrifice the lambs, and then find somewhere to eat it straight afterwards. Josephus, a contemporary historian, tells us there were upwards of a 1/4 million sacrifices in the Temple over Passover. (Brandt Pitre, Jesus and the Jewish roots of the Eucharist’, Image, 2011, p.61)

So we have no names for the women at the Last Supper. Da Vinci didn’t draw them there either. But they were there. They are there in all the other events of these three days we have just begun. The Great Three Days as they are called - Triduum. They are there throughout, they will be the ones who stay and return to the tomb when the men have fallen away. They are there tonight, there is no reason to assume otherwise.

But here we have Jesus/God in the role as male head of the household presiding over the Passover Meal, yes: saying the words the male head of the household is expected to say, but also something more. Jesus goes further, by taking the Passover and making Himself the sacrifice - no longer is it the blood of lambs, it is His blood. No longer the flesh of animals, it is His flesh. But to return to this motherly image - and it is just an image - Jesus goes further here too. Let’s explore that a little. 

Tonight, salvation and sacrifice are begun through the tenderness of touch and care, of washing and kissing and providing a meal. I know these things aren’t necessarily feminine. Please don’t misunderstand me, to speak of Jesus fulfilling these roles, and to see His ‘motherliness’ in them, is in no way to pay into unhelpful stereotypes of women. Instead, it is about freeing the way we receive Jesus in these events, and allowing ourselves to see more of Him. Just a short while ago, Jesus has looked onto Jerusalem as He arrives, and called Himself a ‘mother hen’ wishing to gather up his chicks. It is a striking image for Almighty God (St Luke 13).

In this holy meal, Jesus takes the Passover and fulfils it. The cult of sacrifice in the Temple is fulfilled in the Lamb of God, Jesus, who will be slaughtered on the cross in just a few hours time. This dinner begins the crucifixion. His Body is broken and His Blood poured out. So it will be. And so for us now who do as He has told us, (τοῦτο ποιεῖτε εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν - in remembrance of Him), His Body is broken and His Blood poured out. The Last Supper shares in the cross that will be, at every Eucharist we come to the Cross. And at every Eucharist we share in the Heavenly Banquet of the Lamb, that is ahead of us. We feast on His death, and in His resurrection. His life, hidden in bread and wine.

And all that is to say that the Eucharist (if you’ll run with this) is like a womb for us. As a mother shares her life with the child in her womb. The umbilical cord, the home of nurture and growth, of warmth and loving union: literally sharing a body and blood and life. There is something of this in Eucharist for us. 

Day by day, Sunday by Sunday, decade by decade, God shares His life, His body and blood, and we are at one - Comm-union. 

In this womb that is Jesus’ life, we grow and live until death is our birth into the true life of heaven (the banquet also prefigured here) towards which we are living. 

This life which Jesus shares with us at every Eucharist costs Him everything. Everything. 

And knowing that, He kneels to wash our feet before feeding us with Himself.

The question for us is, how will we respond?