Holy Thursday 2018

Homily for Holy Thursday 2018
"You do not know what I am doing now, but later you will understand."
Jesus speaks to the 12 - but also to us. Year by year we gather to remember in solemn form what it was that Jesus did.  One year I was with the monks of St Paul's outside the Walls in Rome, watching as their new young abbot washed the feet of his monks and of the local community in the splendid setting of the great Basilica. Once I came to the Holy Thursday Mass having spent the day body-nursing a bed-bound friend. Another year I was in Chelsea, preaching to a Hapsburg Archduke. Some years ago I found myself in a village in KwaZulu-Natal, washing feet that had made their barefoot way along dusty footpaths across the hills. In different places, we celebrate this memory.
We do this in memory of him - and not just on Holy Thursday: week by week, day by day, we celebrate the Eucharist, proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes. But what Jesus said remains true: we do not yet know what it is that Jesus did.
If we did know, if we really knew what Jesus did, our churches would be packed, our eucharists would compel people in off the streets, our parishes would transform their neighbourhoods, our church would be an irresistible beacon of faith and of the justice that is a constituent part of faith: in short, our lives would be turned upside down. 
Because what Jesus did, what Jesus does, is to show us that this is how God is in our world, this is who God is in our world. Jesus who gives us himself, who shares his life with us so that we are becoming - we already are, here and now - sharers in the life of God, this Jesus washes feet like a domestic slave.
"You do not know what I am doing now, but later you will understand."
How can we understand? How can we know what it is that Jesus does? It is too simple to say just that, like Jesus, we must be of service to each other. It is too simple to say just that Jesus gives us his presence, his life in the Eucharist, and that we must be aware of how great a gift that is.
Both of these are true - but neither is enough, because what we have to know, what we have, somehow, to understand, is that the breaking of the bread and the washing of the feet cannot be separated, because together they tell us how God is in our world, who God is in our world.
The Gospel doesn't simply tell us to be kind to one another.
The Gospel doesn't simply tell us that Jesus is with us in the Eucharist, giving us his life.
The Gospel doesn't simply tell us that Jesus is the servant of all, the one who reaches out to the poor and the marginalised, who heals the sick and forgives the sinner.
The Gospel doesn't simply tell us that Jesus is our new High Priest, our new Passover Lamb, the one who offers for us the utterly acceptable sacrifice, the one who brings to us the utterly transforming gift of a share in the divine life.
"You do not know what I am doing now, but later you will understand."
The Gospel tells us that Jesus is High Priest and Passover Lamb, Brother and Servant of all, the one who is irrevocably bound to us in celebration and service. The Gospel tells us that we who are Christ's body in the world are irrevocably bound to one another in celebration and service:

• celebration of the presence of God in our midst, Jesus who is our Passover and our lasting peace, present among us whenever we come together as the Church, as the gathering of the followers of Jesus;
• celebration of who we are as adopted children of God, sisters and brothers of Jesus;
• service of each other as brothers and sisters, as members of that gathering, as members of that body of Christ,
• but service first and foremost of God's world, for which we as church are called by our baptism to be the sacrament of Jesus.

We are called to be the sacrament of Jesus – to make the presence of Jesus tangible in the world - that's what sacraments do. And the Gospel as we see and hear it today shows us how God is present in the world. Jesus shows us that celebration and service go hand-in-hand:

• that service must celebrate the one served as an adopted child of God, as brother or sister to me, as brother or sister of Jesus, called like me to the fullness of the life of the Resurrection, to the fullness of that sharing in the life of God which we celebrate here in the Eucharist, because without such celebration service will become, even unwittingly, patronising or servile or constricting;
• that celebration must impel me to service, and to being served, to make tangible in my life the active love of the other that Jesus made tangible in his living and dying, because without such service celebration will become, even unwittingly, empty or self-aggrandising or hypocritical.

"You do not know what I am doing now, but later you will understand."
 And as we come to understand even in part what it is that Jesus is doing, so we come to understand in part who we are – who we already are – as his brothers and sisters.
A couple of days ago I came across these words:
 
We are the towel people,
Soothers, cleansers, healers
Of feet tired and sore and cut from the journey.
 
Christ’s sent people,
Wiping away the dirt and blood and spittle
Of the world’s hatred spewed onto the faces of the weak.
On our knees before others –
And in homage to them,
for Christ is there.
 
"You do not know what I am doing now, but later you will understand."
 
Jesus, Lord and saviour, brother and servant, help us to see in you how God is in our world, who God is in our world.