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‘Jesus had always loved those who were his in the world, but now he showed how perfect his love was’; or in a better translation, ‘Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.’ (John 13:1)
Oftentimes preachers speak about the love Jesus shows for us by focusing almost entirely on the Cross; this is because the Lord’s death on Calvary is the greatest thing anyone has ever done for each one of us. Yet, the Cross did not come out of the blue, it was the climax of a life lived in generous self-giving for us. And tonight as we enter once again in the mystery of the Lord’s passion, death, and resurrection we are greeted by that love. Behind the suffering, the bloodshed, the nails, and the tears what we ought to see is love – not a romantic, sentimental, butterflies-in-the-stomach-causing sort of love, but the unmeasured and self-giving love of Jesus for us. So I would like to draw your attention to just one aspect of that love. On this night when Jesus washes the disciples’ feet and gives himself to us completely in the holy food of the Eucharist, he does not avoid Judas; Jesus does not say “in a few minutes you are going to betray me, so I don’t care about you…” Instead, Jesus washes Judas feet and feeds him with the sacrament of his Body and Blood. Why? One could say that he did so in order to give Judas a moral slap – if Jesus, into whose hands the Father had put all things, was ready and willing to perform the work of a servant, then how could Judas be so arrogant and deceitful? But this interpretation wouldn’t quite work, because the gospel tells us that Jesus washed the disciples’ feet to show them love, not moral superiority. Also, in this case, Jesus could have then prevented Judas from taking part in the Eucharistic meal, but noticeably, he did not. No, I believe that Jesus washed the feet of Judas and welcomed him at his table to show him that he was not going to give up on him that easily. Judas may betray Jesus and be condemned for it, but Jesus would not betray Judas. And this is truly unmeasured love. So let us transpose this gospel reading into our lives. We all fall into sin, great or small, on a daily basis. We all are tempted from time to time to turn our backs on the Church. But every time we fall or find ourselves tempted to betray Christ in favour of something else, Jesus does not turn us away. He is in the sacrament of the Eucharist, he is in the absolution of Confession, he is there for us; he does not exclude us and does not give up on us. And this is, once again, truly unmeasured love. If we understood just this one simple truth, then we could also understand the words of our offertory hymn and learn to sing them as if they were our own; Could I dare live and not requite / such love - then death were meet reward: I cannot live unless to prove / some love for such unmeasured love. (from 'O Bread of Heaven, beneath this veil')
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This morning we continue our Lenten journey through the Ten Commandments, and we turn our attention to the third one;
Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God’ (Deuteronomy 5:12-14) Last Monday evening, as we begun the Pilgrim Course, we started with the simple exercise of remembering the Ten Commandments as a group, but try as we may, for a couple minutes we only managed to get up to nine. That is, until divine inspiration struck one of us and she said, “Keep the Sabbath holy”. But the forgetfulness of our little group about the third commandment is pretty much indicative of what has been happening for decades within the Church – the idea that corporate worship is somehow optional for a Christian coupled with changes to Sunday trading regulations have severely weakened the religious and moral obligation to attend Sunday worship, and particularly to attend a Communion service; to the point that many people have even forgotten (or never even heard) that there is a commandment about this. Yet, the commandment to observe the Lord’s Day and to keep it holy remains. Shabbat, the word from which we get the Sabbath, simply means “rest” and it connects us to the primordial origins of a day of rest found in the book of Genesis, when God is said to have rested on the seventh day, after having completed his work of creation (Cf. Gen 2:2-3). The Sabbath also embodies the celebration of how God later rescued the children of Israel from slavery at the first Passover, and it is still celebrated as such by the Jewish people. Both of these Scriptural events – God’s rest after creation and the redemption of Israel – form the backdrop to the new Sabbath, the new Lord’s Day, we keep as Christians. On Sundays we celebrate the salvation Christ won for us through his passion and death, and we rejoice in the new creation being inaugurated in him through his resurrection on the first day of the week. Then, how should Christians ‘observe Sabbath and keep it holy’? The third commandment does not require us to do anything extraordinary or convoluted. In fact, Jesus says, ‘The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath’ (Mark 2:27). And with this Jesus shows his followers that the point of the Sabbath is not to abide to strict regulations about precisely what to do, or how far one ought to walk, and so on. On one hand, to keep the Lord’s Day “holy” means precisely to set it aside, as it were, from normal or working days, in order to use the free time the Sabbath affords us to nurture our relationships with God and with his people, enjoying the company of the church family, and to recharge our batteries for the new week. Thus, Christians should not work on a Sunday, wherever that is possible and not essential; and we ought to avoid those trivial activities that deprive other workers of the Sabbath rest with their families – even if these should not be Christians themselves. On the other hand, to “observe” the Sabbath means to participate in the corporate worship of the people of God and to remember together the Lord’s redeeming acts for us all. This is particularly relevant in the celebration of the Eucharist, or the Mass, which is the everlasting memorial (the making present in our midst) of Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection. But I think there is more to this. The Mass holds a special place in the Sunday pattern of worship as this is the only thing the Lord ever directly told us to do so that he might be present among us; ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’ (Luke 22:19) Do this. Not café church, or sweaty church, or praying at home, or whatever else. Jesus says, “Do this.” And as a consequence Christians have gathered on Sundays to celebrate the memorial of the Christ’s own Passover, which we now know as the Eucharist or the Mass, since the earliest times. Indeed, the Acts of the Apostles tell us this at several points saying that disciples “broke the bread” together every Sundays at the very least, in not more often. At this service we find ourselves gathered from every walk of life in the presence of the risen Lord as the new people of God. This is “source and summit” of our life as a Christian community; and it really should be regarded as the focal point of our week – the one thing we cannot do without, no matter what. Above all, the “this” the Lord tells us to do is the true fulfilling of the third commandment. ‘Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you.’ May we use this season of Lent to deepen our love and appreciation of the Mass, both on Sundays and on weekdays, so that through this sacrament we may grow ever closer to the Lord. Amen. |
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