Maundy Thursday, March 28, 2024

Maundy Thursday (Year B)

Ex. 12:1-14; Psalm 116:1, 10-17; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31b-35

The Rev. Clint Brown

Pilgrims in their tens of thousands. Pilate, the Roman procurator and Herod Antipas, the tetrarch. Temple priests. Temple guards. Roman soldiers drawn from every quarter of the Empire. Zealots and radicals. Mercenary money changers. Sadducees, Pharisees, “doctors of the law.” Twelve disciples. A faithful band of women. Jesus. There is only one thing that could have brought together such a motley and disparate group to be at the same place at the same time, and that one thing can be summed up in one word: Passover.

Passover, the annual commemoration of God’s deliverance of Israel, had, by Jesus’ day, long since transitioned from a simple house ceremony to a full-fledged festival. Everyone who could was expected to make the journey to Jerusalem and offer their Passover sacrifice in the temple (Deut. 16),[1] and Luke’s Gospel reports that Jesus’s parents did so faithfully every year (Lk. 2:41). Modern estimates put the population of Jerusalem at around this time, conservatively, at something like 25 to 30,000 people, but during the week preceding Passover, that number swelled at least sixfold to 155,000.[2] For a few weeks every spring, the ancient City of David became a raucous, cacophonous mix of multiple languages and dialects, cramped and dusty lanes filled with jostling, irritable strangers, out-of-towners haggling over accommodation, street vendors hawking food, bleating animals meant for sacrifice, curious tourists, men of business unlucky enough to be caught in town, and, of course, the simply pious, shoulder to shoulder with the pickpockets and bandits, zealots and firebrands, and all the other opportunists that these kinds of occasions bring out of the woodwork.

Mixed in and among these teeming throngs were also the elite and privileged classes. One such party was called the Sadducees, and we might think of them as the aristocrats. They had old and distinguished lineages and owned much property. They occupied the majority of the seats on the supreme council, the Sanhedrin, which was presided over by the High Priest, also a Sadducee. The Sadducees, as a collective, were Roman collaborators who had a vested interest in appeasing their overlords even as they secretly despised them. Secondly, there was the party of the Pharisees, whose name is thought to mean something like “the separated.”[3] These were the true believers calling the people back to true religion, who took the view that only a strict return to the Law could save them all. Jesus had many disputes with this group owing to the fact that while they zealously observed of the letter of the Law, they seemed to have forgotten its spirit. Last of all, there were the hereditary priests, the guardians of the temple, who had at their disposal a small contingent of armed guards and who had oversight over the proper conduct of ritual. It was these men who were tasked with the gruesome and ever more formidable task of slaughtering the thousands upon thousands of animals brought to them for sacrifice and then splashing their blood against the sides of the altar. When you think of them, think of blood and sweat and slaughter by the dim, flickering light of torches.

But, as you know, Jerusalem at this time was not only a Jewish city with Jewish preoccupations, it was also a subjugated city, and Palestine was not the home of a proud, autonomous people but a provincial outpost of the Roman Empire, which had, by this time, made a Roman lake out of the Mediterranean. A few days in advance of the Festival, the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, had left his comfortable seaside villa in the city of Caesarea Maritima, the provincial capital, and begrudgingly marched his cohort of soldiers westward to deal with the cranks in Jerusalem. Experience had shown that it was not wise of the Empire to leave unpoliced this annual remembrance of Israel’s past liberation and deliverance, and Rome certainly had no intention of being another Egypt. And so, on the Sunday before Passover, Pilate and his column solemnly processed into the city to the steady and disciplined thump-thump of their drums and with the practiced professionalism of military men. If anyone had thoughts of causing a disturbance this week, by this raw display of power, they were meant to think twice. Without hurry, but also with some relief, the entourage made it to the safety of the Antonia Fortress overlooking the temple and the city. Here Pilate and his soldiers could keep a watchful and wary eye over the city and all that was to come.

But while all these groups and individuals are important players in the drama to come, none of them, we know, will have the starring role this week – that part is reserved for a certain man from Galilee – and it is one of the great ironies of history that at the same time as Pilate and his troops were making their grand but subdued entrance into the city from the west, a quite different procession was approaching the city from the east. At the head of this procession was an altogether different kind of figurehead, the popular and visionary leader of a reform movement within Judaism named Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus, the Gospels tell us, had set his face to come to Jerusalem several days before and now he had arrived to the boisterous acclaim of the crowds who hailed him as their king. But for Jesus, however, there was, as it were, a pall overshadowing all this celebration. Jesus knew that not everything was what it seemed. He knew that by entering the city that day he was entering it for the last time. He knew that he was going to die.

On Thursday night, Jesus gathered his disciples together to share the Passover meal. He washed their feet. He declared to them a new commandment, that they “Love one another.” He blessed and broke the bread and shared with them the cup and solemnly enjoined them (and us) to do this, as often as we come together, in remembrance of him. Which brings me to my main point. You and I are the final participants in this drama. The stage has been set, all the characters are in position, and it is now our turn to take our place. Tonight we commemorate the fact that every Eucharist is a pledge by which we commit ourselves to the cruciform life of a disciple of Christ. We remember that our highest aspiration is not to have great vacations, bulging bank accounts, or even, necessarily, lives of comfort and ease; it is, rather, to be as broken, as poured out, as Jesus Christ. Christ has arrived in Jerusalem to confront us all – pilgrims, procurators, powerbrokers, and us – and he means to transform us all. This Passover is where everything comes together. Take the bread. Take the cup. “Behold the mystery of your salvation laid out for you; behold what you are, become what you receive.”[4] Amen.

[1] By this time, it had become a requirement of anyone living within 15 miles of Jerusalem.

[2] Figures are taken from Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus (London: SCM Press, 1966), 84.

[3] C. H. Dodd, The Founder of Christianity (London: William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1970), 8.

[4] A line from St. Augustine, Sermon 272, “On the Eucharist,” used today in this paraphrased and amplified form in some modern liturgies.