Sermon for Maundy Thursday

I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends

E.B. White’s much-beloved book, Charlotte’s Web, tells the tale of the unlikely friendship betwixt a pig named Wilbur and a spider named Charlotte.

Both Wilbur and Charlotte live in a barn on a farm. Wilbur was born a runty pig, never destined for much but yet was saved by Fern, the farmer’s young daughter who argues with her father that it would be unjust to kill the young and small pig simply because of its weakness. Wilbur is saved and later sold to Fern’s uncle, joining the animals in his barn.

Once there he hears the farmer’s plan to slaughter the animals by Christmas. Dismayed, he finds comfort in the words of his new friend, Charlotte, who assures him that she will do all she can to save him. Charlotte later writes complimentary thing about Wilbur in her web, which the farmer sees and immediately understand that something miraculous is happening – and Wilbur becomes a local legend.

With help, little Wilbur eventually takes first place in the County Fair, thus sparing his life; yet in a very cold, dispassioned, and difficult few words the author explains that after saving Wilbur, Charlotte dies quietly and alone at the county fair, leaving behind an egg sac – her offspring – as a continued presence at the farm.

The story is of course a commentary on friendship and sacrifice, beautifully summed up, I think, in Charlotte and Wilbur’s final words together:

“Why did you do all this for me?” Wilbur asked. “I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.”

“You have been my friend,” replied Charlotte. “That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.”

Now, I don’t want to go too far in drawing connections between the Passion of Christ and Charlotte’s Web, and whether Christ and his passion was in the mind of E.B. White when writing the book, I have no idea. Afterall, the story is about friendship and sacrifice, concepts not unique to Christianity but universal.

Earlier this week at one of the Daily Offices we heard a portion of John’s Gospel, a few chapters of which accompany the holy days of this most important week, and we heard words of Jesus which echo through all of our readings and all of the passion narratives that we hear this week, words drawn from John 15, “You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer,” says Jesus to the disciples, “…but I have called you friends…you did not choose me, but I chose you…I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”

This week is a week of great and startling contrasts. This night is the starkest of all of those contrasts. Earlier in the week we heard the story of Mary of Bethany breaking the alabaster box of ointment, valued at 300 pieces of silver – a years’ salary - and anointing Jesus’ feet, and we heard the outrage of Judas Iscariot at her…Judas, who would later betray his friend to death for a tenth of that amount.

Tonight we begin in splendour, the sanctuary bedecked in white, cheerful, joyous, remembering and giving thanks for the institution, the beginning, of the Holy Eucharist – His body and blood, his presence enduring with us forever. But later on it all gets stripped away in a scene that should be deeply jarring to any of us, recalling that it is not just Judas but all of the disciples who abandon him at his hour of need.

But tonight is also about friendship, actually this whole week is about friendship. Jesus says in that chapter of John that I quoted above that there is no greater love than to lay down our lives for our friends.

And this he does for us because we are his friends.

There are many in our lives we would call friends but if we dug deep and thought honestly there are many we have called friends whom we have betrayed or failed or disappointed. Not always in big ways, like selling their lives for a bit of silver, but in lots of little ways: not showing up for them, speaking or thinking ill of them, not listening enough. Death by a thousand papercuts.

And sad though it is, it’s natural to us.

All of our relationships are going to be marred by our weakness and our failures, by our brokenness and sin. All of our relationships are going to be coloured by past experience and prejudice, fear, and self-concern, “Certainly this man also was with him, for he is a Galilean,” said a stranger to Jesus’ friend, Peter, in the Passion narrative last night, “Man, I do not know what you are saying.’ And immediately, while he was still speaking, the cock crowed.”

All will fall away because of me this night, Jesus will tell them. And indeed they will. And indeed we will. We will not have our feet be washed, we will not stay and watch with him in the Garden, he who lowers himself to wash our feet, he who will tomorrow die for us.

One theologian noted that we often think of the events of Holy Week as our movement towards God, our movement towards Jesus and his Crucifixion, and indeed we do – it is a pilgrimage for us to Jerusalem earthly and heavenly, a journey towards his cross and our cross.

But perhaps, this thinker surmised, perhaps the movement in Holy Week is more accurately a movement of God towards us.

We are always more stagnant in mind and heart than we think we are, and perhaps Jesus, the Son of God, left the Throne of Heaven and became one of us, to be tortured and killed in a shameful way on our behalf so that he could have the opportunity to lift us into the Father’s presence.

Through our Lenten book study we talked about how the wildernesses of our lives – our sufferings and our trials – are not accidental speedbumps on the way to paradise but are actually necessary parts of the journey because it is often in the wilderness, in the midst of our sufferings and our trials, that we find the paradise and presence of God.

            Jesus offers us friendship

            Despite our betrayal

            Despite our apathy

            Despite our indifference.

            Despite murdering him.

Despite actually being rather poor friends to him and to others, the kind of friends that most earthly friends would give up on.

But really, it’s not despite these things at all, but he takes us up and loves us completely, all of us, in all of our brokenness and failings, and even when we turn from him he still dies for us.

And this night we remember that, not wanting to give up on us, not wanting us to give up on him on this our pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he leaves us himself in the great gift of the Holy Eucharist.

He keeps a seat for us at a table which, despite our unworthiness is always prepared for us.

We will leave here tonight and later on, and tomorrow, and next week forget him in so many ways large and small, yet these three holy days are to remind us that we are never, ever forgotten by him, who has called us friends.

“Why did you do all this for me?” Wilbur asked. “I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.”

“You have been my friend,” replied Charlotte. “That in itself is a tremendous thing.”

I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends