Tonight we begin the Triduum (Latin for "three day") with our Holy Thursday service, The Mass of the Lord's Supper. The Triduum is one service that begins tonight, includes the Good Friday liturgy, and culminates in the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday, the highest, holiest celebration in our Church year. In these three days we enter into the paschal mystery, the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ. Tonight we will hear the earliest account of the Last Supper, the reading from Paul's Letter to the Corinthians (written a good 15-30 yrs. before any of the gospel accounts). Paul is writing in response to the disreputable behavior of the Corinthian community at their celebrations of the Lord's Supper. I once heard a priest in a talk on the Eucharist say, "Thank God for the drunks at Corinth!" Those drunks are the reason Paul recounts the words of Jesus at the Last Supper. Paul's insight in this 11th chapter of this letter is that when the Corinthians mistreat their fellow Christians, when they let some in their community go hungry and suffer while they indulge themselves, they do not recognize Christ, and thus eat and drink judgment upon themselves. They do not discern the body. In other words, they do not recognize that they are the body of Christ, and when they do not recognize Christ's presence in one another, they do not recognize Christ in the body.

The gospel we hear from John gives a similar message. In the Gospel of John, there is no account of the sharing of the bread and wine. Instead we hear about the washing of the feet. Jesus washes his disciples feet, a gesture of love, concern, humbleness, service, and tells them that as he has done for them, so they are to do for one another. In this passage is one of the most profound lines in John's gospel for me:

I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do. (John 13:15)

If we could live by this one line in the Gospel, we would have understood Jesus' entire life and message; we would have understood what it means to be a Christian. We literally wash one another's feet at the Holy Thursday service. If you have ever had your feet washed, you may know that it is not always a comfortable feeling. You have to be willing to be a bit vulnerable to have your feet washed. You have to recognize another's vulnerability and trust when you wash her feet. In many places 12 are picked to have their feet washed. I have also attended at places where everyone washes someone's feet and has her own feet washed. The theme of Holy Thursday is what it means to be a member of the body of Christ, the continuing sacrament of God's love in the world.

On Good Friday we venerate the cross. We do not worship the object, but rather express our devotion to what the object stands for - the crucifixion of Christ. The cross represents Christ's sacrifice for us and his solidarity with us in our moments of worst suffering. The cross should tell us that we are never alone, even when we feel abandoned by all including God. The cross is the symbol of God's love for us poured out. The cross tells us that God's reaction to our sinfulness is to love us without any conditions. Nothing we could ever do can "separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:39)

Easter, like all of our feast days, begins at sundown Saturday night. At the Easter Vigil, we begin in darkness as the Paschal candle is lit. The light of Christ's resurrection is spread through the entire church, as each of us receives the light and then gives what we have received, the pattern of our Christian lives. We hear the story of salvation history - the way God has worked in our history from the moment of creation. We welcome new members into the Church and renew our own baptismal vows, seeing in the waters of baptism that we have become new creations, we have put on Christ, we are transfigured. We again receive what we are and become what we receive in the Eucharist, and we are sent out into the world to take the Easter light into all the darkest places in our lives and our world.