Let's Get Physical (Maundy Thursday)

Sermon by the vicar, the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Ex 12:1-4, 11-14, Ps 116:1,9-end, 1Cor 11:23-26, Jn 13:1-17, 31b-35

Is it possible to love someone without touching them?

 Maybe you’re think of Pyramus and Thisbe, as told by Ovid, or played in Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the basis of Romeo and Juliet, where the lovers are separated by a wall and whisper their sweet nothings to one another, with all that teenage tension.

 Or maybe you’re thinking of the great romances spun out by letter writing; Right now, in our Blitz mentality, we might be thinking of those War romances, letters back home from the trenches: ‘We’ll meet again’ as Queen Vera once sang.

 Maybe you’re thinking of the love you are separated from at this moment by the dreaded lurgy. Rhiannon reported to me advice given on the radio to a young man, at the beginning of all this, who was enquiring whether he could still meet up with his girlfriend for some furtive kissing, The presenter’s reply with all the real politic of agony-aunts was to suggest that now might be the time to take their relationship to the next level and move in together. Judging by the divorce spike in post-Covid China that’s not necessarily a helpful suggestion.

 Perhaps we need to narrow the question: Is love physical? The answer is yes. And I don’t just mean in the way Olivia Newton John sang of in 1981: “Let’s Get Physical”.

 Maundy Thursday is the festival in which we are most clearly celebrating the Christian ideal of love, and it’s a very physical service. Of all the services planned for this weekend, this feels the most difficult to celebrate in separation, because in all its elements it depends on physicality.

 So for centuries the church has practiced foot-washing. This is the quintessentially unBritish ordeal of having parishioners doff the socks and shoes, like a holiday trip to Blackpool, while the vicar already in hyperbolic liturgical dress, dons an extra-large bath towel and awkwardly gives a pair of arthritic feet a cursory rub.

 It’s one of those situations where no one wants to be there. Usually, there’s one person who’s very keen.But it doesn’t really make sense, as foot washing now is hardly part of our culture. If anything we associate feet more with fetish than with servility. We don’t very much tread the long dusty roads in our sandals. Some churches now do hand-washing, but that’s even more bizarre – who washes other people’s hands? Perhaps we should go round church offering people paper towels and a range of perfumes or colognes, but then all that’s shot out the window anyway with our social distancing. I’m fairly sure the government’s advice did not suggest washing someone else’s hands for twenty seconds.

 But there’s no denying that foot-washing is very physical. Intimate. Bodily. It requires contact, connection, vulnerability, trust. And in the meeting and the openness of those two bodies it is spiritual. Part of why we feel so awkward about it is because it’s intimate, uncomfortably so.

And what would the choir have been singing or chanting for centuries and centuries? ‘Ubi caritas et amor, deus ibi est.’ Where there is love and charity – there is God.  So when we get to the great commandment at the end of today’s Gospel; foot-washing is the illustration. ‘Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.’ Love is physical. It demands intimacy, vulnerability, trust, connection, contact.

 We were already nervous about physical touch. Respecting physical boundaries is a dominant theme in today’s society. COVID-19 has taken that to a new 2m level. Have we lost a piece of Christian love?

 As I’ve mentioned before there are no sacraments directly discussed in John’s Gospel. The Christian rites here are kept firmly implied. But everything in the foot-washing is suggestive of baptism. ‘Unless I wash you, you have no share in me’. Baptism is physical. Immersion in water. Anointing with oil. Touch.  Love is physical.

And of course, we are commemorating tonight the Last Supper. Eating and drinking. Bread and wine. And this is something we can relate to. If we love someone we take them out to dinner. Our favourite way to spend time with those we love is over food, or maybe cocktails. If you want to see how well a date’s going in a restaurant or a bar, watch how closely they put their glasses next to each other. The nearer the proximity the greater the better the date’s going.

And what is this sacrament about? ‘Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you… Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.’ That is Jesus saying ‘let’s get physical’. We must take his flesh, his blood inside us, to have life. There is nothing very abstract about Christianity. It is literally flesh and blood. A sacrament is a visible sign of an invisible presence: a physical demonstration of what we believe. And as we will see on Easter Sunday, it is a physical resurrection, into whose wounds the disciples are invited to press their hands, their fingers.

 Now my point is this. There have been those throughout history who have insisted that Christian love, altruism, charity should be impartial, abstract, objective; detached; that we must make decisions in the least bodily way, abstracted from emotion, attachment, from our humanity. This I think is unchristian. In a world that is largely run by systems, we all know the coldness, the frustration of being put on hold, held in a queue, told we don’t qualify.

What is more Christian is the American idiom ‘Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes’; the understanding that until you truly connect with a person you simply cannot love them. Unless you are there physically with them, in their clothes, their home, eating their food, touched or untouchable as they are, you cannot know.

 So what does this all mean in a world where the physical is prohibited? First of all we can still get alongside one another. I’ve been arranging shopping trips, errands and pick up for people across Putney, people I’ve never met, the volunteers have never met. We have never depended so much on the kindness of strangers in my lifetime. And all for our physical, bodily needs. People have picked up medicine for our boy Oberon, delivered much needed cake and vegetables to us; we have heard the voices of neighbours hitherto unknown. We cannot touch but we can physically help others facing constraint.

But also we have remembrance. Proust started off the world’s longest series until Coronation Street, with the memory based on the smell of a cake. Physicality is lodged in the memory. And as Christ calls us to the sacrament in memory of him, It is by memory that we evoke and celebrate God’s love.

 But also as every lover knows, the physical is not limited to touch. We have thousands of ways to communicate, through smiling, a nod, a telephone call, the gift of a cake, a letter.

 What we see as the Passion unfolds is the isolation of Christ. He is taken away from his friends. He is silenced. He is set apart like the scapegoat. He is taken outside the city. He is raised up from the earth. He cries, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me”; the cry of a man truly alone. But in all of this we have a physical account. A bruising, murderous physicality. A physicality of love through endurance As by his stripes we are healed.

 So while we continue in our isolation, waiting for that Easter morning when we can truly meet again. Let us remember how to love, and how to serve; and find those ways of maintaining physical connection; a desire to connect, to be vulnerable; to trust; to protect; to provide for; In a world that is more and more pulling people apart. Amen.