Mass of the Lord’s Supper Years A B C 2024

Our passages give us two pictures, the first one of an ongoing sacrifice that is taken up in the new sacrifice, but in both of which a male who has not mated is taken and it is eaten as food for a journey and the blood is protection, a freeing from death. The second is Jesus’ taking the place of a slave and washing the feet of the disciples showing what love looks like. He is still doing that today. But he presents it as a model of leadership for this Church - the leaders love, which means taking a lower place while still conscious of their authority and appointment and cleaning up the messes of the others.

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Servant and Missionary

Outline

Our readings can be either overwhelming or too familiar

They are overwhelming when we think of Jesus as the Passover sacrifice given for us. Here, perhaps 1300 years after that first Passover it is being celebrated again and there is a different lamb, Jesus. Does that grab you? Does it shake you? If not this year, did it ever shake you?

They are too familiar when they become routine. Passover had become routine for the Jewish people, and perhaps because they had become routine they missed the deeper reality at this Passover in the text.

Let me comment on two aspects of the readings

First, in Exodus, the enslaved people are to take a male animal, either a one year old sheep or a one year old goat (the Hebrew she can mean either), slaughter it, use its blood as protection from evil, and consume the meat so that it became part of them, food for the journey.

We are still doing that, if we know what we are doing, in the Eucharist the male who has not bread, Jesus, becomes present to us now through the hands of a male conformed to him (and in many parts of the church celibate), and we are present to his death and we consume him, become one with him, as food for our journey to freedom. We invoke his blood as protection from evil - I do so daily in my prayers against demonic influence.

We are to know what we do, become conscious of it. Keep it in consciousness.

Second, in our Gospel the Lord of the Universe who is about to give his life in love for the world does an astounding act.

He takes the role and dress of a slave and not a top slave, and starts to wash the disciples’ feet. John says this is what love looks like. Can you imagine Tiberius Caesar doing that? Can you imagine the High Priest doing that? It offends Peter. And note that Peter never says, Master, let me do that on your behalf. He wants to be one with Jesus, but he cannot “get down” yet. That will come later. So Jesus goes on from man to man, washing Peter’s feet, John’s feet, and even Judas Iscariot’s feet.

We have all had a bath, that is, baptism, as the disciples had had. But Jesus is still kneeling at our feet. cleaning them up. We are like children who can’t seem to stay out of the mud.

One further point, the point Jesus makes. This is the model of Christian leadership on whatever level we exercise it. Don’t look for it in the leadership manuals of the world. Jesus says, “If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.” Jesus is fully aware of his status - our one mistake is to give up leadership and say that all are equal - but he shows us love, he shows us how to care for those we lead. And, of course, it is based in his sacrifice on the cross, which is why he can say “Pick up your cross and follow me.”

That is is, that is enough for me to chew on

We are recapitulating Passover in every Eucharist, getting our bread for the journey, getting our blood for protection. That is what Jesus gave us. Meditate on this.

We are to love one another as Jesus loved us and because we would not understand the theory he showed us what it looked like. He is still showing us today, still washing our feet. But more than that, he showed us what leading others looks like: taking the lowest place, serving others, cleaning up their dirty feet and doing that without losing consciousness of our position as teacher or leader or parent of whatever.