Stripped [Maundy Thursday]

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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Exodus 12:1-14

• 1 Corinthians 11:23-32

• St. John 13:1-15

Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. (1 Tim 1)
 
Jesus speaks to you tonight, from His Holy Supper, through the Gospel, saying:

“He rose from supper. He stripped off his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist.”

 
Tonight, we strip our altar, made with our own hands, not God’s, not in the hope of receiving some special grace or gift from God in doing so, but in the hope that our conscience will be as stricken, smitten, and afflicted as our Lord. We only keep the ceremonies that teach what we need to know about Christ.
 
And what does stripping the Altar have to do with the doctrines of Jesus, necessary for faith? It is a mark of the Messiah, a prophesy, and so that you know the Messiah communes at this Altar, we make our Altar like our Messiah.
 
Joseph was stripped of his coat of many colors by his brothers, in their desire to kill him. When King Saul died, his enemies stripped him and sent “messengers throughout the land of the Philistines, to carry the good news to the house of their idols and to the people” (1 Sam 31:9), that their enemy king was defeated. 
 
Job prophesies, in his Easter chapter (19), saying, “He has stripped from me my glory and taken the crown from my head” yet, “I know that my Redeemer lives.” 
 
So we come to the humiliation of Jesus and hear this same prophetic pattern fulfilled, “And they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’” (St. Matt 27:28-29) and it is Good News to carry to the people!
 
But the delivery of this prophesy does not stop there! What is it that the Marys and St. Peter and St John see in the tomb? They see cloths, stripped off! Jesus, rising from the dead, strips Himself. He strips Himself of the old linens, the old wineskins, the old leaven of sin, death, and the power of the devil and leaves them in the grave.
 
The mortality of Christ has now put on immortality. The corruption that was laid on Christ has been turned to incorruption. In the twinkling of an eye. Cast off and bedecked. This is the movement that we are then given to live out in our life of Faith.
 
Look at St. Peter after the Resurrection of Jesus, for example. After the St. Thomas incident, Peter still does not understand what Jesus did for him and declared, “I’m going fishing” (St John 21:3). Jesus continues to chase after His weary, confused Apostles and appears to them again, this time on the shore while they are in the boats, a familiar scene. 
 
When St. John exclaims that it is Jesus, St. Peter clothes himself, for he was stripped for work. He was stripped for the earthly work of slugging through sin, guilty of unbelief. But when the Lord appears, when Jesus shows up, St. Peter gets dressed. He dresses in the outer garment that is his in Christ Jesus, that is, Christ’s righteousness.
 
He dresses in that garment to remind himself and to reinvigorate his faith, that he is baptized, that he does believe, and that he is now going to eat with Jesus. Similar to tonight’s Gospel where St. Peter also declares that he should strip so that Jesus may wash all of him before he communes, Jesus speaks of a better way.
 
The better way of Word and Sacrament. Of rebirth and regeneration. Of the stripping off the old and being clothed in the new. This is why we attempt to dress different for Sundays, because we believe that we come into heaven’s own Temple here. That Christ Himself, appears on our shore of Chancel and Pulpit to cry out to us: Come and break bread.
 
When we are invited to the wedding feast, the clothes are provided, the uniforms furnished. We all look alike in Christ, for we all look like little Christs. We are stripped of sin and death and dressed to enter into the presence of our sinless and deathless Lord and Savior, fully clothed in Him.
 
In these new clothes, St. Paul can now say, “If we judged ourselves, we would not be judged” (1 Cor 11:31), because if we have faith the size of a mustard seed, we can say to God, I am baptized into Christ! So now our judgement from the Lord is discipline. A knock on the side of the head to keep us on the straight and narrow. An example to keep us going towards communing with His only begotten Son.
 
Thus, Jesus interrupts the Last Supper in order to remind His disciples, to rekindle the struggling faith in His Word and in His Promises, washing completely, from head to toe, from cradle to grave, those who hear His Word and believe it.
 
Jesus lays aside His outer garments to reveal His Body, His Blood, and the new, watery garments that appeal to God for a good conscience, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Pet 3:21). Jesus gives Himself and we take Him bare-faced. He created this world bare-faced, He was made man barefaced, he did His work barefaced, and He continues among you, stripped for the work of cleansing you from your sins.

In order that you, now in the robes of Christ, may touch, smell, hear, taste and see that the Lord is good.