Maundy Thursday 2009
Hagios o Theos
Holy God.
One of the ancient prayers of the Church is the Trisagion. It remains today in the liturgy of the Eastern Church and in the liturgy of Good Friday of the Roman rite. But many of us will know it from the conclusion of the chaplet of Divine Mercy -“holy God, holy mighty, holy immortal One have mercy on us.” Hagios o Theos, Hagios ischyros, Hagios athanatos, eleison imas. Sanctus Deus, Sanctus Fortis, Sanctus Immortalis, miserere nobis. This cry from ages past comes from the soul of the church as she enters the Great Mystery of these three days. It is an echo of the human heart stunned by what we see in front of us. We have begun these most solemn days of the Church’s year and use this ancient formula as our guide.
Hagios o Theos, Sanctus Deus, Holy God.
Tonight the holy God Himself is present in the Holy Eucharist. We mark the institution and the inauguration of this sacrament, through the sacrament of holy orders. The words and rituals we use highlight this most sacred of actions that has fed and sustained the church for centuries. We think of magnificent altars of gilded marble. We admire the artistry employed in making the sacred vessels and liturgical vestments. And some of the most beautiful music ever written is dedicated to this Mystery.
Simply put, the Eucharist is holy because it is the Body and Blood, soul and divinity of God Himself. And while we join the church’s cry of “holy,” we strangely do not find ourselves separate from the events of this night. In this Mass, we see ourselves seated around the table with Jesus and the Twelve. We see Him washing their feet and hear the water lightly splashing on the floor. We feel the tension in the room as He announces His upcoming betrayal. We feel the fear and anxiety of the disciples who are dreading the loss of their Master.
Do you see what has happened here? Yes, God is holy – completely other end absolutely higher than any of us. Yes, we are awestruck as limited beings in the Presence, the sacred Presence, of the omnipotent God and yet, we are called “friends” of that same Divine Person. We are shown the inner sanctum of our God’s entire revelation to the world when we are told to love one another because and in the same way He has loved us. The intimacy of what is happening here has not yet been fully described by any human being. The mystery of the Holy Eucharist is not only found in the miracle of transubstantiation. The mystery of faith we proclaim this evening is how intimately our holy God speaks to us.
In almost every movie and painting of the Last Supper, you’ll notice a soft, golden glow hovering over the scene. Yes, it highlights the bread and wine transformed but it also tries to articulate something we can too often miss. The holiness of the moment is obvious because of Christ. But He is not alone. So once again, we hear the echo of those first moments of creation when God saw that it was not a good thing for human beings to be without one another. Tonight, we are not being offered again the convenience of coexistence. Tonight, the holy God will offer us holy communion.
From the intimacy of the Trinity Himself, we are offered a mystery of union with our God and each other. Christianity is best symbolized by the cross. These two beams demonstrate the vertical relationship to God and the horizontal relationship to one another. Without one of these, the other means little. And this Divine intimacy holds the two together through the Eucharist. In Christ, we see the love of God and the love of neighbor perfectly united. Today in His Eucharistic presence, Christ remains the power joining the love of God and the love of neighbor.
We have all noticed in recent years a loss of faith in the mystery of the Eucharist. The teaching of the Church has been ‘downgraded’ by some. This is a very dangerous thing because so many can lose their understanding of that communion of love. It can become far too easy to separate the love of God and neighbor because without Christ holding it together, chaos ensues. If the Eucharist is merely a symbol, our worship becomes an empty token. Our service to the neighbor goes without reference to God. What was once a font of salvation becomes nothing more then one of many sources of blessing.
Chaos is the absence of order and the refusal of relationship. Objects exist on their own without regard for and to other objects. It’s almost like a cup of flour thrown heedlessly into the air resulting only in a big mess. The mystery of Christ’s intimacy gatherers those scattered grains and by the power of the Holy Spirit, joins them together. In the Eucharist we see and we receive the re-creation of the world and ourselves.
So tonight we cry out, “Agios o Theos, Holy God.” But this God does not exist remotely in the darkness of a temple or in the unapproachable sacred splendor of the heavens. The holiness of God is found tonight not in how far away He is, but in how close He remains. The holy God of salvation has delivered us from the slavery of hopelessness much as He delivered the Israelites from the slavery of Pharaoh. Tonight we sang once again the refrain of those delivered by this holy God, “what nation has gods so close to it as the Lord our God is to us?”
Our God is the holy God who has made a sovereign decision to re-create from the chaos of the world, a communion of holiness. He has chosen to remain close even to those who would abandon him. Our prayer this evening is that we would have the grace to remain close to him and to one another. And so we pray:
Draw us in the Spirit's tether;
For when humbly, in thy name,
Two or three are met together,
Thou art in the midst of them:
Touch we now thy garment's hem.
As the faithful used to gather
In the name of Christ to sup,
Then with thanks to God the Father
Break the bread and bless the cup,
So knit thou our friendship up.
All our meals and all our living
Make as sacraments of thee,
That by caring, helping, giving,
We may true disciples be.
We will serve thee faithfully. Amen.