Preached on Maundy Thursday, April 2, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Samuel Torvend. With gratitude to Dom Gregory Dix.
Exodus 12:1-14
Psalm 116:1, 10-17
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17
Divine Mercy, by Gracie Morbitzer
Was ever another command in the history of the world so clearly obeyed as this one: Take and eat; take and drink? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this eating and drinking has been done in every conceivable human circumstance and for every conceivable human need: from infancy and before it, to old age and after it; from the grandeur of cathedrals to the fox hole amid the terror of war to the shanty towns that mark the earth. The Christian people have found no better thing than this to do for the infant newly-born; for the couple uniting in the bonds of marriage; as the sick or injured recover their health; as the dying receive the food and drink of eternal life; at the death of one’s beloved friend, spouse, child, or parent. The strong have found themselves humbled by the self-giving love of the monarch who wears no crown and directs no army; the weak and fearful discover their fragile souls nourished and strengthened by One who says, “Fear not, I am with you.”
The people of God have no found no better thing than this to do in the midst of famine or war; at the death of a slain president or princess; in the settlement of a strike as workers receive the Body and Blood of the laborer from Nazareth; in the prisoner of war camp among the wounded and the tortured; upon hearing the passage of a law that benefits the downtrodden; with those in the hidden room who must eat and drink in secret for fear of persecution: Christ hidden in a fragment of bread and a sip of wine.
The members of the Body of Christ have found no better thing than this to do in memory of the martyrs – in memory of the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem and the hundreds of school children who have been slain in this land; in memory of Peter and Paul, Stephen and Perpetua, Justin and Agnes, Thomas Becket and Thomas More and the many among us who cherish their union with the Prince of Peace more than their nation, tribe, or race; of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy and all those whose love for God’s holy justice has been and continues to be sealed with the shedding of their blood. Was ever a command in the history of the world so clearly and gratefully obeyed as this one: Take and eat; take and drink?
Women and men have found no better thing than this to do as the summer breeze floats through the window; as people of good will, in Autumn’s cool days, share bread and cup with those who live on the streets in this wealthiest of nations; as Winter rain and cold herald the land’s death; as Spring marks the increase of the houseless seeking food and shelter; as the monks and nuns of every monastery throughout the Christian world receive each guest as Christ himself and thereupon offer them the most precious Body and Blood of the One who wandered from village to village, proclaiming the coming of God’s kingdom with shared food and drink; as the mother, the father, holds open the hands of their child so that he, so that she, might receive the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation; as the priest traces the wine, the medicine of immortality, on the lips of the man, the woman, the teenager dying of AIDS, of cancer, of loneliness.
Week by week, and month by month, on the most ordinary days of the year and on this most Holy Thursday, on a hundred thousand Sundays, faithfully and unfailingly across all the parishes of the world, and in this church whose patron, Paul, was the first to write of this Lord’s Supper, the people and their priests continue to gather at table where heaven meets earth, where God becomes bread, where we are joined with our beloved dead who are alive to God in this sublime communion, where Christ nourishes you and me and then sends you and me into this troubled world as a blessing – as living food and drink for those who yearn for the compassion and justice this world cannot give itself: a blessing and not a curse.