Stripping Away for Life: A Maundy Thursday Sermon

​We are already deep into Holy Week. But we are just getting to the real heart of it. Our service this evening begins the holiest set of services for the entire Christian year: Maundy Thursday; Good Friday; and Easter.
 
Those three services go together, almost as if they are really one big service. There is no blessing or dismissal at the end of our service tonight. We’ll strip the altar, then leave in silence. To be continued….
 
Tomorrow, our Good Friday service picks up where we leave off tonight, with a silent entry. That service doesn’t have a blessing or dismissal either. Again, we’ll leave in silence. Again, to be continued…..
 
It’s only at the end of the Easter service that we’ll receive a final blessing and dismissal. Only then, at the end of the Easter service, does the worship that we begin tonight truly end.
 
In an ideal world, we would spend all the time between Maundy Thursday and Easter morning, all the time during this complex, multi-day service, in prayer. In the world we actually live in, that’s not possible. Among other interruptions, tomorrow morning the Church will be full of kids making a joyful noise. Our children’s event is a wonderful thing, but not particularly prayerful as I experience it!
 
Still, as much as possible, these next few days should be a prayerful time. Please do whatever you can to make that happen in your own life.
 
One way into this prayerful time is to focus on the stripping of the altar in a few minutes. As people remove the various things from the altar area, ponder what is happening. We are removing things that make the altar area beautiful, things that are part of our regular worship life, even the tabernacle and lighted candle that represent God’s constant presence with us. It all gets stripped away, leaving a bare altar with a cross looming over it.  
 
Stripping the altar on Maundy Thursday, the eve of Good Friday, is one small way of expressing solidarity with Christ, who, on this night two thousand years ago, had to let go of everything that might hold him back, everything that could possibly stand between him and God. Affection for his disciples. Worry for his mother. Fear of pain and loneliness and betrayal. Jesus had to let it all go, all be stripped away, and submit to the awful fact of his coming crucifixion.
 
Remember the reading from Philippians we heard last Sunday.
 
“Christ Jesus…, though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.”
 
We see that emptying, that stripping away to become a slave, in our reading for this evening when Christ washed the feet of his disciples, including even the feet of Judas, who was about to betray him.
 
The reading from last week keeps going. “Being found in human form, [Christ] humbled himself [still father] and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross” (2:5-8). That’s the story for the next part of this multi-part service, the story for Good Friday.
 
In our services this week, we watch Christ emptying himself, letting everything be stripped away from him. Ponder that in your heart as you watch the stripping of the altar this evening.
 
Think about your own life, too. Stripping away happens to us, also, whether we like it or not, most obviously as we age. As the years mount up, we all have to let go of much that we value. Already I can’t do some of the things I used to do, or enjoy some of the things I used to enjoy. And that is a one-way road.
 
Things have begun to be stripped away from me. Like Christ, I am slowly being emptied out. We all are.
 
Having things stripped away, being emptied out, is not a lot of fun. It certainly wasn’t fun for Christ.
 
But there is more to the stripping away than loss. As we let go of whatever we have to let go, we are, at least potentially, letting go of things, sometimes good things, that can still stand between us and God.
 
Intentionally letting things go is a big part of our spiritual practice. The entire season of Lent, which I think of as culminating in the stripping of the altar, is just that. We give up things we enjoy because we believe that stripping things away can somehow help us draw closer to God.
 
So, although there is loss as we get emptied out, there is also, at least potentially, gain.
 
We see exactly that loss and gain in Christ’s experience on this night.
 
John tells us “Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father.” Both parts of that sentence matter. Departing from this world is the final stripping away, the final emptying out. That’s the loss. Going to the Father is the gain.
 
There is a beautiful scene in the series The Chosen that makes this point. Jesus has invited a prominent Pharisee named Nicodemus to follow him. Nicodemus protests that he would have to give up his family, his position, everything he has worked for. Jesus agrees, and promises Nicodemus that he will gain infinitely more than he loses. Sadly, Nicodemus can’t bring himself to accept Jesus’ invitation.
 
But we have accepted Jesus’ invitation. We have committed to following Jesus, knowing that we, too will be emptied out over time and trusting to the new life with Christ that comes as a result.
 
We see Christ himself looking back, letting go, and moving forward in just this way in the Last Supper, which we commemorate tonight
 
Through the meal, Jesus reminds his disciples of the many times they ate together, especially in the miraculous feedings. Jesus reminds them of his entire life and ministry, a life and ministry that are about to end.
 
And, knowing that this is his last meal, Jesus tells the disciples always to remember this moment, this meal, as their way of proclaiming the Lord’s death. Stripping away life itself.
 
But Jesus also looks forward to where he is going after his death, into resurrection life with God the Father. Stripping away life as he has known it, to enter ever more deeply into the very life of God.
 
Jesus tells us to look forward, too, past loss and death to Christ’s resurrection and ascension, and even farther forward, to the promise of Christ’s eventual return to establish God’s kingdom for all of us.
 
So, in the Eucharist, this is our reading from Paul, we “proclaim the Lord’s death [—looking back—] until he comes”—looking forward.
 
Christ is our future, even more than our past. We remember. But more than that, we are in process of being emptied out, stripped, as Christ was, so that we, too, can experience new and greater life with God.
 
So, I say again, pay attention as the altar gets stripped. Meditate on what was coming for Christ, both the immediate loss and the subsequent risen life. And think about what might need to be stripped away in your life, or what is being stripped away, intentionally or not.
 
When the altar is bare, linger in the Church for a few minutes. And as you leave, try to hold onto that prayerful spirit, and come back to it whenever you can over the next few days. Let God work on you in this holy time of stripping away.
 
In Christ’s name. Amen.