Maundy Thursday address by Rt Revd. James Bell, Bishop of Knaresborough

Ripon Cathedral 01.04.10

You’ll be glad to know that I have resisted the temptation of the day: so this isn’t going to be about being fools for Christ!

It seems particularly appropriate in this week of all weeks to recognise the crises facing the church.

The ending of Christendom (called the Death of Christian Britain by Callum Brown) and with it the loss of a guaranteed place in society; the reduction in the numbers of stipendiary clergy and growth in the size of benefices; the aging congregations and the alienation of young people; the financial crisis which some say is a spiritual crisis (I suppose they mean a want of generosity on the one hand and a lack of vision on the other); revelations of child abuse which have been particularly devastating for the Catholic Church in Ireland and now Germany. The list could go on and could include the crises of the world of which we are a part: climate change, poverty, recession, terrorism.

The aim isn’t to depress you, but to suggest that we need to recognise and be real about the crises that beset us and hang on in there. Crisis may, strangely, be a good thing (we do, after all call this Friday “Good”). Crisis invites reflection on and reappraisal of who and how we are as church. Perhaps crisis helps us to hear again who and how we are called to be?

And so to the theme of this day: a new commandment, a new mandate, Mandatum novum. The traditional English name of this day comes, of course, from that mandatum. “Love one another as I have loved you,” is the new mandate, the ever-renewed mandate.

Since there already was the commandment to love your neighbour as yourself, it has been suggested that the novelty of this mandate was in the injunction to love one another “as I have loved you.” To love as Christ has loved: that’s quite a development of, even a departure from, “Love your neighbour as yourself.”

Love one another as I have loved you.” Heard and taken to heart, these are converting words! I remember clearly the impact of they made on Jean. It was Maundy Thursday evening. The sermon focused on the implications and the applications of the new commandment. Jean was visibly moved. She was crying. And later she said how the new commandment had moved her to lay aside a long-standing resentment of another member of the church and to seek a reconciliation, costly as that undoubtedly was.

During the bible study at my bishops’ cell group the other week, I was struck by Gordon Mursell’s observation that the new commandment encapsulates perfectly the calling of the church. Mutual love is fundamentally what the church is about, what it exists to practice. That’s because mutual love is the reflection, the demonstration, the incarnation of the love of the Trinity.

C.K. Barrett comments, “The commandment is new………in that it corresponds to the command that regulates the relation between Jesus and the Father; the love of the disciples for one another is not merely edifying, it reveals the Father and the Son.”

Love for one another is not merely edifying; it reveals the Father and the Son. So is church “church” if it lacks signs of mutual love?

What are those signs? Surely they must be the marks of Christ. In the Gospel Christ’s love was demonstrated in advance of the new commandment in the washing of the disciples’ feet. His love would have the absolute and ultimate demonstration in the cross. His love was also demonstrated in forgiveness and restoration of those who had failed, misunderstood and denied him.

Of the washing of the feet, Richard Bauckham in the excellent Testimony of the Beloved Disciple says, “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given him the uniquely divine lordship over all creation, undertook the role of a slave, performing for his disciples the act most expressive of servile status. The one who can claim the highest status in all reality, sovereign over all creation, humbles himself to the lowliest human status, expressing his lordship in self-humiliating service for his social inferiors. A radical overturning of common cultural values with respect to status is implied.”

He goes on to suggest that “mutual foot-washing has a clear meaning as the key to rejection of social hierarchy and a new form of social relationship based on Jesus’ example.” 

Maybe as we emerge from Christendom, church is better placed to hear this message that in has been for a long time? Love requires that we serve; that we abandon status and whatever else separates us from others.

One of those things is, of course, power. Timothy Radcliffe reflects on this in the aftermath of the crisis caused by the revelations of child abuse. His article in the Tablet is entitled, “Towards a Humble Church.” He says, “This terrible crisis of sexual abuse is deeply linked to the way that power can corrupt human relationships, which is why it touches all the churches, even if the Catholic Church happens to have been more in the spotlight recently.”

 “We will not have a Church which is safe for the young until we learn from Christ and become again a humble church in which we are all equal children of the one Father and authority is never oppressive.” “….we need a new culture of authority, from the Vatican to the parish council, which lifts people up into the mystery of loving equality, which is the life of the Trinity.” Radcliffe reaches this interesting conclusion, worthy of reflection as ministers reaffirm their commitment to their ministry: “Jesus promises rest for our souls. Often we priests are consumed by a destructive activism in our service of the people…….Thomas Merton believed that this hyper-activism was a collusion with the violence of our society: ‘The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is co-operation in violence.’ If we let this implicit violence infect our lives, then it will come out somehow.”

Thought-provoking? I hope so!

That crisis – like all the others – is recalling the Church to the calling of Christ, to who and how Christ is which is the mandate for who and how we are to be.

“Love one another as I have loved you.”

The new commandment is clearly begging to find expression in the life of every local Christian community. What does it look like when it does? Do we see, for example, a new form of social relationship based on Jesus’ example? (The washing of feet is clearly culturally conditioned; what might be the equivalents?)

Can it be practised across the denominational divides? Can it apply to the churches of the diocese? Can it find expression amongst the clergy of deaneries and, indeed, diocese?  What would it look like if it did? What would be the signs of mutual love in the likeness of Christ? What would be different? What would things look like if it was the basis of the arrangements attending the ordination of women to the episcopate? How would it shape the debate about sexuality? Have we got anything to show the world about mutual attention and regard, about forgiveness and restoration, about being in community? “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Can we become, can we become more fully a humble church? (And a sacrificial church, and a merciful church?)