Holy Thursday
March 28, 2013
 
    Holy Thursday is a night unlike all others.  We sense that as we gather tonight.  We are in St. James Cathedral in Seattle but we are also with Jesus and his disciples in the Upper Room, and somehow we know that this is where we came from and that our very identity is bound up with what we do here tonight.

     And who are we?  We are the people who gather in the name of the Lord Jesus to break the Bread of Life in his memory.  There are many good and important things we do together as a people, of course, but none more important than this. What we do here tonight is at the heart of who we are and makes sense of everything we do.

     Do you remember the Passover scene from Fiddler on the Roof?  Tevye and his wife have gathered all the children.  They are dressed in their Sabbath best; the table is set simply but beautifully, and everything is as it should be.  But on the faces and in the eyes of the youngest children there is a question: “why are we doing all this? Why do we go to all this trouble?  We don’t understand.”  The answer, in their mother’s eyes and on their father’s lips, is “We are doing this because we are Jews.  We are doing this so we can remember who we are.”

     Tevye and his family were Jews in Russia.  They lived in perilous times.  Whatever happened, they must not forget who they were – children of Abraham, children of the Promise, God’s Chosen People.

     My friends, we do what we are doing here tonight so we can remember who we are.  The Passover celebration took Tevye and his family back to their roots: to the great moment of God’s deliverance when He led a captive people from slavery to freedom through the waters of the Red Sea. The Eucharist we celebrate tonight -- the bread we break and the cup we share –- takes us right back to our roots: to our beginnings in the Upper Room the night before Jesus died and to Calvary’s lonely hilltop.  But there is more: the Eucharist not only reminds us of where we came from, it also makes us who we are.  That is its power.

     The ritual we celebrate is old, but it is ever new.  Because it is old, and very familiar, there is always the possibility that we will miss some of its power.  So, my friends, take it in tonight not only with your eyes and your ears; take it in with your hearts as well. And listen closely to what Jesus says as he breaks the bread and shares the cup: “Do this in memory of me.”  In memory of me. Break the bread of life and share the wine of loving sacrifice in my memory.  Do it over and over again. Never stop doing it.  Do it today, do it tomorrow, do it until the end of time.  Do it until the path of my life becomes the pattern of yours.  Why so often?  Because you are so forgetful!  You need to be reminded again and again of who I am and of what I did and, yes, you need to be reminded of who you are.  “Do this in memory of me.”  Why?  Because while there was death in it for me, there is life in it for you.

     And, my friends, this remembering that we do tonight and whenever we gather in His name, is no mere looking back fondly or wistfully.  It is not an exercise in nostalgia.  This remembering has unique power: a mystical, sacramental, divine power to transcend time and space and to make the past present!

     Tonight, as at every Mass, we are in the upper room.  We are witnesses to the greatest outpouring of love our world has ever known, but we are more than witnesses, we are partakers. When we take part in the Eucharistic meal as we will soon do, we will be one with Jesus. He will become our food and we will become his Body – become more and more who and what he is. And that, my friends, is the way – the only way -- his otherwise impossible commandment becomes possible for us: “Love one another,” he says, “as I have loved you.”  Through our communion with him that impossible commandment begins to become possible.

       But, lest all this sound abstract and theoretical, Jesus, true to form, told a wonderful parable to his friends at table that night.  No, he went one better: instead of telling a parable he acted one out.  During the meal, he got up from the table, set aside his outer garment, got down on his hands and knees, and washed the dirty, sweaty feet of his friends.  It was a parable that needed no more explanation than have the simple, startlingly humble things we have seen Pope Francis doing one after another since his election two weeks ago. He’s following the way of Jesus, and the way of Jesus is the way of love, and the way of love is the way of humble service. No power trips, no pulling rank, no lording it over others.

     “I AM IN YOUR MIDST AS ONE WHO SERVES.”   Those Last Supper words of Jesus which speak to us from high above the altar of this cathedral are yet one more telling of his Last Supper parable. They are a constant and challenging reminder to us not only of who Jesus is, but of who we are.  On this night when we remember what he did and who we are, let us hear them afresh.  On this holy night may Jesus who is in our midst as one who serves show us how to wash each other’s feet, and may he show himself to us as never before in the Breaking of the Bread!

     Father Michael G. Ryan