Maundy Thursday 2010 Jesus - body builder

Who is this Jesus? As Holy Week moves to its climax with Maundy Thursday this is our question heading for a five part sermon series.

Christianity’s best asset is its Founder. In these days we seek to come close to him for as Dostoyevsky wrote ‘There has never been anyone lovelier, deeper or more sympathetic than Jesus’.

Over the next three days we’ll be looking at five key aspects of Jesus: his origin, teaching, death, resurrection, his church and his return. Because we’re starting today we’ll start out of sequence with the church.

If we’re to commend Jesus we can’t escape the inextricable link between him and the church he founded to be his earthly body.

Can you have Jesus without his church? Not in his fullness the bible says. To come close to Jesus you need scripture and you need the earthly body he came to build.

Yes, the church falls short of Jesus and can get in the way of Jesus but we can’t get around the fact that Jesus founded the church.

I will build my church Jesus said in Matthew 16 and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. In the 19th of our 39 Anglican Articles of Religion we read that ‘The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance..’

Sacraments, notably Baptism and the Eucharist, were commanded by Jesus, so it’s not true to Jesus to go without them and you won’t find them or preaching outside the Christian church! The creeds and dogmas of the church may seem complicated but they’re vital signposts that protect believers from straying off the well trodden path of Christian believing.

Who is this Jesus? The appreciation of Jesus is something people can do alone but best do together. Christianity centres on the person of Jesus. Like any person there is a mystery about Jesus. People are prone to manage that mystery by simplifying and reducing it. Sometimes this can end up in a false remake of Christianity that serves no one. This is where the corporate faith of the church is important in keeping people on track so their prayer, faith and action remain faithful to Jesus.

Today on Maundy Thursday we recall the principal action of Jesus that builds his body on earth. This is my body he said over bread at his Last Supper commanding us to continue that action until he returns.

Though we Christians are many we are one body because we all share in the one bread (1 Corinthians 10.17) says St Paul. Communion in bread and wine makes and keeps Christians one body, Christ’s body.

Jesus died to gather together the scattered children of God. (John 11.52). What happened in Holy Week is drawing humankind into one.

When people look at the church they don’t always see it as the body of Jesus. Yes, we’re a sinful body - but Jesus remains in our midst.

The story of the church is the unfolding of Holy Week as Jesus makes himself known to each generation through the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer. (Acts 2.42)

To this day wherever the Christian faith is being taught, the sacraments are being celebrated and people are praying and serving in Jesus’ name the body of Jesus is being built up under the sign of the Cross.

Jesus Christ is inseparable now from the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church that has grown up through the centuries across the nations.

Tonight in age old ceremonies this church recalls the gift of the eucharist which is ours to make us more fully Christ’s.

At that first supper in the upper room there was a cleansing of feet. That ceremony is to be repeated now. None of us is worthy to sit at the Lord ’s Table. All are in need of cleansing before we take our place.

We’re Christ’s body called to be more fully what he’s made us. The outward cleansing of feet now reminds us of the inward cleansing Jesus offers through his blood that makes us one with him in the new covenant established in that blood on this most holy night. We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world.