2 April 2026 Maundy Thursday
Exodus 12.1-4; 11-14 Psalm 116.1-2; 11-18 1 Corinthians 11.23-26 John 13.1-17; 31b-35
Tonight we continue our ambiguous journey through Holy Week, in the midst of celebration, anxiety, violence, and hopelessness. On this night, when the cross is on the horizon, Jesus shares an act of love with his disciples and models for them a new vision of relational power.
The Psalmist asks the question ‘what shall I return to God for the bounty of my life’, and it is a reminder of the places where we have experienced God’s grace and deliverance. This question invites us into self-reflection and loving action. We have been given much, and our gifts invite us to service and sacrifice.
The Passover story from Exodus frames our readings. It is a story of deliverance, the living history of the Jewish people, including Jesus and his followers then and now. Yet the story is filled with violence and exclusion. The people of Israel were spared, and that inspires gratitude, but this came at the cost of the first born Egyptian children. When we read this passage, rarely do we give thought to the pain and grief of the children and the Egyptian parents. The Egyptian rulers are portrayed as people without feeling, yet even they, as the book of Jonah asserts, are God’s children.
Sadly in today’s society, many of us have become those Egyptians in our time; those whose wealth and power are responsible for poverty, oppression and the destruction of the good Earth. We pray that we will not be the victims of our own foolish consumerism and hunger for power, but more than that, we need to act sacrificially and forcefully to ensure the survival of our fellow human and non-human companions.
Paul’s letter describes for us the Lord’s Supper – a meal of memory and transformation – a sacrament; a making holy, both as a Passover ritual of Jesus two thousand years ago, and as a place where we continue to look for God. We share in the Lord’s Supper as an invitation to make every encounter sacramental, whether it be at the dinner table or in the community. And when we do that, we will discover that God is in the domestic as well as the dramatic. In each moment God reveals the divine; the presence of God is ubiquitous not only in the bread and cup, but in all creation.
John reveals to us love embodied. As Jesus washes the feet of the disciples, he models for us how we should lovingly respond to each other. Jesus serves his followers, washing feet, providing the bread of life and the cup of salvation, then he ‘mandates’ them to love one another as he has loved them. This is the sign of our allegiance to God’s realm – our loving care, sacrifice, and hospitality within and beyond the community of faith.