09.04.2020
Maundy Thursday Eucharist in Christ Church Cathedral
The Maundy Thursday Eucharist took place in Christ Church Cathedral Dublin this evening (April 9). During this exceptional Holy Week of 2020, there were just three people present, Archbishop Michael Jackson, Dean Dermot Dunne and the Revd Abigail Sines. The congregation viewed the service online via the cathedral’s webcam. The preacher was the Archbishop and the text of his sermon is below.
Short Reflection on Maundy Thursday
Reading: St John 13.1–7, 31b–35
St John 13.34, 35: I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
On Maundy Thursday, we draw together in our life of faith two things in particular: Jesus’s washing the feet of his disciples and Jesus’s institution of Holy Communion in remembrance of him, who he is, what he does, what he is yet to become. Both of them focus on sacrifice and on self–sacrifice, on service seen through the filter of slavery as Godliness. This is a radical shaft of light into our regular reading of Holy Scripture. It takes Jesus to enable us to see ourselves properly as slaves. This evening, we approach the end of yet another day in our own lives, a day that is both empty and full. I say this because each day is a gift of God and yet in these timeless times we are not quite sure what we have made of this day. In other circumstances we’d have done something quite different. What we can do is to focus on these key Scriptural elements to express our discipleship of Jesus and our belonging to the body of Christ. In both the washing of feet and the administration of Holy Communion, the Master serves the servants, the Master gives the grace and we receive the gift. This year 2020 is no different in this respect from what has been the case in any other year since the historic and momentous events of the first Holy Week and the first Maundy Thursday.
What is different this year, because of the coronavirus Covid–19, is what it means to receive. We receive spiritually because we cannot receive physically – both the Footwashing and the Holy Communion. This is because of the social distancing that is the church’s response to the coronavirus that goes ahead of us into every meeting we have with other people in every aspect of our lives. We have been called to a new understanding of community – a community of distance rather than a community of nearness – precisely because this is the best gift we can give to others and to their hope of survival. Gift and giving in this form are not now optional extras and dispensable luxuries; they are urgent essentials and immediate necessities. It is as much for these reasons as for any others that worship carried out appropriately and with all of the safeguards in place continues in the diocesan cathedral – for all and with all. From the beginning of this time of crisis, we have sought to continue as best we can on behalf of members of the Church of Ireland right across the dioceses and beyond and also on behalf of the community of people unknown to us to whom Christ Church is precious, we have sought to grapple faithfully with what it is to be the church now. We applaud and delight to learn of the wonderful ways in which in local parishes and communities across the United Dioceses of Dublin and Glendalough people have done not only new things well but the old things well – kindness, prayer, warmth and mending and making do. This thread of continuity, this flame of hope make up what it is daily to live out the service of Footwashing and the banquet of the Eucharist for everyone who can give and who can receive. We honour all of those who, in frontline services, in all places and at all hours of the day and night, do what we cannot do. They inspire us to do what we can do.
My encouragement to everyone is to take comfort in the effort that you and everyone else are making today and tomorrow. Comfort is what the children of Israel cried to God for; comfort is what God gives to God’s people:
Comfort my people; bring comfort to them, says your God, speak kindly to Jerusalem … More and more people are finding new neighbours and new ways of experiencing being gathered together. We are doing the work of humanity and the work of God all in one by being there for one another and by being willing to sacrifice what we love and what feeds us as people: the company of others. There is no reason for us to feel lost in being on our own. We need to work at it but we are all together part of a bigger work of love in action. Those powerful and generous acts of Jesus: service and invitation are things that we do ad will continue to do as we say spiritually and reverently:
May the body and blood of Christ keep us in eternal life … on earth as it is in heaven …
St John 13.1: Before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.