Sacrifice and Service: Homily for Holy Thursday

What if,
at communion,
after receiving the Body and Blood,
after consuming the consecrated bread and wine,
we were handed a consecrated towel?

What if we came forward with arms held out,
and the priest or deacon or eucharistic minister said,
“The Body of Christ,” and handed us the host,
and then, “The Blood of Christ,” and handed us the cup,
and then “The Service of Christ,”
and gently placed a white towel in our hands?

And what if we took that towel
walked out of this building
and went in search of feet to wash?
Strengthened by the Body of Christ,
given new life by the Blood of Christ,
what if we spent the rest of the week on our knees
washing dirt from the feet of our friends, neighbors, and strangers,
or wiping their tears,
or binding their wounds,
only to return the next Sunday to get another towel?

Tonight we are reminded
that the love of Jesus consists of two things:
sacrifice and service.

Love is service made possible by sacrifice.

At the Last Supper
Jesus is about to humble himself to serve God and us
by his sacrifice on the cross.
“He loved his own in the world
and he loved them to the end.”

He is on the eve of giving his Body and Blood for our sake;
and in his final act before accepting the cross,
he does the work of a menial servant
and tells his disciples to do for others as he has done for them.

This was the purpose for which Jesus came:
to serve God and neighbor,
a service we are called to imitate
by loving one another as he loved us.

This is who we are now—
the people who do this in remembrance of Jesus;
the people who do for others as he has done for us;
the people who bring the love of Christ
through service made possible by sacrifice.

Pope Francis has described the Church as a field hospital.
The world is filled with the sick and the wounded
waiting to be touched by the love of Christ.
Waiting for us to wash their feet.

When I imagine a field hospital, I think of the TV show M*A*S*H.
M*A*S*H stands for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital.
The doctors and nurses of the M*A*S*H units worked in tents,
picking up and moving to wherever the wounded needed them the most.
It was menial, dirty work;
they were often exhausted;
they were often put in harm’s way;
and they often questioned the war;
but they kept at their healing work for the sake of the soldiers.

We are to be the M*A*S*H units for the wounded of this world.
We go out from this place
strengthened by the Body of Christ,
renewed by the Blood of Christ,
and we set up our tents of healing,
wherever they are needed.

Like the doctors and nurses of the M*A*S*H unit,
sometimes our healing work is menial and tedious;
sometimes it exhausts us;
sometimes it puts us in harm’s way;
and sometimes we question a world that causes so much pain;
but our discipleship calls us to keep at our work
for the sake of the wounded.

Tonight the liturgy asks us to consider,
Is my home a tent of healing?
Is my place of work a field hospital for the sorrowful and lonely?
Is the Church in our city a healing presence
for the hungry, the imprisoned, the marginalized?
Is it time to move my tent to another location
where the wounded need help?

This kind of service is a sacrifice,
as all true service is.
It makes great demands on us;
it takes us away from things we would rather do;
it sends us to places we would rather not go.

But it is only a shadow of the great sacrifice of service
Christ has done for us.
In fact tonight is a foreshadowing,
a prelude to the great act of love we commemorate tomorrow,
the Way of the Cross.

We can make tonight a prelude to our own Way of the Cross
by calling to mind all those in our lives who need healing,
who need the grime of disappointment and desperation wiped away.

On this Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper
we will watch as members of our community come forward
to get their feet washed and dried with a towel.

They represent all the wounded whom we are sent to serve.
And they are many.

And later, as we come forward for communion tonight
we won’t get a towel to take with us out to the injured of the world.
But we will receive the Body and Blood of Christ for their sake,
and take the love of Jesus into the wounded world,
to wherever there is pain and loss.
We can provide our own towel.

This is who we are:
the people who do for others as Christ has done for us,
the people who perform a sacrifice of service,
in pale imitation of the Christ who loves us more deeply
than we can ever imagine.

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