Sermon on Maunday Sunday - Fr Sam Rossiter-Peters

Yet when they made beings in the universe who could choose to reciprocate that love, those beings chose not to. We humans chose and continue to choose selfishness more than love, power more than generosity, riches more than contentment, the ability to dominate more than the ability to serve. Of course it would be easy to lay these traits at the doors of people like President Trump but truthfully they lie within all of us.

Each of us has at some point in our lives been given the choice to show love and chosen not to. Yet rather than abandon creation which so departed from their goodness, God continued to love. They taught as a parent teaches a child, gently leading humanity from one basic concept of love to another.

They began with Abraham, made him Abraham, made him a family, made him a nation. They gave that nation a home, a future and when they struggled to follow the law of love they'd been given, God sent prophets to help. And yet this nation called to be a priestly example of love to the world struggled to look beyond its own borders, struggled even to love its own people enough to make much of a difference for itself never mind anyone else.

So the son came, he became one of us and lived amongst us as a peasant amongst peasants and he called the poor and the destitute and the hopeless and the uneducated and he made them a community. He healed and gave hope to those who had lost sight, hearing, physical ability, even life. But his priority was spreading a simple message.

He, the anointed one, had come to establish the kingdom of God. Soon he would invite everyone into the loving relationship for which they are created. He would affirm that all people are welcome to become a child of God if they would allow Jesus to remake them.

And in hatred of that message, human beings, we betrayed him, humiliated him, beat him, scourged him, stripped him and pinned him to a cross. And then we sat back and played dice for his clothing whilst he suffocated. And at last when we got bored we pierced him with a spear so that he would die more quickly.

Yet even in our hatred he did not abandon us. He opened himself up and made himself a mediator, a representative for every human being who is willing to ask. He bore the weight of our misery and grief, the sinfulness of every time we have acted without love and he lifted that weight from our shoulders.

He embraced death and allowed our sin to die with him so that it would not kill us. We murdered God and he prayed for our forgiveness. Again of course our temptation is to blame others for these horrors.

It was the Jewish religious leaders, it was the Roman guards, it was Pilate. None of us was even born when Jesus died. But each of us has been given the choice to love and at some point we have chosen not to.

If we hadn't he wouldn't have had to die for us. We wouldn't need reconciliation because we would never have been estranged from God. We would be perfect.

So if you're not perfect then you chose to put him there just as much as Pilate did. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. A simple sentence but a command that must take a lifetime to understand.

How can we share in a love so deep that it would give up perfection and die for people who hated him so that they might be free to love him back? The Christians in Galatia understood that loving one another wasn't enough. The love of God exists in such abundance that it spills over. Its abundance made the universe, called Abraham, formed Israel, sent the prophets, became man, died on a cross and rose again to a life eternal.

To love one another as Jesus has loved us is to dedicate ourselves to love so much that we have to share it. We have to share it with people who don't understand it, don't appreciate us, don't thank us for it, even hate us for it, but who need it just like we do. This Maundy Thursday as we prepare to walk with Jesus through the valley of the shadow of death, knowing that he goes in our stead, may we ask for his grace to love as he loved, to love so abundantly that kings and emperors are shamed by it.

And we talk about it hundreds of years later.