Coronavirus Pandemic Maundy Thursday

Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14Psalm 116:1-2, 12-191 Corinthians 11:23-26John 13:1-17, 31b-35

 

Maundy Thursday  By Rev. Jerry Eve

 

There’s quite a lot for us today: Passover, Communion, and Jesus washing his disciples’ feet; and sometimes as much material as this can be a bit overwhelming.

 

I was tempted, to begin by considering the ten plagues of Egypt, but then I thought that’s an avenue I don’t really have the stomach for given the current context. Is that wrong of me, I wonder?

 

My next thought was to consider the reference to sheep and goats in Exodus (incidentally, I was a bit confused as I always thought a young goat was a kid rather than a lamb!), and ask whether Jesus’ incredibly challenging ‘parable of the sheep and the goats’ in Matthew 25 was connected in any way with the themes of Passover.

 

Passing over that line of questioning, though (and I’m tempted to say that I was led by the Spirit, but I’m never sure if this is what’s happening with Bible Study – should I really have dodged the plagues?), my next thought was to notice the ‘cup of salvation’ in the 116th psalm, and have a wee think about how this relates to St Paul’s, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?” at 1 Corinthians 10:16.

 

I did once take part in a Passover Seder at which four cups are drunk, and while there are various symbolic reasons given by Jewish theologians for this, one I quite liked at the time was an explanation that they remind us of the four Matriarchs of our faith: Sarah, Rebeccah, Rachel and Leah.

 

What stands out for me above all else today, however, is verse 12 of our psalm, which in Latin (Pro Tanto Quid Retribuamus) is the Belfast city motto: What shall I return to the Lord for all his bounty to me? Isn’t that wonderful? I’ve never been to Northern Ireland, but if I was to, then just two or three of the places I’d very much like to visit are:

 

1) any of  those sites associated with St Malachy (1094 – 1148), the first Irish-born saint to be canonised – just one of the things he did, in time of famine, was to go all over Ireland planting apple trees. And

 

2) the Corrymeela Community. Founded in 1965 by the Presbyterian minister, Ray Davey, who was educated at New College, Edinburgh; he’d been a prisoner of war near to Dresden in the 1940s, and had witnessed the bombardment there. Afterwards, he became Chaplain at Queen’s University Belfast, and it was during his tenure, and as part of his work there, that he set up the Community with the aim of ‘reconciliation in Northern Ireland, and throughout the world.’

 

Belfast is sometimes called Linenopolis instead, a reference to the 19th century Irish linen industry based there, and at Corrymeely there’s a Linen Memorial to the thousands of people who lost their lives to the Troubles, Corrymeela always doing what it can, then and now, to bring peace, and help families.

 

At the moment they’re publishing daily ‘Prayers for Community in a Time of Pandemic,’ and this is today’s –

 

Let us pray:

 

God who washes our feet, God who commands us to love: before the prayers in the garden, and the stations of the cross; before the tomb and the spices and the stone they put in place, there was this moment when you showed us what it meant to be divine. May we not forget that the power to defeat death was not what you wanted us to imitate.
It was to lay aside all other things and to love.

 

Amen.

 


 

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