17.04.2025
Maundy Thursday Offers Mandate to Renew Service, Encourage Ministry and Strengthen Love
Clergy and lay ministers from throughout Dublin & Glendalough attended the Maundy Thursday Chrism Eucharist in Christ Church Cathedral this morning (April 17). During the service they renewed their commitment to ministry and the oils for healing and baptism and the oil of the chrism were consecrated. Archbishop Michael Jackson washed the feet of several members of the clergy and in turn had his feet washed. The service was celebrated by the Archbishop and sung by the Cathedral Choir.
In his sermon, Archbishop Jackson addressed his fellow clergy and lay ministers and reminded them that despite the allure of clericalism and being an “insider with Jesus Christ” they are also part of the bigger group of people who Scriptures regularly call ‘the crowd’.
“As well as there being an unique quality in who we are as well as specialness as being an integral part of what we do and who God makes us to be, we all remain anonymous and wayward, unreliable and problematic. We too are: the crowd,” he noted.
Referring to The Footwashing, the Archbishop said that the Gospel reading [St John 13] enabled us to move seamlessly from the public ministry of Jesus among the people to the more intense expression of that ministry among his disciples. It changed the understanding of the 12 Disciples of their Master.
He then looked at St John 13: 34–35: ‘I give you a new commandment: love one another; as I have loved you, so you are to love one another. If there is this love among you, then everyone will know that you are my disciples’. He suggest that this could also be termed ‘I give you a new mandate: love one another…’
“Looked at from this perspective, the instruction and the invitation that Jesus gives to the disciples – and everything that we are told in the passage of Scripture between the Footwashing and the New Commandment – from how we now in church life use the word: mandated refers to a particular type of safeguarding of the community. It, therefore, gives to the word: love as used in this context a resonance something like this: …. This is the brutal task of holding fractious, dissident insiders together. This is love in a different register as protection regarding those who are vulnerable alongside protection regarding those who do evil and want to do evil – protecting the latter from themselves. This after all is regulation rather than punishment; and regulation needs to offer scope for redemption. This is not a condemnation. This is a commitment. This is a contract of mutual service. This is a mandate,” he explained.
The Archbishop asked what it might look like to be mandated on Maundy Thursday to follow Christ – to Calvary, to Emmaus and to the ends of the earth. He suggested that on Maundy Thursday the word ‘mandate’ could been seen in a new light, as a gift to renew service, encourage ministry and strengthen love.
You can read Archbishop Jackson’s sermon in full here.
