Remember & Respond - Sermon for Maundy Thursday (April 17, 2025)

Scripture Readings: Exodus 12:1–14 | Psalm 116:1–2, 12–19 | 1 Corinthians 11:23–26 | John 13:1–17, 31b–35

“…Do this in remembrance of me.” (1 Corinthians 11:24).

On this sacred night, we remember and in a real sense re-live the story of the ‘Last Supper’: the turning point in the dramatic story of Holy Week… the last precious moments that Jesus our Lord spends with His closest disciples before His betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion. 

Tonight, we remember the powerful and precious gifts that our Lord has given, not only to those who personally shared in that time in the upper room, but to all who would follow Him.

We remember His new and great commandment: that we are to love one another, just as He has first loved us. 

We remember the shocking way He demonstrated this love… by humbly washing their feet, and commanding us to do the same.

We remember how He invited His disciples to experience a very familiar celebration and story in a whole new way… 
Telling us to take and eat… to receive bread and wine as His own blessed body and blood of the new covenant… and so find ourselves taking part in the Living God’s greatest act of saving love.

That night, Jesus our Lord and His disciples celebrated the Passover… a sacred meal remembering the new beginning God created for His people Israel, many centuries before. Once they had been oppressed slaves in a strange land, with no hope of finding freedom for themselves. But God had compassion on them. God came to their aid. God broke the power of Pharaoh, once and for all, and with a might arm, God set them free to be His people forever.

And this act of saving love transformed Israel’s story. God set them free, not so they could wander about aimlessly through life… but to be His beloved children. He set them free so that they could come to know His grace and His glory up close, and so start to live no longer for Pharaoh, or even for themselves, but for their merciful Creator and Saviour. Putting His holy ways into practice, as a light shining into a darkened world. 
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But remembering this calling wasn’t always easy. They faced all sorts of distractions, and threats, and temptations that sought to take hold of their attention, and draw them away from their Saviour’s side. 

And so, to help them remember… to keep the story of God’s saving love alive throughout the centuries, God gave them the Passover meal as a perpetual sign… passed down for generations, to remind them not only of what the LORD has done for them… His might acts of salvation… but also to remind them of their new calling as His people in the world. 

This sacred meal became an ongoing invitation for His beloved children, to remember their place in the story of His saving love.

And many centuries after the Israelites were set free from slavery in Egypt, Jesus and His disciples celebrated the Passover meal together… remembering and celebrating what the Living God had done for their ancestors long ago. 

But rather than simply retelling the past, Jesus points His followers forward to the new and surprising act of God’s saving love that was about to happen through Him! God was again about to delivering His people, not just from a deadly plague, or the dominion of Pharaoh… but from the terrible powers of sin and death, and the forces of spiritual darkness at work, around and inside of us. And this victory would not be achieved through the sacrifice and shed blood of a lamb, spread across the doorframes of a house… but through the sacrifice of Christ’s own life… His own body broken, and His own blood shed upon the wooden beams of the cross. 

And so tonight, all these long centuries after the Last Supper, we are reminded that the saving love of the Living God leads us to the cross… to what Jesus Christ our Lord has done there to save us, and our darkened world.

And now every time that we gather around Christ’s table, not only in Holy Week, but Sunday after Sunday, we do so in remembrance of Him. We remember His faithfulness, when all of us had faltered. We remember His compassion and mercy, for sinners, when our own hearts had run cold. We remember that Jesus has given us the gift of Himself, His own life, once and for all… and as unworthy as we are, He still invites us to share in His new life, again and again.

But we must remember all this for a purpose: so that, with His help, we might truly live as Christ’s people today. That we might be set free to allow what He has done for us to actually begin to change us… so that His saving love will be free to do its good work in and through us.

So that we might be set free to live Jesus’ way in the world! When others are fighting over status and power, to lay down our selfishness and pride, and instead begin to practice faithfulness and service. 

To not only receive His gifts of forgiveness and grace, but to start to extend them as well… choosing to share these gifts with those in our own lives… even those who frustrate, and insult, and betray our trust. Not condoning evil, or allowing it to simply run amok and go unchecked… but choosing, as Christ Jesus our Lord did, to stand against it, and even suffer for righteousness, rather than to give in to hatred, cruelty, or the temptation to condemn our neighbours. 

And when those around us are driven by their fears, real or imagined, to fend for themselves, and only look out for their own interests… we are called to remember what Jesus our Lord has done for us all at the cross… so that we can be set free from fear to love one another as Christ Jesus first loved us. 

This is a high calling indeed. And like the Israelites before us, it can be easy for us to get distracted, or led astray, and so forget what this sacred night is all about: to forget what Jesus our Lord came to accomplish… not just for us, but for our world. 

To forget that, despite all the darkness at work… and there’s still a whole lot of darkness at work these days, to be sure… to forget that Jesus Christ gave His life at the cross to share God’s saving love with sinners like us… to set us all free from our slaveries to selfishness, and prejudice, and fear, and sin… to set us all free when we least deserved this precious gift… to set us all free to share in His holy love… to be a worldwide community marked by His life-changing mercy, His generosity, and His grace. 

And the way our darkened world will come to know of God’s saving love is through us. Through you and me. Through those who still believe the Good News of Jesus Christ… who have received His forgiveness and grace offered to all of us at the cross… those who are willing to be drawn into His story year after year, week after week, again and again… to allow our lives to be shaped and transformed by His faithful life, and death, and glorious resurrection. 

In a moment, I will invite anyone who is willing to come forward to have their feet symbolically washed, remembering the tender, merciful and faithful love that God has shared with us in Jesus Christ, and that He now calls us to share with one another. But whether we come forward, or remain seated tonight, may we all always remember what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us, and our world. And by the Holy Spirit’s help, may we faithfully respond to what He has done, by putting His saving love into practice. Amen.