An Triptych for the Triduum

below you will find the three sermons I preach during the Triduum. They are not long -  the Bible fills these days with stories - but they are reflections on three words "Commandment, Power and Authority". The texts may be a little rough and I am publishing before the Great Vigil so if you are reading this Saturday......
Maundy Thursday - Commandment
Many of you will have heard before that the name Maundy Thursday comes from the Latin word for Commandment.
“A new commandment (mandatum) I give to you….” Says Jesus and this commandment is about love. This commandment is about loving one another. Loving one another is where these great three days of Easter begin – all that is coming is love enacted.
Jesus washed his Disciples feet – love enacted, gives Eucharist – love enacted, goes to the Garden to pray, goes to the cross – in all that He does he is love enacted and shows us what love enacted looks like. After all, that is what the Incarnation is – love enacted – love made human, love walking, talking and living.
So we should pay attention in these three days to what love looks like as love goes about its business because if anyone can command us to love one another and give us any sort of clue as to how we might do that, surely love can.
The first thing to note is that Love commands. Love does not ask quietly or gently, love gives direction. It is, perhaps, symptomatic of the state of Western Christianity that the Triduum has fallen out of favor in so many places and Jesus has been turned into a big brother character with some vaguely magical powers to look after the people who behave themselves. This fairy tale character Jesus who drifts in and out of our lives but might erupt in rage if we do certain sorts of things wrong (notably have sex with the wrong people) belongs to an Elementary school cosmology and certainly does not issue commandments.
The real Jesus gets down on his knees and washes the filthy, dusty feet of his disciples. This is not sentimental, this is gross. He literally enfolds himself in the mire and muck of the world. Not only that but he then turns to the disciples and says – this is what you have to do
Jesus who commands humbles himself to the form and action of a servant – this is not just lip service. When we re-enact the footwashing it is both an acceptance of Jesus’ offer to wash our feet and also a pledge to take the commandment to love – to wash the feet of others.
Again, this is not a sentimental action. In order to wash feet, Jesus changes his apparel, wraps himself around with a towel, prepares to wholly engage in the task – how are we to do that? How are we to totally direct our attention to the task of loving one another – not just the people we like, the people with nice clean feet, the ones we know have had a bath, but all those others as well. This is the difference between the fairy tale God and the real one – the real God remains in the cinders of the kitchen and serves there as a princess – and gets prince charming to join her. Yes that is a horribly mixed metaphor but the love which commands is a love which reigns from the cross not from a golden throne,
Then, going back to that meal with His disciples and, as if he has completely lost his mind, Jesus transforms the symbols of Passover, bread and wine into something new – this is now me, he says. My body, my blood. Think back through all that imagery – this, again, is not something small to be gulped down, to be dashed by. The commandment continues – not only does loving one another mean washing feet but loving one another means sharing this meal.
When I say the Eucharistic Prayer later the words of institution, those moments where Jesus tells his disciples what to do are definitive – he does not say – well….if you remember…. and if you feel like it…..
The idea of commandment is one which, perhaps, we are less familiar with than the disciples would have been. The Jewish culture was bound around with the Ten Commandments and the Covenant, outs less so. Whilst the Ten Commandments are still a familiar icon they are viewed with suspicion and a Church leader who stands up and says to a congregation that they command them to do anything is, for the most part, going to have short tenure.
The covenant should always, as we have seen many times before, have been centered in love but it had lost its centre. Jesus is now giving Himself as that centre.
You might be a person who wants to read carefully through each word of these stories, or you might be able to imagine yourself there – listen to the sounds, see the people. I wonder what that would have been like – to be commanded to love by one who was total love – to be told to love others by one who loved me completely.
Of course, that is what we are told tonight, that is what we are commanded – love one another as I have loved you.
Love
As I have loved
To the last thread
Crumb
And drop.
To the last word
Light
And breath.
Love as I have loved
When you are wrong
Angry
Sad
Insensitive
When you walk away
Or just don’t care.
Love as I love you
When you pretend not to notice
When you cross the street
Or look away
Especially then,
I command you
Love
As I have loved you.
Good Friday - Power
My seventeen year old son and I were exchanging texts earlier in the week. It is the first full week of spring football training and the team are in the weight room. He sent me a series of texts half joking bur definitely complaining about how much various pieces of him were aching. My response was not exactly sympathetic to which he replied, with a great deal of humor,
“Be nice to me or I will burn all your shoes.” My shoes are a joke in our house – I have more shoes than I need – not the hundreds of pairs (literally) which my next door neighbor owns – but more than I need. Threatening to burn them, of course, is a perceived weak spot – a point at which I can be leveraged – a point of power.
Yesterday we thought about the word “commandment” and Jesus commandment to love one another. Today, as we are standing at the foot of the cross, I want to reflect briefly on power. It might seem a hopeless sort of word. We are to love one another and Jesus has given up all power as he dies before our very eyes.
Or has he. My reason for choosing the words commandment, power and authority is very precisely because our Christian mission is defined but not by the things which often define the rest of our life. Jesus could have found the weak spots in the system and exploited them on the surface – rather like burning my shoes. It would be annoying, perhaps upsetting, it would be a sort of power play – He would certainly have been capable of it but what would it have achieved.
If we lose our material goods they can be replaced. If Jesus had simply used earthly power against earthly power one power would simply have replaced another, become corrupted and things would have been back where they started. Divine power looks different and acts differently and it is into that world we are called.
Today, at the foot of the cross we are called to confront our expectations about ourselves and our own lives. Society tells us again and again that we must seek to be powerful individuals. That we must be confident, forthright, state our claim and so forth. In many ways there is nothing wrong with these things but today we are asked to confront something much deeper within ourselves – what are we ultimately standing upon?
Are we standing upon an understanding of ourselves as those who hold power to conquer or are we holding onto an understanding of ourselves as those who are invited into this moment of Jesus’ Passion. If Jesus has all power and yet did this – where does that leave our scrambling and demanding? Where do we rest our aspiration?
Power might not be what we think it is – it might not look like we think it does. The power of the cross does not threaten or berate. It does not exploit our weaknesses or make our fears into nightmares. It does not make us smaller to make God bigger. The power of the cross is not a comparative power – it does not rely on taking power from somewhere for itself – it is, if you like, outside of the laws of physics, there is no conservation of energy in this power – because God is endless power.
So if, in Christ, we do not have to take from the other to have for ourselves. If in Christ we do not have to fight always to win. If in Christ we do not have to vehemently defend to speak the truth (what did Jesus do at His trials) – if all of this is true – what is power? Where does our power lay? What does it look like and what do we do with it?
Holy Saturday - Authority
This is the third of a triptych of sermons which I have preached during these Three Great Days. On Maundy Thursday I took the word “commandment” as my theme and thought about that great commandment which Jesus gave to love and how that is worked through in these three days. Yesterday we looked at the word power and saw that the power of the cross is not subject to the laws of physics – you do not have to take from one to give to the other – the cross can give and give and give some more.
So today we come to my third word “authority”. This might seem a somewhat lack joy choice for the vigil – after all shouldn’t we be focused on joy, or celebration?
The disciples come, in the various Gospel accounts, in various groups or alone to the tomb and there like a ripple the news begins to spread. They seem to have been certain immediately. The hesitancy of seeing Jesus in half-light and being unsure is soon replaced by the overwhelming ecstasy of the reality of this news of Resurrection – Jesus is Risen – He has defeated death and the grave.
It is from this moment of encounter with the risen Christ that all else comes and that is important because we are invited to that same encounter. It is not accidental that the Church invites us to this yearly commemoration in such depth, but neither is it accidental that we are invited week after week into a Celebration of The Resurrection.
By inviting us to deeply encounter the stories of these days through word and sacrament, through action and symbol we are invited to be more deeply transformed by this first encounter with the Risen Christ. The reason I chose the word authority is because in that word is summed up all that comes from this encounter – joy and celebration inform our authority, transformation of life supports it – and I could continue.
The Greek word for authority is exousia – it turns up a lot in the Gospels as those who think themselves in charge challenge by what authority Jesus does these things. But exousia is not just about being in charge – it is much bigger than that – like most Greek words it has layers of meanings. It has the idea of having the freedom and power to act, the idea of Divine will, the idea, even, of a ruler. So when Jesus takes authority he is not just telling people what to do, he is making a theological statement about who he is.
As participants in the Resurrection we are those who witness the freedom and power of God to act. We are those who, through our devotion the Christ, submit to and participate in Divine will and we are those who enter into the Kingdom of God, the place of God’s rule. As such, as those who enter into exousia by witnessing the Resurrection we become those who hold authority – but like those other words “commandment” and “power” we have to be careful not to make that authority too small by trying to make ourselves too large.
We are those who are commanded to love, we are those who are led by a Savior who could have chosen any power – yet died a horrible death knowing that the only way to defeat the endless battle of human self-aggrandizement and selfishness was simply to refuse to participate in it.
When Mary Magdalene goes out to the disciples to give them to message if the Resurrection the verb which is used in John’s Gospel is that she angeled them. The word angellos is Greek for messenger – it is the word, of course, from which we get angel. When Mary gives the disciples the message of Good News she is angeling the message to them.
Angels are powerful icons because they abide so close to God – but you see – in the Resurrection everything is broken open and we are invited to live as sons and daughters – no longer as those who are far off, but as God’s dearly beloved children. We are becoming those who come from the heart of God and the message of Christ that we bring is borne with the authority of the angels.

Whisper your prayers of disbelief
Shout your alleluias and then run
Run messengers of Christ
Run you who have the authority of heaven
The voice of the angels
And tell the Good News
- HE IS RISEN!