“WHAT CHRIST HAS DONE TO YOU”
Saint John 13: 1-15
Holy Thursday: 24 March Anno Domini 2016
Father Jay Watson SSP
God forbid that [you] should glory, save in the cross of [y]our Lord Jesus Christ!
But your fallen nature would rather glory in yourself. You find it far easier to intellectually assent to a life-long “tradition” of accepting propositional truths about “Christianity” and the Bible than you do about being what The Christ has made you to be. You do not fear, love, trust, and obey God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. You hate your neighbor when he doesn’t think and act like you want him to. You glory in your own image, knowledge, and accomplishments.
That’s why God had to die.
Holy Thursday is part of the Church’s Holy Week. It is a week leading up to the Passover of God, what is called Easter, but more specifically is The Feast, not of unleavened bread, but of The Resurrection of our Lord from the dead. It’s not only a holy “weekend” but yesterday was Holy Wednesday and the two days after Palmarum were Holy Monday and Holy Tuesday. Every day for a disciple of The Lord is Holy because every Christian is Holy by virtue of being Baptized into Christ’s Holy + Name. Holy and separated out from death and damnation by His suffering, death, and burial.
He knew it was all coming when He celebrated the last Supper with His “12.” Holy Thursday is commonly called Maundy because of His mandate, His command, “for I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.” But if it was nothing more than just another entreaty to obey the two great Laws, to follow the commandments, than you remain in your sins and the darkness of that night—the darkness of noon to three p.m. the following day still imprisons you. No. What Christ did in the upper room was not to issue a command. His famous “a new command I give you” is not a retread of Moses’ Decalogue. How does one keep God’s Law? By believing in the Son of Man. By believing that Jesus is man’s Redeemer by being sinful man’s obedience and man’s substitutionary atonement for sins. You sinners are now dear Saints precisely because you believe, that is, you trust with your very lives and souls, Jesus’ Grace, His love, for you, by the hands of faith He has given you in your washing; which He strengthens in His Word of Holy + Absolution and Holy Sacrament…which He instituted on the night in which He was betrayed: Holy Thursday. If this were nothing more than a re-presentation, a play-acting of a famous event, then we should be pitied for having little imagination and hope in the goodness of God, and even less faith in the things unseen, the realities of the Cross and the Crucified! But you live by faith and not by sight.
Why does Saint John’s text focus on foot washing and not on the Verba? John was there, an eye and ear witness. The Holy Ghost has given Christ’s Church catholic the consecration events in Matthew, Luke, Mark, and Paul. Saint John shows what the Supper gives and does; Who Jesus is.
You don’t go back to the upper room any more than you travel back to Calvary. But, “low I Am with you till the end of the age.” “Where two or three are gathered together in My Name there I Am in the midst of you—IN YOU!”
As The Lord passed over His Hebrews Whom He had hid in houses belonging to His Name, marked with His Blood in Trinitarian + Identity, so too He was preparing the “12” and all of you on Holy Thursday for the real and great Passover wherein the ancient enemy would have its infernal skull crushed on the hill of the skull. Christ’s hour had come and He did depart out of the world of life and light to insure that you would have that bright new world this very evening…and forever and ever. He loves His own unto His own end that He might go on loving you world without end.
When you sin there is a devil in your heart as well, we call him “old Adam.” We betray our Lord in countless ways every day. Only the Second and Perfect Adam, He of this Supper and this Font fixes things and restores; cleans and feeds.
The Sacrament of The Altar is the most important thing in The Kingdom of Grace because it gives, Jesus gives, to all of you, exactly what He gave to Peter and the others—love to the end. The Supper, like The Sacrament of Absolution, plugs all of Baptism’s forgiveness and cleansing, all of its scouring, bleaching, washing, cleansing, restoring, regeneration, hydration, and soothing thirst slaking, into the Holy Chalice and Paten. You are not re-baptized because “he that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet.” You have been adopted and need no further incorporation of family status. But like the prodigal, your Father, your Brother, your Lord and God, desires your return and your nourishment in His feast of faith and peace.
As Christ pours His water, and Blood, into a bason, a font, He too pours His water and Blood into the cup from which He feeds you. He continually washes your feet in every Mass as He forgives you your trespasses and dries you off and wraps you up in His ruby-red robes of Blood and ivory flashing white of His Immaculate Body.
You do follow His example every time The Holy Spirit brings you forward to the rail. You do love God and your neighbor, PERFECTLY, every time He places His Body on your tongue and pours His blood down your throat in His Meal of Love.
In Christ The Word you are all clean. This “cleanliness in not just ‘next’ to godliness” but Is Godliness. You are + baptized and forgiven. You belong to Jesus and are loved. Come to receive Him in Supper and be strengthened and In Peace.
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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