The Lamb Once Slain - Maundy Thursday

Exodus 12.1-8, 11-14 Ordinances for the Passover meal.

1 Corinthians 11.23-26 ‘For as often as you eat and drink, you proclaim the Lord’s death’

John 13.1-15 He loved them to the end.

 

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‘Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’ (John 1.29 & 1.36)

 

That is the fundamental proclamation of John the Baptist.

 

Behold. Jesus.

 

In other words, look really closely at him and look at what that proclamation means, that he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

 

John’s proclamation lies at the heart of every celebration of the Eucharist - as we sing, ‘Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us/grant us peace’ and when the body and blood of Christ is raised up and the priest declares:

 

Behold, the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world, blessed are those who are called to the supper of the Lamb.

 

This is sacrificial language, the language of offering a life to achieve life and destroy sin.

 

It is one of those gospel paradoxes: the Good Shepherd, Jesus, the one who will lay down his life for the sheep (John 10.11) is also the Lamb.

 

And it comes together tonight, as the ordinances of Exodus are fulfilled and a sacrifice prepared.

 

Tonight, at the Last Supper the sacrificial language of the blood of the lambs connects with the blood of the Cross in the bloodless sacrifice of the Eucharist.

 

In our first reading we are in Egypt.

 

The Israelites are captive, enslaved to Pharaoh, and they yearn to be free.

 

Moses leads them, and God sends plagues upon Egypt to soften Pharaoh’s heart to release the Israelites.

 

But Pharaoh’s heart remains hardened in the face of them all.

 

It is only the tenth plague that makes him relent, so that God’s people may be free.

 

The tenth plague is when God sends the angel of death to kill anyone who does not sacrifice a lamb and smear the lamb’s blood on the lintel and doorposts of the home in which they eat the lamb.

 

The angel of death passes over those homes, sparing the inhabitants: that is Passover, fundamental to Jews and Christians alike.

 

But what could that possibly mean to us today?

 

St John Chrysostom is clear: we are the People of God.

 

We are in slavery to sin and our hearts are hardened to God.

 

The angel of death stalks the land, that is to say those things that are spiritual death - pride, anger, lust, envy, greed, avarice, sloth – these things can make a home in us.

 

So how do we resist the angel of death?

 

We must eat the flesh of the Lamb, the Son of God; his blood must be on our doorposts, and those doorposts are our lips.

 

As Jesus says of himself:

 

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. (John 6.53)

 

That is profoundly sacrificial language again: Christ giving his life that we might live.

 

The words of the Last Supper are not recalling a half-buried memory about what Jesus once told us to do, but an act of recollection of the reality of what Christ does for us now.

 

St Paul asks the rhetorical questions:

 

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? (1 Corinthians 10.16)

 

The point is that the Eucharist binds us in to the ‘full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world’ that Christ made ‘through his death upon the Cross for our redemption.’ (Book of Common Prayer, 1662)

Taking the bread and the wine at the supper and declaring them to be his Body and his Blood was shocking to his disciples, and is shocking to us, no doubt, if we pause to ponder it for a moment.

 

Why did Jesus do this on the night he was betrayed?

 

It was to make totally clear that he was giving himself as the one, true sacrifice; that he would offer his body on the cross for you and for me.

 

That is when he will be seen as the Sacrificial Lamb who takes away the sins of the world.

 

The Eucharist presents this sacrifice afresh.

 

That’s why it is so much more than being with fellow believers lovely though that is; more than hearing the word of God important though that is; more than hearing a sermon or enjoying beautiful music, lovely on the ears as they are: no! it is being present at the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, the same redeeming, one, perfect sacrifice of Him who died and takes away the sins of the world; your sins, my sins.

 

His body will be broken on the Cross; his lifeblood will drain away through his wounds and when a lance pierces his side from which blood and water flow.

 

We will hear the death of Jesus presented by St John in his account of the Passion tomorrow.

 

Jesus makes it clear: this is a ritualised death; it is a sacrifice.

 

It echoes the sacrifice of the lambs in the Temple, but as the Letter to the Hebrews makes clear Christ is both the sacrifice and the sacrificed; the priest and the victim.

 

He enters the sanctuary not by the blood of lambs ‘but by means of his own blood’:

 

For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. (Hebrews 9.12-14)

 

He made one sacrifice in time.

 

He draws us into that sacrifice eternally:

 

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11.26).

 

This Last Supper is the origin story for Christian life and practice which takes us on into Jesus’ betrayal and arrest in Gethsemane, his trial and death which unfolds into tomorrow and the Sabbath Day.

 

The Last Supper gives us the Eucharist, the sacrificial meal of the Church through which we participate in the passion and sacrifice of Christ.

 

‘Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’

 

What do we see when we behold - truly behold - Jesus Christ?

 

We behold the one who ‘emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.’ (Philippians 2.7,8)

 

Yes, we behold the one who, in the form of a servant, washed his disciples’ feet.

 

We behold the one who goes to the very depths of death out of love for you and me, to save your soul and mine.

Palm Sunday: From Hosanna to Alleluia

Luke 19.28-40 ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’ (The Gospel of the Palms)

Isaiah 50.4-7 ‘I his not my face from disgrace, and I know that I shall not be put to shame.’

Philippians 2.6-11 ‘He humbled himself, therefore God has highly exalted him.’

Luke 23.1-49 The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ (The Passion Gospel)

 

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The most powerful week of the year is upon us.

Each year we mark this Holy Week to reveal again the deepest mysteries of our faith.

Seven days that changed, and still change, the world.

This Holy Week echoes the first week of the Creation, because it is a week of New Creation.

Today ‘hosannas’ ring out; shouts of acclamation go up and palm branches wave.

As the week unfolds Christ whispers the New Commandment: ‘love one another as I have loved you’ and declares his enduring, life-giving presence in the sacrament: ‘this is my body; this is my blood’.

On Friday shouts of ‘crucify him’ fill the air; and on the cross Jesus cries, ‘all is accomplished’.

And as the week closes, stillness descends before a new week begins with cries of ‘alleluia, he is risen’.

On the first day of Creation light was created; as on the first day of each week, Sunday by Sunday, we gather as Christians to bathe in the uncreated light of Christ.

The week of the Creation unfolds with abundance: light and darkness, sun, moon and stars, vegetation, fish, animals all find their place in God’s intentions.

On the sixth day of the week of creation mankind is created in the very image of God, ‘male and female, he created them’; on the sixth day of Holy Week the fulness of humanity, Jesus Christ, dies upon the cross.

On the seventh day of the week of Creation – the Sabbath - God rests; on the seventh day of Holy Week, Christ’s body lies still, in the tomb.

As the day gives way to the night on Saturday, we will keep vigil: watching and praying for the signs of God’s redeeming power.

That vigil will re-present deep, ancient prophecy, that is fulfilled in Christ, the One who comes in the name of the Lord.

Our Easter Vigil gathers us together in expectant hope of the eighth day of Creation, the Day of Resurrection, when we declare ‘The Light of Christ’ as surely as God, in the beginning, declared, ‘Let there be light’.

In that proclamation God brought order, meaning and purpose to a world of swirling, surging waters; Christ now plunges into the deep waters of death to bring order, meaning, purpose, hope and life in a world and peoples’ lives that swirl with chaos.

In Jesus Christ creation and humanity are being restored!

Holy Week invites us on a journey of faith when we walk the way of the Cross with Christ: may our ‘hosannas’ today give way to Easter Day ‘alleluias’ that resound throughout our lives.

Not condemning; not condoning

Isaiah 43.16-21 ‘Behold, I am doing a new thing and I will give drink to my chosen people.’

Philippians 3.8-14 ‘For the sake of Christ I have suffered the loss of all things, becoming like him in his death.’

John 8.1-11 ‘Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.’

 

Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

She said, “No one, Lord.”

And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you;

go, and from now on sin no more.” (John 8.10-11)

 

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The Gospel account of a terrified woman being dragged along by a group of men ready to kill her with rocks and stones for committing adultery is chilling.

 

It will not have been the first time, nor the last, that something like this has happened.

 

The condemnation and righteous fury of the scribes and Pharisees is challenged by Jesus and the scene turns into one of forgiveness, healing and restoration – it takes us deep into the heart of Jesus’ mission.

 

Before we go into the Gospel let’s just go back to paradise, to the Garden of Eden, as described in Genesis.

 

There is method in this! And you might start to make some connections between Eden and the gospel reading as we go along.

 

In the Garden God creates Adam from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2.7).

 

But Adam is alone in the garden and, as Adam names the creatures, none can help in the task given to Adam of tending paradise.

 

So, as equally in God’s image as the man, God creates the woman (Genesis 2.22): from one flesh they’re created so they can find fulfilment in each other and be complete and fruitful (Genesis 2.23).

 

They enjoy the Garden paradise, tasting the fruits of all the trees, but God warns them not to eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, for that is knowledge only God can bear.

 

But eat they do.

 

And then they hide.

 

Out of God’s sight.

 

God finds them, and blame is passed around: from the man, to his wife, to the serpent. (Genesis 2.6,7; 12,13).

 

God clothes them in protecting garments and then they are driven out of the Garden paradise. (Genesis 2.24)

 

Any connections?

 

What’s the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise got to do with today’s gospel reading?

 

Before addressing that, it’s worth knowing that although humanity left Paradise, there was always an echo of it in the Temple of Jerusalem.

 

In Hebrew thought the Temple is the representation of paradise on earth, a microcosm of how creation should be, with purity of worship and unity with God, just as the Garden of Eden in the beginning.

 

Our gospel opened with Jesus in the Temple, at the beginning of the day: a new creation day.

 

He is there, teaching people how to live lives worthy of Paradise.

 

And in come the scribes and Pharisees with the woman.

 

You might ask, where’s the man, the co-respondent in the adultery? (see Leviticus 20:10-12).

 

The scribes and Pharisees had singled out this woman, just as Adam blamed Eve for the fruit of the tree being eaten.

 

Adultery is a grave sin which takes two people, a violation of the seventh of the Ten Commandments ((Exodus 20.14) and a breach of fidelity between husband and wife.

 

Adultery is used throughout scripture as an image of human infidelity towards God: God as a spurned bridegroom whose bride turns away. (cf Hosea)

 

Just as in Eden the man hides, and both man and woman have breached a relationship of trust and covenant.

 

It was eating the fruit that broke that trust: that was the moment of infidelity: cheating on God.

 

Here it is the scribes and Pharisees who take it upon themselves to condemn and pass sentence: they put themselves as arbiters of good and evil; precisely why Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden.

 

This is the moment for Jesus to restore, to bind up and to heal, to recall everyone in the Temple – the echo of Eden – to a restored relationship with God.

 

But Jesus’ first action is puzzling: he bends over and writes in the dust. Why?

 

Dust is the very stuff from which Adam was created in the first place before being set in the Garden of Eden, even from dust God brought life, even from the dust of sin Jesus can bring forgiveness.

 

It’s so intriguing. We have no written words of Jesus, he wrote no books, and the only reference to him writing is in the dust.

 

He is the one whose words stand for ever (Isaiah 40.8b; 1 Peter 1.25), but these written words are blown away in the dust.

 

It is only when Jesus stands up and confronts the baying mob with their own sin, that they see they are in no position to stone this woman.

 

She had violated the Law.

 

They violate the Law.

 

No one stands innocent before God, as St Paul says, ‘For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3.22,23)

 

Sin is not just about breaking rules; sin is the words and deeds that estrange us from God, be that in Eden, in the Temple that morning, or in our daily lives.

 

The scriptures reveal patterns we know to be true of ourselves.

 

Jesus’ project for humanity is bigger than rules kept or broken, it is about the renewal of Creation, about restoring men and women in the image of God, about making us holy by being as he is, in perfect relationship with the Father, unobscured by sin and death.

 

The man and the woman were expelled from the earthly paradise, the Garden of Eden: Jesus’ mission is to restore men and women to their first innocence.

 

I wonder if Jesus wrote in the dust the words of Isaiah from our first reading?

 

Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

I will make a way in the wilderness
    and rivers in the desert. (Isaiah 43.19)

 

From his writing,

 

Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

 

Jesus both refuses to condemn the woman, and he refuses to condone what she has done.

 

Scribes and Pharisees wanted condemnation.

 

Given attitudes to marriage and fidelity today perhaps some would condone.

 

But being humane is not being just or merciful or true; it doesn’t reconcile or restore.

 

As St Augustine says, ‘It is sin [Jesus] condemns, not people’ (Augustine, Homilies on the Gospel of John, 33.6-7)

 

We come into Jesus’ presence like Adam and Eve, like the woman caught in adultery – ‘guiltie of dust and sin’, as the priest and poet George Herbert puts it. (George Herbert, Love [III])

 

And as we come into his presence, feeling under condemnation of others or of ourselves, may we hear Jesus’ words: “I do not condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

Sing we, too, of Mary's sorrows

Exodus 2:1-10 This is one of the Hebrew children

2 Corinthians 1:1,3-7 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ

Luke 2:33-35 “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed”

 

‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,

who comforts us in all our affliction,

so that we may be able to comfort those

who are in any affliction,

with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.’

(2 Corinthians 1.1)

 

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At home our family has an icon, known as the Icon of the Seven Sorrows of Mary.

 

Around the serene figure of Mary, the Blessed Mother of the Lord, there are seven swords, each representing a sorrow.

 

Her face, in its serenity, is suggestive of a woman who has seen affliction, and received comfort from ‘the Father of all mercies and God of all comfort’ of whom St Paul writes.

 

And, Paul continues: having received comfort in affliction, we ourselves are to comfort the afflicted in turn.

 

In the icon Mary’s face of maternal love reflects comfort received and comfort shown.

 

The Blessed Mother, Mary, certainly knew affliction.

 

Her seven sorrows begin with the prophecy we have just heard when the aged man Simeon speaks on the day Mary and Joseph present Jesus in the Temple when he is 40 days old (Luke 2:34-35).

 

The second sorrow is the flight of Mary and Joseph with their infant son to Egypt, as Herod seeks his life and kills all the little children in and around Bethlehem and Jerusalem (Matthew 2.13-21).

 

That sorrow is an echo of the life of Moses.

 

The third is the utter sense of loss Mary and Joseph experience when the 12 year old Jesus is missing in Jerusalem, eventually to be found in the Temple with the Teachers of the Law (Luke 2.41-50).

 

So, the first three are in Jesus’ infancy and are shared with Joseph.

 

The next four are in Jesus’ adulthood.

 

Sorrows four and five are in the midst of the crowds, as Mary sees Jesus carry his cross (John 19.17) to his execution and is then crucified (John 19.18-30): how alone she must have felt in a surging crowd baying for her Son’s blood.

 

Mary saw Jesus born now sees him die.

 

The film The Passion of the Christ, portrays Jesus stumbling whilst carrying the cross, and Mary has a flashback of Jesus as a little boy falling over, as little boys and girls do, and cutting his knee.

 

She scooped him up; how she wanted to now as he falls, once, twice, three times, already bloodied from the brutality of being whipped and scourged, stumbling under the weight of the Cross.

 

In the sixth and seventh sorrows Mary is with the intimate circle of disciples, who love her.

 

One of them, known as the Beloved Disciple, will take her into his own home; but her firstborn Son is dead.

 

She sees his dead, limp, lifeless body, in sorrow six, taken down from the cross (John 19.39-40).

 

And in the final sorrow her boy’s body is laid in a tomb (John 19.39-42.)

 

Those seven sorrows capture in an intense way the pains of motherhood and the cost of love.

 

Mother of affliction indeed.

 

And we see the anguish of Moses’ mother who, rather than see her son die in Pharaoh’s genocidal massacre of Hebrew boys, placed him in a basket amongst the rushes on the bank of the River Nile and trusted the God of all comfort in affliction.

 

Both mothers, Jochebed (cf Exodus 6.20, Numbers 26.59) and Mary - daughters of Israel - had to let go of their sons to enable the Lord to work his wonders through them.

 

The spiritual writer Esther de Waal captures this, saying that, ‘The loving is in the letting go’.

 

What a painful, haunting yet comforting phrase.

 

It is true that when we let go we love, because we are letting someone go into God’s hands, and we relinquish our control.

 

As we might say, children need a loving mother not a controlling smother.

 

Indeed, in what human relationship is that not true?

 

And their mothers having let them go, God raised up both sons: Moses to liberate the Hebrews from slavery to the Egyptians; Jesus to liberate all humanity from our slavery to sin.

 

And Jesus is, of course, greater than Moses (cf Hebrews 3.1-6): the Gospel of John tells us, ‘For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ’ (John 1.17).

 

It is on Jesus that we fix our sights in Lent.

 

Mothering Sunday converges with Refreshment Sunday as we journey towards the annual proclamation of the life giving Cross and saving Resurrection of Christ; the time when we know the comfort in affliction that flows, with maternal care, from the loving heart of God.

 

Thankfully there is also a tradition of the Seven Joys of Mary too (they’ll be for another time): joy and sorrow, tears and glory intermingle in Mary’s life as they surely do in our yours and mine and all mothers.

 

In that joy and sorry, in tears and glory Mary points us, rightly to her Divine Son, the Saviour.

 

 ‘Do whatever he tells you’ she says to the servants at the Wedding Feast at Cana (John 2.4).

 

They are to prepare abundant amounts of water which Christ will take and transform into the flowing wine of the kingdom, which to believers is the lifeblood that flows from his body on the Cross:

 

Glory be to Jesus,

who in bitter pains

poured for me the lifeblood

from his sacred veins.

 

This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel.

 

Christ falls on his way to the cross, and falls into death. Having descended into the depths he is raised, bringing life, hope and comfort in his resurrection.

 

In the conviction of the resurrection of the Lord, St Paul writes, ‘Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort’. (2 Corinthians 1.7)

 

May we all, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, one in the Lord know His comfort in our afflictions and sorrow.