18.04.2019
Maundy Thursday Calls us to Action – Chrism Eucharist in Christ Church Cathedral
“Maundy Thursday is a time for us to take to heart the radical nature of domestic religion and to use it and to live it and not to crave punching above our weight as if headlines are our right.” So said Archbishop Michael Jackson at this morning’s Chrism Eucharist which takes place each year on Maundy Thursday in Christ Church Cathedral.
During the service, which was sung by a consort of the cathedral choir, those in lay and ordained ministry renewed their commitment to ministry. Oils for use in healing and baptism and the oil of the chrism were consecrated. The Archbishop also washed the feet of a number of clergy and lay people and in turn had his feet washed.
His sermon focused on foot washing. He took as his text: “Then turning to the woman, Jesus said to Simon: You see this woman? I came to your house, you provided no water for my feet but this woman has made my feet wet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.” [St Luke 7.44].
Archbishop Jackson pointed out that the incident was particularly important because it related to a situation in which hospitality was denied and withheld by Simon the Pharisee because a woman of scandal had entered his house. The woman took over the hospitality and forced matters around the priority of love and forgiveness over sinfulness and exclusion, he said.
Foot washing was a feature of church life in early times and had woven its way back into many traditions in recent years. “It has varied uses and has become normalized in our tradition on Maundy Thursday above all days. It has to do with belonging to a household of living and is extended to belonging to a household of faith while arriving as an outsider or an outcast: it is a grace of inclusion, an intuition of trust, a practicality of welcome,” the Archbishop stated.
Two activities happen on Maundy Thursday – foot washing in the morning and breaking bread in the evening, he observed. “Both are actions and activities where Jesus Christ did something unexpected, unprecedented, unusual – transformative yet predictable, in the middle of something entirely domestic,” he noted.
He continued: “As we ourselves today renew and refresh our sense of call to serve and to lead, we would do well to regain and restore such a sense of confidence in what is new and necessary and urgent for the faith once delivered. This is important if we want to impact for good the society and the generation in which we live. This is important if we want to care. I am not talking about big headline issues. I am talking about domestic faith, things that effectively happened in homes and houses – the house of Simon, an upper room in the house of a Christian sympathizer.”