Maundi Thurs 2025

Bless the Lord forgive all our sins.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God.

The Lord be with you.

Let us pray.

Almighty Father, his dear Son, on the night before he suffered, instituted the sacrament of his body and blood.

Mercifully grant that we may receive it thankfully, in remembrance of Jesus Christ our Lord, who in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life and who now lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

Who is like you, mighty one, among the gods?

Who is like you, resplendent in holiness, revered, praiseworthy, working in wonders?

You stretched out your right hand, the earth swallowed you.

You led in your faithful love by the people who you redeemed.

You guided them by your strength to your holy abode.

The rulers of Moab trembling seized them.

All the inhabitants of Canaan melted away.

Terror and dread fell upon you by the mind of your heart.

And became still as a study until your people entertained God as I, until the people that you acquired as I, that you brought them and planted them on the mountain of your own possession, the place sheltering God that you made for your dwelling, the sanctuary of the most high God that your hands have established, and the everlasting God will reign forever and ever.

The horse of Pharaoh and his chariots, the chariot of tears, went into the sea, and the mighty God turned the waters of the sea back upon them.

But the daughters of the sons of Israel walked through the sea on dry ground.

Then the prophet, Miriam, Aaron's sister, took a hand drum in her hand, and all the women went out after her with hand drums and were dancing.

And Miriam was saying to them, Women and men, Sing to the indomitable God who has triumphed triumphantly, horse and rider God has thrown into the sea the word of the Lord.

Our psalm is one thirty six, we will read responsibly by half verse.

Give thanks to the fountain of life who is good.

Give thanks to the God of gods.

Give thanks to the majesty of majesties.

Who alone does great wonders, who through insight made the heavens, etc.

To the one who spread out the land upon the waters, etc.

To the one who made the great lights, etc.

The sun to govern the day, etc.

The moon and stars to govern the night, et cetera, who struck in Egypt through their firstborn daughters and sons, and brought Israel out from among them, Isabella, with a strong hand and an outstretched arm.

Who cut the Red Sea in two Israel and made Israel pass over through the midst of it.

But turn Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea who walked her people through the wilderness.

Because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king's commandment.

By faith, Moses, after he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, rather choosing an ill treatment with the people of God, an enjoyment of the transitory pleasures of sin.

He considered abuse for the sake of the Messiah to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to the reward.

By faith he left Egypt, unafraid of the anger of the king, for he persisted as though he saw the unseen.

By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, in order that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn daughters and sons of Israel with the word of the Lord.

The first day of unleavened bread, the disciples came to Jesus, saying, Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover?

He said, Go into the city to a certain person and say, The teacher says, My time is near.

I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.

So the disciples did, just as Jesus instructed them, and they prepared the Passover meal.

When it was evening, he reclined at table with the twelve, and while they ate, he said, Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me.

They became deeply grieved, and each one began to say to Jesus, Not me, as a rabbi.

He responded and said, The one who dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me.

Indeed, the Son of Woman goes away as it is written of him, but woe to the person by whom the Son of Woman is betrayed, it would be better for that person not to have been born.

Judas, who did betray him, responded and said, It wasn't me, was it, Rabbi?

Jesus replied, You said it.

While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and blessing it, he broke it, and gave it to the disciples, saying, Take, eat, this is my body.

Then he took a cup, and giving thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink from it, all of you.

For this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sin.

I tell you all, I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new with you in the realm of my Abba.

And when they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

Then Jesus said to them, You will all become scandalized to the point of desertion because of me this night, for it is written, for I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.

But after I am raised, I will go ahead of you all to Galilee.

Peter said to him, Though all become scandalized and desert because of you, I will never desert you.

Jesus said to him, Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.

Peter said to him, Should it be necessary I die with you, I will not deny you.

Then likewise said all the disciples.

Then Jesus came with the disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, You all sit here while I go pray there.

He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee and began to be grieved and distressed, and he said to them, My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death.

You all stay here and stay awake with me.

And going on a little, he fell on the ground and prayed, saying, My father, if it's possible, let this cup pass from me.

Nevertheless, not what I want, but what you do.

And then he came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, So you all were not strong enough to stay awake with me one hour?

Stay awake and pray that you all may not come into the test.

Indeed.

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Again for the second time Jesus went away and prayed, saying, My Father, if it is not possible for this to pass, lest I drink it, let your will be done.

And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy.

So leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying those words again.

And he came to the disciples and said to them, Sleep now and take your rest.

See, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Woman is betrayed into the hands of sinners.

Get up, let us go, and look, my betrayer is at hand.

While Jesus was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, came, and with him was a large crowd with swords and clubs from the chief priests and the elders of the people.

Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, The one I kiss is he, take him.

At once Judas came up to Jesus and said, Shalom, Rabbi, and kissed him.

Jesus said to him, Friend, this is why you have come.

And then they came and laid hands on Jesus and took him.

And suddenly someone with Jesus reached out with his hand, drew his sword, and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear.

Then Jesus said to that one, Return your sword to its place, for all who choose the sword will perish by the sword.

Do you think I'm not able to ask my Abba, who will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?

How then would the scriptures be fulfilled which say it must be thus?

At that hour Jesus said to the crowds, Is it as for a band that you all have come out with swords and clubs to seize me?

Daily in the temple I sat teaching, and you did not arrest me, but all this has happened so that the scriptures of the prophets may be fulfilled.

And then all the disciples deserted him and fled.

The gospel of the Lord.

Well, welcome to the Traduo.

It actually began 45 minutes ago with the footwashing service.

We split it since COVID, but you have this rather swarthy booklet in your hand because this is one service spread over three days.

It's a lot to hold.

And it's almost too much to avoid the whiplash of coming in for a celebratory meal that then turns into this forecast of betrayal, party over, then goes to the agony in the garden, and then the betrayal.

And then we're going to make a turn in just a little bit.

And we know this is coming.

We have to know this is coming.

And yet, for now, this is our Passover, our celebration.

And so we know where this is going.

And then I invite you just to the moment of the Passover itself.

It's Maundy Thursday, but you didn't hear that unless you came at 5.15.

Because that comes from John's gospel, not Matthew's.

It's Maundy Thursday from the word mandate.

A new command I give you when you see somebody's need, meet it because you can, not because they chose not to.

That's Maundy Thursday.

Love one another the way I've loved you.

I saw something I could do and I did it.

That's it.

No scolding.

No, you ought to know better.

I saw you needed it and I did it.

Now we come into Matthew and we have the institution of the Lord's Supper before the betrayal.

This is the one day of the year, the preacher gets to talk about the whole Eucharistic theology.

Preferably in like 10 minutes or fewer.

For your sakes.

So here goes.

And there is a saying that as long as our Jewish brothers and sisters have kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept our Jewish brothers and sisters, has kept them.

And so it is that every Friday night in a Jewish household, you will find exactly what we continue with to this day in church.

You'll find two candles on the table.

And it is always the woman who blesses the candles, the Sabbath light, the beginning of the day.

Our Jewish brothers and sisters begin time in the evening, not the morning.

And the oldest woman in the Jewish household says the prayer of blessing over the candles, beginning of the light of the Sabbath, the gift of God, the queen that is Shabbat.

And then the oldest man in the home takes a silver cup of wine and says the blessing over the wine.

And in many homes to this day, the wine is passed around.

And each person drinks from the cup of the kiddos.

And they may say, depending on which home you go to, something for which they are grateful for before they pass to their neighborhood.

Children may or may not drink from the cup, nonetheless, they receive it and share it.

And then they take the bread, which 51 weeks of the year we now recognize as hala, the braided loaf.

And the children bless the halah, and then it's shared.

This is a repetition.

You will find in Jewish households tomorrow.

And at the time of Jesus.

And Passover, of course, has the same elements, but the bread is flat this one week.

The bread is flat because they didn't have time for the bread to rise.

It's not because they didn't use yeast, it's because the yeast they used was airborne.

They didn't have fleischments.

So there was no time for it to rise, so it appeared rather flat.

Even the Passover meal, which has the redemptive story, just as we do our trinua, we tell the story and we live into it.

Our Jewish brothers and sisters did this last week.

They tell the story.

And in every Jewish home on Passover, in every celebration, the youngest person in the room acts the oldest.

Why is this night different from every other night?

Why do we eat bitter herbs?

Why is the bread flat?

Why do we eat this mushed carouset?

And the oldest person instructs, the youngest person could be 99.

It must be asked from youngest to the oldest.

And every question is answered because we were slaves.

And God released us.

Last week that was said, not our ancestors were slaves, and God released them.

We were slaves to Egypt and God has delivered us.

This happened.

Tonight, this happened.

With Christ at the table.

Who was the youngest disciple?

I have no idea, but if Jesus wasn't the oldest, he didn't answer the four questions.

Who lit the candles?

We don't know whether there were women in the room or not, but we know women followed him.

So why not?

Who blessed the kiddish?

We don't know.

Well we know when the normal bit was done, Jesus said, well, these words at institution, that this bread is my body, and this wine is my blood.

And millions of pages have been spilled over what these words mean.

There are these words maybe you learned back in European history: transubstantiation, consubstantiation, symbolism.

And we forget our history.

We forget that the candles came not from the church, but from our church, brothers and sisters.

We forget that the Passover didn't come from the high priest or from Jesus on the cross.

It came from a Paschal lamb.

So I can't straighten it out, but I can remind you that priests did not heal the Passover lamb.

Families did.

The one time of the year a family could butcher their own meat was the night of Passover.

Every other day, it was the priest's job.

Why?

Because taking life was holy and sacred.

So we started as butchers.

And at our worst, we remain.

Why didn't the priest do it?

Because there wasn't time.

There wasn't time.

In the middle of the night, they were gonna go.

So what do you need before a journey?

You need a meal.

What do you need before a long journey when you eat meat like four times a year?

Calories.

There wasn't time for the bread, there wasn't time for the priest.

Kill the lamb, eat as much as you can, because in the middle of the night it's time to go.

It's possible that you think the Passover lamb is a sacrifice for sin, but friends, it's not.

That happens on Yom Kippur.

That happens at the temple.

Passover happens at the home.

Maybe you're wondering, what's the deal with the blood then?

The blood in the Hebrew Bible tells us very plainly in Exodus the life force of the animal, the chi, is in the blood.

Which is why no Jewish person who keeps kosher can have it.

Because the life force of the animal does not belong to us, it belongs to God.

So the blood is poured out onto the earth and returned to God.

I know this sounds kind of wild, but you've probably heard of people eating parts of tigers to have their virility and killing rhinos for the horn.

It's so that they can have the animal's powers.

We think that's nuts because we live in the West.

Judaism is an Eastern religion, not a Western one.

The prohibition is the life force belongs to God, even if you eat the meat.

You can't have the soul.

You can't have the power.

So in obedience to God, they show they've not consumed the blood, and they put it on the lintels of their door, and they are ready because the Passover is eaten standing up.

It's eaten fully dressed.

So that when God says go, we're ready to go.

So Jesus replicates this meal.

The disciples did not think he was going to pour out his blood and wash them white as a garment, because we all know laundry doesn't work like that.

They thought, ah, maybe our deliverance is near.

Food for the journey.

So we can fight with you.

You notice Judah seems a little chilly.

Maybe because he thinks he's delivering Jesus into the rebellion they all wanted.

Maybe.

I don't know if you've seen Jesus Christ Superstar.

It lends a really shocking lens to this, where Jesus says, I want you to remember me.

And then he says, look at your blank faces.

I must be crazy to think you'll remember me five minutes after I'm gone.

For all you care, this bread could be my body, and you would eat me like bread.

For all you care, this wine could be my blood.

You're so stuck on what you want from God that you can't see what God wants for you.

It's a convicting scene for me.

Not in the scriptures.

Convicting.

And then Jesus says, You used to the Passover lamb.

So what if you were nourished by my body?

My time with you, my teaching, my kneeling to wash your feet, which you are convinced is beneath your slaves.

What if you were nourished by my life?

You can sense our life forces in our blood.

What if this wine was my blood and you were full not only with the symbol of joy that wine is in the Bible, but the symbol of my life?

Not so you could wash yourselves off with it, but so that you could be renewed by it.

So that you could be made ready for the journey out of exile, out of slavery, out of bondage.

And how often are we to keep this meal?

Well, this is quite interesting, isn't it?

I grew up where we did it every week because I grew up in the Christian church.

Then I became a Southern Baptist and we did it once a quarter because we didn't want to strip the meaning out of it.

You know, if you did it every week, you might not think about it strongly enough.

And then I was a Methodist.

And we did it about once a quarter.

And you know, when people started doing it every week in 1976 with that new prayer book, they said, well, we're gonna spoil it by doing it every week.

Of course, what Jesus says is not whenever you eat the Passover meal.

He says, whenever you eat bread.

Which happened every day, because the average Galilean ate two pounds of bread a day.

Which happened every day.

Sometimes we worry, we take this too much, and perhaps we don't remember Jesus enough.

When are we invited to share the life force of Jesus that we are nourished?

That might be five times a day if you're one of those little, you know, have a little snappers.

That might be three times a day.

It might be twelve times a day if you're on a cruise ship.

It sounds funny, but don't you see we don't need it once a year?

This night, well, it's dark.

But many other nights of the year are dark as well.

And each night God calls to us, calls to the world.

What if you just left Egypt behind tonight?

What if you just left tonight your slavery and your bonds and your regrets and your resentment?

What if you left your burdens behind tonight?

God would nourish us for that.

And God would nourish not only our bodies but our spirits so that we could nourish others.

And God would nourish us so that we can say to the pharaohs of our world, whether they be in Egypt or the West Bank or Russia or Washington, D.C., let my people go.

Let my people go.

The ones who are exclusive in body, in mind, in spirit.

We know the yoke of slavery in our own way.

And God invites us again and again to the table so we can be nourished and leave it.

So we can say to our brothers and sisters, come with me, so we can say to Pharaoh, God is God, and you are not.

So let my people go.

So we can live it with him.

We believe in one God, the Father, the Lord, if you have to do it, uh, it's not just a five.

And we can also find the five and stuff.

But the father has to be glorified, it's not a good process.

We're all back to the access.

We have to put it.

Okay.

In the company of Jesus and joining with his faithful followers in years past and in our present day, let us offer our prayers responding, Christie, for the gift of humility that we may mirror the servanthood of Jesus, mending the knee of our hearts to all whose feet have journeyed a long distance, and whose hands have washed away the burdens of others.

Let us pray.

For peace throughout the world in all places, where the lust for power fosters tyranny and war.

Let us pray.

Peace and peace for the courage to face our own unfaithfulness, the kisses of deception, the subtle betrayals, our spiritual sleepiness, that in turning to Christ we may receive the grace that changes lives.

Let us pray.

For those who keep watch this night, that in watching they may be found, in seeking they may be filled with the Spirit, and in waiting they may find peace.

Let us pray.

For those who keep watch every night, the hungry, the homeless, the fearful, that Christ may find them in their own gardens of Gethsemane and not leave them in despair.

Let us pray.

In thanksgiving for this Eucharistic meal which gathers us into fellowship of all the beloved, uniting us.

Let us only confess our sin to Almighty God.

Holy God, Creator of all things, and to uphold us with each other and with you.

Friends, hear this good news.

The love of God is beyond measure, and you are recruited in that love.

So know that you are forgiven, and thus freed to love and to serve.

Amen.

Thank you for sharing this holy three days with us at St.

Thomas.

Special welcome to our newcomers and guests.

So if you're new to us or haven't done this before, in the room right behind the one we're sitting in, we called it an Arpex.

There are these little cards that say welcome, and we'd be tremendously grateful that you fill one out and put it in a little blue basket so we have a record of your visit.

If you don't want me to call you, I won't call you.

If you want me to call you, I will.

So you decide what follow-up looks like, but we're so grateful you're here, and we'd be so grateful to have a record of your visit.

Just in view, a few announcements, which is uh, it's going to get dark.

So we read that.

We're going to do it.

Don't be alarmed.

It's not an electrical failure, like the lights are going to get dark.

And when it's time to go, you go when you're ready.

So we don't, I'm not going to dismiss you tonight.

You stay.

Some folks are staying to pray with the reserve sacrament.

Uh, if you haven't signed up, you're still welcome to do that.

Just talk to Sean or I at the door.

And we have devotional material if you want, if you're keeping vigil to do that.

There is something new we're doing this year.

Our friends St.

Grace and Galveston have lent us their monstrance.

That's really what that's called.

We never used one here, to my knowledge.

Uh it holds uh it holds the reserve sacrament.

Uh so you'll see that, and it'll be here so that people who keep vigil can keep contemplation.

It's part of our tradition.

It's not for everybody, but it is part of the Anglo-Catholic tradition and the Anglican tradition.

So I'll remove the sacrament tomorrow.

I don't know if you know this.

There's two days in which we cannot celebrate the Eucharist.

We cannot.

Those are Friday and Saturday.

So tomorrow at noon when the hour in which Jesus dies, I'll remove the sacrament and serpent.

Consecrate tonight.

Servant tomorrow.

Grateful for the use of the demonstrators from our friends at Galveston.

Just a reminder that tomorrow we'll have services at 6.

They're the same.

It'll be a dark day.

So please hear that Friday is Friday.

We'll have resurrection on Sunday, but Friday is a dark day.

So just come prepare going out.

We don't hunt in the darkness.

We will be with it tomorrow.

And the same for Saturday.

We'll offer morning prayer at nine.

This is the day that Jesus is, of course, dead in the tomb.

So it's a solemn morning.

And then I invite you to keep vigil with us, just like the first disciples and evangelists, those women, who on Sunday morning arrived in the dark at 6:30 a.m.

to a small fire, kept vigil with their candles as we will do.

And then sometime around, you know, 7, it'll be apparently light outside, and you'll hear a great noise from the clear drum line.

It'll be noisy.

Just simulate that earthquake.

And what do you know?

It'll be light, and we'll say, the Lord has risen indeed.

It's a service unlike any other.

It's a lot of reading.

It's what you do when you're keeping vigil.

You read and you pray, and uh and it is something to be a part of, to live in these moments.

And then, of course, we'll have our Resurrection Sunday celebrations at 8.30 and 10.30, and there's a little egg hunt out there on the ground.

You can see it's already marked off at 9.45.

So whether you're here or at home or on a plane to Ireland, my prayer is that this tribula will in fact be one holy day of journey for you.

It is one story, not in bits, it is one story.

And you have not only permission, but you have God's blessing and invitation to feel the lows, to feel the lows of your life, of the story, to walk the road of Jesus over the disciples, abide in love, as Christ first love does and make himself for us an offering and sacrifice to God.