Maundy Thursday Sermon

“Do this in remembrance of me,” Jesus bids his disciples.

“Remember me when you come in to your kingdom,” begs the man hanging at Jesus’ side.

Our memories slip often as we get older.  It is not just people living with Alzheimer’s and dementia that experience this fate.  It just seems that sooner, or later, memories start to fade and things that we once knew seem to shy a little further from our grasp.  The things we best remember are often times those things we have called on time and time again since childhood.  More than once has a pastor, myself included, found themselves saying the Lord’s Prayer to someone who seems far beyond comprehension, only to have that person join in with the familiar deeply entrenched words. 

Jesus doesn’t want to be forgotten.  No one wants to be forgotten do they?  Even those who battle with depression and other mental or physical illness, on some level hope they, too, will be remembered by someone. 

“Remember me.”

How do we remember?  Well, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 2008 came up with a marketing idea to help make the mission of the Church more memorable.  “God’s work.  Our Hands.”  Pretty catchy I’d say.  We are called as followers of Christ to work for God’s kingdom to come to the here and now.  And much of the work we do is with our hands.  So being able to carry around in 4 words as a reminder of who and whose we are is helpful for our all too fragile memories.

In the 16^th Century, Teresa of Avila, the Spanish mystic, wrote a prayer that might be a bit more difficult to remember, but addresses the same idea.

“Christ has no body now but yours.  No hands, no feet on Earth but yours.  Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world.  Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good.  Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world.  Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body.  Christ has no body now on Earth but yours.”

Remember me.  I will know you remember me when I see you doing as I have done.  When I see you loving as I have loved.  When I see you serving.  When I see you kneeling, not before Kings and monuments of power, but before the poor, the world weary, the filthy footed, gutter walking, shoeless, shameless souls on whom I shower my love and compassion. 

You are it.  If you don’t do it, who will?

Your hands, your feet, your eyes…

Look with compassion on the world.  And let me remind you that compassion means to feel strongly with the people.  It means passionately caring for and with others in their suffering.  It means an end to lines of division and separation.  It means understanding that we all share the same fate.  The one who kneels today may be washed tomorrow.  The one who is washed today, may be kneeling tomorrow.  We are called to humble service and servanthood.

The passion of Jesus, that is his love for all of us.  Yes, it means sacrifice.  But do not miss that it is all borne of love.

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

Remember me.

Remember me kneeling before you and loving you to the very soles of your feet.  The lowest part of you.  The least lovable part of you.  I am not afraid to get dirty.  I have touched the leper and the unclean.  And I will remember you when I come into my Kingdom.

Remember me.