The Holy Thursday April 18, 2019
Fr. Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
This Sacred Triduum is a single liturgy spread over three days, a profound entrance into the mysteries of our salvation. So, the homilies for these days will be a series following the same theme. This year, the focus is the identity of Jesus. Who is he and what does his identity mean for us? Jesus is the servant, the sufferer, and the savior. Everyone wants Jesus the savior, but, as we’ll see, we cannot truly know this savior unless we also know the servant and the sufferer.
How do you know someone… how can we understand the true identity of a person? Well, there is what they say and there is what they do. Jesus is the Word of God. As the Word of God, he speaks through all of scripture in what we call the “vox Christi” – the voice of Christ. This is especially true of the psalms, the ancient biblical prayers that are full of prophecy and revelation about the messiah, the savior.
And in the very psalm we heard tonight, the voice of Christ cries out in prayer to God “I am your servant, the son of your handmaid.” Psalm 40 adds, “In the scroll of the book it stands written that I should do your will.” Jesus is the obedient servant of God, the son of God’s handmaiden, Mary. He also acknowledges that God has “loosed my bonds.” What bonds? The bonds of death. Already, we are getting into the layered reality of what is happening here. Servant, Sufferer, and Savior cannot truly be separated. This feast, this last Passover of Jesus with his Apostles is at one and the same time an act of service, of suffering, and of salvation. At every Mass we enter into this trifold reality and it was so from the very first Mass, the Last Supper.
This mystical conjunction is why Jesus can “offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving” to God for being saved from a death that actually happens the next day. His service to God is not just the bloody, sweaty obedience to death that we see later tonight in the garden, it is obedience to the debt of gratitude that he owes to God for saving him from death… for saving us all from death.
Jesus the servant is first and foremost the servant of God who, in this psalm exclaims, “The cup of salvation I will take up, and I will call upon the name of the LORD.” But, as with anyone else, what Jesus does reveals more about his identity that what he says. He not only talks about lifting this “cup,” he actually does it here at the Last Supper and every day around the world in each Mass, eternally lifting up the cup of salvation.
Yet, this act of service, of solemn worship of God cannot be truly separated from the other profound service seen this night: the washing of his disciples’ feet. In anticipation of his final obedience, the Father rewards his son and servant by putting “everything into his power.” It is at this moment that we begin to see the true depths of the identity of Jesus Christ. More than a person’s words, even more than their every day actions, the greatest revelation of a persons’ identity – of their character – is their words and actions at the two extremes: when they have great power and when they have nothing at all. Jesus’s identity is revealed to be the same at both.
Aware of having the power of the Father, what does Jesus do? He strips down, girds himself with a towel, and performs a service meant only for slaves to do – he washes the feet of the Apostles. In the very meal where he reveals his identity as the great high-priest in service to God, he also reveals himself as the willing slave in service to all mankind.
And Peter realizes this. Peter is the one who first recognized Jesus’ identity as messiah, king, and son of God. Now he sees this kingly priest acting like a slave and he thinks “I know who this man is, and he is no slave… he should not wash anyone’s feet.” So, Peter objects. But Jesus insists, “unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.” Through Peter’s initial resistance and then acceptance, Jesus sharpens the image and revelation of who he is. Jesus the Son of God is inextricably bound up with Jesus the servant. The same pattern will emerge with Peter for Jesus the sufferer and again with Peter for Jesus the savior.
Washed clean by the humble, yet powerful service of Christ, the Apostles are now told what this means for them. If Jesus the teacher and master is also Jesus the servant, so must the Apostles as teachers and leaders of the faith be servants. Servants first of God, lifting up the cup of salvation, but unavoidably also servants of man, washing the feet of one another. The Apostles, all baptized Christians, are meant to be other Christs, imitators of Christ. As Jesus is a servant, so am I a servant. So are you a servant.
Beware, then, anyone who offers you Jesus without service. Beware leaders and teachers of the faith who are unwilling to serve, for if they do not know and imitate Jesus the Servant, how can they really know Jesus the Son of God, Jesus the Savior? Beware also your own heart. If you have a heart, a love for Jesus, but are not yourself willing to serve, then you do not love Jesus. You love only your own imagination and that love is useless.
Do not take offense at that challenge, “brothers and sisters,” for what I hand on to you is only what “I received from the Lord:” that he served God in offering us his body and blood; that he served us in washing our feet; and that as he has done for us, so we should also do. This example, this revelation of Jesus identity as servant, this command to imitate that identity… it is a gift! Yet, do not expect this gift to always be pleasant. Do not expect it to be easy to receive and to use. If you are faithful to Jesus the servant, to being like Jesus the servant, you will quickly realize that this is impossible without also being faithful to, and imitators of Jesus the sufferer, who is and will be revealed to us tomorrow when commemorate, venerate, and imitate his death on the Cross.