Compline 9 April
Preacher: Rev Professor Ian Bradley
Address on touch for Maundy Thursday
Christ’s is the world in which we move;
Christ’s are the folk we’re summoned to love;
Christ’s is the voice which calls us to care,
and Christ is the one who meets us here.
To the lost Christ shows his face,
to the unloved he gives his embrace,
to those who cry in pain or disgrace
Christ makes, with his friends, a touching place.
That hymn by John Bell, righty one of his best known and best loved, reminds us that Christ makes for all of us, but particularly for the lost, the unloved, those who cry in pain or disgrace, a touching place.
Just now, of course, we are not in a touching place or a touching world. We’re having to practice social distancing –no handshaking, no reassuring pats on the shoulder, not even any hugs. It’s a strangely untactile, isolated world which is reassuring for those for whom physical contact is unwelcome and unsettling but which for many others feels cold and unnatural.
Touch is at the heart of what Jesus did to and with his first disciples on that first Maundy Thursday when they were gathered together in the upper room to have supper. As described in St John’s Gospel, he rose from supper, put aside his clothes and girded himself with a towel. Then he poured water into a basin, washed each of the disciples’ feet and dried them with the towel. A very simple gesture but also an extraordinary one – expressing profound humility and servanthood. Foot washing has been taken up in many churches on Maundy Thursday, not least by Pope Francis who has washed the feet of refugees and prisoners, female as well as male. It is practised in many of the churches here in St Andrews.
There is a strong case, I think, for regarding foot washing as the third sacrament along with baptism, to which it is perhaps more closely related than we might think, and communion which we are celebrating tonight. Like them, it has clear dominical institution – Jesus did it himself and he commanded others to emulate him, saying, ‘If I then your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done. Truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them’.
So we are commanded by Jesus to wash one another’s feet, not just literally every Maundy Thursday, or perhaps more often, but also metaphorically and symbolically, signifying thereby our mutual service and servanthood and our willingness almost literally to stoop to the lowliest and humblest actions.
Tonight of course we cannot wash one another’s feet. Nor can we reach out with a pat on the shoulder, a handshake, nor even with our own extended hands to receive the bread and wine in imitation and remembrance of what Jesus also did with his disciples on that first Maundy Thursday. We cannot emulate the woman who reached out and touched the hem of Jesus’s garment, finding as she did so that she was cured from the bleeding that had afflicted her for twelve years. We cannot, like Thomas, touch and feel the scars in Jesus’ hands to assuage our doubts that the crucified one has indeed come back to life as the resurrected one. Touch is so crucial in so many ways to the ministry and identity of Jesus. And tonight we cannot touch.
However, if we cannot touch each other, we can remain ‘in touch’ and so in communion with each other in these strange and isolated times. And if we cannot touch, we can feel – feel for those lonely and anxious and full of doubt and dread and fear in these troubling times, and we can, too, feel the touch of Christ, like the disciples as he washed their feet, the woman who touched the hem of his garment, Thomas who felt his scars.
Christ’s is the world in which we move;
Christ’s are the folk we’re summoned to love;
Christ’s is the voice which calls us to care,
and Christ is the one who meets us here.
To the lost Christ shows his face,
to the unloved he gives his embrace,
to those who cry in pain or disgrace
Christ makes, with his friends, a touching place.
Amen
Rev Professor Ian Bradley
Honorary Church of Scotland Chaplain