© 2025 Evan D. Garner
Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video can be seen here.
I mentioned in the announcements on Sunday that I’m always surprised that more people don’t show up to the Maundy Thursday service. It’s such a beautiful, tender, and dramatic way to begin these three holy days, and I’m glad you’re here. But, tonight, I’m also glad that there aren’t more people with us because I want to say something that, if the wrong people heard it, might get me into trouble. Don’t tell anyone, but I don’t really like the invitation we say before coming to Communion: whoever you are and wherever you are on your pilgrimage of faith, you are welcome in this place, and you are welcome at God’s table.
As I’m sure you’ve noticed, that hasn’t stopped me from saying it. I remember the search committee asking me about it when they interviewed me for this position. I don’t remember what I told them, but I remember thinking to myself, “Oh boy! That sounds really important, and I guess I’m going to have to find a way to say it.” Later on, early in my time here, I forgot to say those words at one of the Sunday-morning services. It just slipped my mind. Sometimes that happens. But, on the way out of church, a parishioner stopped and asked me about it. “Why didn’t you say the invitation to Communion?” she asked accusingly. “Don’t you believe those words? Have you decided not to say them anymore?”
As a statement of invitation and welcome, those familiar words—whoever you are and wherever you are—are a fundamental expression of the character of this parish. It’s not that character that I have a problem with. In fact, that’s the thing I love most about St. Paul’s. It’s why I accepted the call to serve as your rector. The part that gives me pause is their incompleteness—it’s what we don’t say next. Hospitality and inclusion, regardless of denominational affiliation or doctrinal allegiance, are a hallmark of St. Paul’s and of the wider Episcopal tradition. But this sacramental meal that we share is nothing less than the complete offering of ourselves into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that seems to demand more than a simple word of invitation.
Every time we receive Holy Communion, we reenact our sacred commitment to Christ’s way of living and loving and dying, which God has shown to be the way of salvation, and that seems like an awfully big ask for a first date. There’s no easy way to say to visitors and newcomers that anyone and everyone is welcome to take Communion in this place as long as they are ready to love other people the way that Jesus loved them, which is to say as long as they are willing to die not only for the people who love them back but even for those who don’t love them at all. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I want to hear that every week, either. But that’s what Jesus says to us tonight.
Do this in remembrance of me. It is an imperative. When Jesus was at the table with his disciples on the night before he died, he took a loaf of bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” After supper, he did the same with the cup of wine, saying, “Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” Saint Paul’s words to the Corinthian church are the earliest written record of Holy Communion. He shows us that Jesus’s followers have been sharing this sacred meal not only as a way of remembering Jesus but also as a way of “proclaiming the Lord’s death until he comes.”
The word translated for us as “proclaiming” literally means “down-declaring,” which carries the same connotation we might use when describing how an authority figure like a parent or a teacher has “laid down the law.” It means to announce something significant and with conviction. When we share Communion, therefore, we are not only recalling in our minds what Jesus did for us, but we are declaring to the world with conviction the centrality of Jesus’s death in our lives.
In the gospel lesson for Maundy Thursday, we hear another imperative that has its roots in the same meal. Interestingly enough, although Holy Communion has always been central to our identity as Christians, the Gospel according to John does not mention it. The other gospel accounts—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—all record Jesus’s command that we are to share the bread and wine—Christ’s body and blood—in remembrance of him. But John recalls another aspect of that Last Supper: the washing of the disciples’ feet.
As Jesus put a towel around his waist and prepared, like a servant, to wash the disciples’ feet, Peter objected vehemently: “You will never wash my feet!” It is absurd, if you think about it, for the King of kings to stoop down on the floor and wash the feet of his subjects—his followers. Peter wanted no part of it, yet Jesus insisted. This was not merely an act of humility. It was a pattern for us to follow. “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet,” Jesus said, “you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” For us, Jesus provides not only a model of humble service but also of the radical love that undergirds it. That is the new commandment that Jesus has given us—that we love one another just as he has loved us—and we pledge ourselves to that way of love every time we gather at this table.
When the nature of that love becomes clear, the absurdity behind it becomes even more profound. As John’s description of that night shows us, Jesus not only washed the feet of Peter and the rest of the eleven disciples who remained faithful to him, but he also washed the feet of Judas his betrayer. “Not all of you are clean,” Jesus said, but he washed all of their feet. Similarly, in the synoptic gospel tradition, when Jesus gave the blessed bread and wine to his disciples, Judas was still there at the table. “This is my body, which is given for you,” he said even to the one who had betrayed him to death. The death of Jesus, which we proclaim every time we share Holy Communion, was not withheld even from the one who set that death in motion.
What did Judas feel in his heart as he looked down at his teacher, the one he would soon arrange to be arrested, washing his feet? What maddening thoughts must have gone through his mind as he received this gesture of incomprehensible love from the one whose love he would reject? What did Jesus feel in his heart as he knelt down before his betrayer and washed his feet as carefully and lovingly as he washed anyone else’s? What do we feel in our hearts when we realize that Jesus’s offering of himself upon the cross was not given for the sake of our best selves but even for that part of us that is utterly unworthy of his love? What does it feel like to know that we must love others like that?
In one sense, I need to hear those words beckoning me back to the table each time we gather in this place: whoever you are and wherever you are in your pilgrimage of faith, you are welcome in this place, and you are welcome at God’s table. That part of me that struggles to believe that Jesus’s sacrifice—his love—is meant for me yearns to hear those words of welcome. And so I say them each time—not only to you but to my own heart. And yet all of us must also hear the significance of that invitation—that, if we are going to share this sacred meal not only in remembrance of Jesus but as an expression of who we are and who we desire to become, we must make his sacrificial love the defining characteristic of our lives.
This is not a casual encounter. It is not a chance to get acquainted with Jesus and try his love on for size. When you come to that table, you are accepting that the way Jesus loves each one of us must become the way that you love others. And nothing about that is easy. Don’t let our genuine and wide-open invitation obscure the significance of what takes place within us when we partake of Christ’s body and blood.
You don’t need to have everything figured out to come to that table. You don’t need to agree with everything that the church teaches. You don’t need to be perfect. You don’t even need to love others the way the Jesus loved them. But you need to want that. You need to want the love of Jesus to break open your heart until you are able to love all people—even your enemies, even those who betray you—with that same love. Everyone is welcome at that table, including you, and that means that you must welcome anyone who comes with the open arms and open heart of Jesus.
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