Read : John 13:1-17 & 31b-35
Towards the end of the film, Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy, the spy-catcher, George Smiley, speaks with the captured traitor, a very senior MI6 officer, who has been under the control of Karla, the head of the Russian secret service. “Did Karla want you to become head of MI6?”, Smiley asks. “I am not his office boy”, the traitor shouts back. “What are you then?” Smiley shouts in reply. “I am somebody who made a difference” the traitor replies.
There is something very human about wanting to be somebody. What are you? Or, Who are you? You might be a son or a daughter, a husband, or a wife, or a lover or a friend. You might be a parent or a grandparent; or a teacher, a nurse, a poet or a painter. The network of relationships, which make up our lives and the way we live out our lives define us as people. A few times, in my ministry, I have had to conduct the funeral of someone who has left no family and has outlived all their friends. There is no one at the funeral except me and a solicitor. This must have been somebody, somebody about whom there was a story to tell. But there is no one left to tell that story. So, with gentleness, we pray the words of a simple funeral service, for this was somebody and they are still a person beloved by God, a person for whom Christ died.
In the Second World War concentration camp, Auschwitz, you can see room after room of abandoned suitcases, discarded spectacles and false limbs. Those who entered this place of hell were stripped of everything that made them someone, even their teeth and their hair. Their very names were replaced with a tattooed number. They were totally dehumanised and then disposed of. This holocaust is remembered as one of the greatest evils of the 20th Century, but such ethnic cleansing, in one form or another, has continued to be seen in our world, in one form or another, to this present day.
And what of us? Surely we are horrified by such things, yet we are human and we are always (perhaps in small ways) ready to marginalise and therefore dehumanise those who are different from us in some way. Over the centuries, the Church has had a dreadful track record of excluding others. “You are not somebody to us!” we have said so many times – to black people, Jewish people, female people, gay people, or indeed anyone who is in any way different.
Tonight we focus on Jesus – Jesus sharing a last supper with his friends. It was one of many such suppers, yet this one was different. Jesus had entered Jerusalem and, despite the welcome cheers of the crowd, they met under the threat of arrest, or even worse. Jesus breaks bread and shares it. He shares the cup of wine. As he does so, he tells them that this represents his body and his blood, a body that is to be given for them, blood that is to be shed for them. He was surrounded by his chosen twelve, not to mention any women who might have been there. Here we find James and John, who had so misrepresented the core of Jesus’ message as to ask for the prime seats in heaven. Here is Peter, the rock, whom, Jesus knew, would soon be denying him. And Thomas, who would doubt the truth of the resurrection, despite having sat at Jesus’ feet and heard all his teaching. And Judas, who would betray him. Yet he holds them in one fellowship and he bestows on them, in a simple meal, a depth of meaning that points to his own impending death.
Do this in remembrance of me, he tells them. And he stoops and washes their feet in an action of service to them, which at first they find quite unsettling. Surely this is inappropriate for someone who is their master, their leader, their Lord? Yet Jesus insists. It is a servant that he is called to be. And we are called to be servants too.
So we meet to break bread together, to share bread and wine, to do this in remembrance of Jesus, who (the very next day) would give his very body to death on a cross, for us and for all humankind.
If we call this a commemorative meal, we don’t to do justice to what we will share in tonight. We don’t just commemorate Jesus’ death on the cross. By taking broken bread, we are brought face to face with the reality of a real body, broken on a cross by our human hatred, yet given that we might find life. By drinking wine, we are brought face to face with the reality that this blood, that we (humanity) will shed, has been shed for us, that we might know the truth of God’s love for us. The power of what happened for us at Calvary is brought into the present instant of our lives, as broken bread is placed in our hands and a cup of wine is shared.
We do this, not only to remember Jesus, but to engage ourselves in God’s saving action of the cross. This is what Christ has done for you – for me. As the sharing of this Eucharist brings that reality into the present moment of our lives, it does so in a way that engages our hearts and then evokes the response of the giving of our own lives in return.
Perhaps it is a pity that the washing of feet, so integral to the account of the last supper in John’s Gospel, is only remembered as an add-on.
Do this in remembrance of me is not just a command to keep on receiving the bread and wine of communion, but (much more) is it the invitation to follow Christ in self-giving service to everyone given to us as a neighbour. The action of sharing in bread and wine together, gathers us together to discover the reality of the risen Christ in our midst, but more than simply receive the Eucharistic bread, we are ourselves to be the body of Christ – to be as bread, broken in our loving service to others; to be as people , who (as it were) stoop to wash the feet of every neighbour in need.
Be broken, in remembrance of me. Serve others, in remembrance of me. Wash their feet – or whatever might be the most appropriate way of serving others in our lives today. Treat every person you meet as somebody so precious that Christ was prepared to die for them, for every person you meet is somebody called to be a child of God. The fellowship of the Kingdom is such that, rather than building walls for our own protection, we ourselves are compelled to go out into the world, charged with the command that we must invite everyone to come in.
Give of yourselves to others. Treat every encounter with others as a meeting with somebody, in whom the face of Christ can be found. Give of your life in the service of others, for in this way you will be serving Christ and you will have stepped onto the road of eternity. Let the joy of thanksgiving, which should be so central to this Eucharist, be something that wells up, overflows and spills out into the world.
For, as we do this in remembrance of Christ, we will find that we have become heralds of his Kingdom and others will find here, in this community, bread that will satisfy the deepest longings of their hearts and a place where they are cherished as somebody – somebody of infinite beauty and potential – somebody beloved by God – somebody whose destiny is to be drawn, with us, into the fellowship of God’s heavenly banquet.
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