Preached on Thursday, April 17, 2025, Maundy Thursday, at Trinity Cathedral, Little Rock.

From the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26).

The collect that Danny prayed on our behalf this evening––the collect for Maundy Thursday––is likely the one that I pray the most often as a priest here at Trinity. Do you remember it?

Almighty Father, whose dear Son, on the night before he suffered, did institute the Sacrament of his Body and Blood: Mercifully grant that we may thankfully receive the same in remembrance of him who in these holy mysteries giveth us a pledge of life eternal… (Book of Common Prayer, page 169)

In addition to being the collect for Maundy Thursday, it is also the collect for “Communion under Special Circumstances,” that is, the liturgy used when laity and clergy bring the Bread and Wine of Holy Communion to those who cannot gather with the Sunday assembly: people who are homebound, people who have fallen ill, people in hospital rooms, people in retirement communities, and so on. I pray this collect quite often, as do our Lay Eucharistic Visitors, because we receive the Bread and Wine often, because, as Paul writes to the Corinthians, we have been commanded by our Lord to do so.

I’m reminded of a famous quote by Gregory Dix, an Anglican monk, priest, and liturgical scholar from the twentieth century. It comes from his most famous work, The Shape of the Liturgy.

Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacle of earthly greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth. [Humanity has] found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for [a couple] in a little country church; for the proclamation of a dogma or for a good crop of wheat; for the wisdom of the Parliament of a mighty nation or for a sick old woman afraid to die…for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover; in thankfulness because my father did not die of pneumonia…for Captain so-and-so wounded and prisoner of war; on the beach at Dunkirk; while the hiss of scythes in the thick June grass came faintly through the windows of the church…one could fill many pages with the reasons why [humanity has] done this, and not tell a hundredth part of them. And [humanity has obeyed this command to celebrate Holy Communion] best of all week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of Christendom… [1]

In every corner of the world, in every corner of our lives, we pray that, by this Holy Communion, we might remember Christ’s death and be assured of the eternal life given to us therein.

One of the reasons we prioritize bringing the Bread and Wine to those who are unable to join the Sunday assembly is that it keeps the Church together. It forces us to recognize that we are one body, no matter where we find ourselves amidst the changes and chances of life. Ask any Eucharistic Visitor: they’ll tell you that that’s the most rewarding part of the job.

But tonight, I find myself wondering: how is it that Holy Communion keeps us connected to Christ and to one another? How is it that we are one body in sharing one bread and one cup?

Liturgically-minded folks like Gregory Dix might say something like this: we are connected to one another and to Christ by this Holy Communion because we share in it. We are made one body because we share one bread and one cup. It is because we share in this sacrament, in every time and in every place, that we are joined to one another and to Christ. And so, it’s no wonder that coming to Church on Sundays is so important for us. It’s no wonder that sharing Holy Communion each week is so important for us. It’s no wonder that sending our Eucharistic Visitors to the sick and to the homebound is so important for us. It’s no wonder that this very night, the night in which Christ instituted the Sacrament of His Body and Blood, is so very important for us. By it, we are united, made one body with Him, Who died for us.

Now, there’s a lot of truth to that kind of thinking. But I also think that it misses a crucial point. At the end of the day, it’s not because we do anything that we are united to one another and to Christ in this sacrament. In fact, it’s exactly not that. To start there would be to miss out on the miracle that is the Sacrum Triduum, the three holy days, which begin tonight. The miracle of these three days is that Christ did something for us that we could never have done for ourselves. What unites all of us together is what Christ did for all of us, and it’s that unifying act of Christ that we remember in this sacrament given to us by our Lord Himself.

It is the miracle of Christ’s redeeming work that unites us to one another; it is Christ’s death, in which we share, that makes us one body. Holy Communion is the means by which we remember something that happened once and for all, in the strongest sense possible. As our Prayer Book puts it, the cross of Christ is “full, perfect, and sufficient,” and that means that the cross of Christ “doesn’t need prolonging, reenacting, or reactivating. It is the single, complete fact in which God deals with the sins of the whole world. It stands. It is finished” [2]. The finality of the cross of Christ stands above all time, reaching forth across all time, uniting us to Christ and to one another as children redeemed from bondage by our Lord—and it’s that fact that we remember in this and every Holy Communion. So, it’s not really what we do here and now that makes us one; it’s what Christ did then and there—and in the Bread and Wine, we remember that we are one here and now because of what He did then and there.

So, you might be asking yourself, “okay, then, what’s the point in celebrating Holy Communion if it doesn’t really do anything?  What are we celebrating tonight if obeying Christ’s command to ‘do this in remembrance of Him’ doesn’t actually accomplish anything at all, not least making us one body with Him and with one another? What is it that we are doing?”

What we do in the Holy Communion is that strange kind of doing––that doing in which we don’t really do much at all. Our collect for tonight calls this doing “receiving,” picking up Paul’s language in his letter to Corinth. What we do is receive what Christ has already done, once and for all. Or to put it another way, as Paul also writes, what we do is “proclaim” what has already been done for us––that is, Christ’s death. But really, whether you use “receiving” and “proclaiming,” they’re both reaching for that other word that is so central for Christians: what we’re talking about here is “faith.” Faith is that strange doing where we don’t do much at all; faith is that activity of receiving the activity which is God’s alone; faith is that proclamation of something that has been proclaimed to us: that Christ died for us, a miracle which unites us all, one to another, no matter where we find ourselves along life’s way––a unity which we faithfully receive and proclaim at this Table.

How good it is for us to have been given this gift by our Lord! How good it is to be reassured of Christ’s love for us, whether in this Cathedral, or at home, or in the hospital, or anywhere else in life. How good it is for us to be reassured of God’s favor and goodness towards us; that we are very members––true members!––incorporate in the mystical body of His Son, the blessed company of all faithful people; and also heirs, through hope, of His everlasting kingdom. And so, my friends, draw near with faith tonight and take this Holy Sacrament to your comfort. Amen.

[1] Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (London: A. & C. Black, Ltd.), 744–745.

[2] John Webster, “Take this Holy Sacrament,” Confronted by Grace (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2015), 76.