April 2, 2026 Maundy Thursday

I’m going to share with you all at the outset tonight that this sermon and tomorrow’s sermon are paired this year as one thematic arc connecting these first two nights of our great and holy Triduum—the three holiest days of our Christian year.

And I promise, this is not simply a ploy to get you all to come back tomorrow—though that would be nice. The truth is that these two nights take us into the deepest heart of our faith and the truth of who we believe Jesus to be, and the salvific significance of his work upon the cross.

But I want to start in a place very far from there—and from here.

I was born in 1986, and we moved to the Illinois side of the St. Louis metro area when I was a year and a half old. My father pastored a small church for a few years, but by the late 1980s, we were attending Winstanley Baptist Church, which became my spiritual home for the rest of my childhood and adolescence.

Winstanley is located on the top of a small rise on the edge of the bluff line overlooking the Mississippi River, and its entrance sits a mere 500 feet from the eastern edge of East St. Louis. I suspect there were some who wished it was farther away than that.

Winstanley was a product of East St. Louis. Originally a mission church, a group of 33 people met together in the fall of 1907 to formally establish it as a congregation. For decades, they worshiped just blocks from Miles Davis’ childhood home. But in 1968—like many predominantly white churches of that era—they abandoned their downtown home for a place just over the line, literally on the “better” side of the railroad tracks.

And that could have been the end of the story. Except for death and rebirth. Except for servant leadership.

Some of you may remember the years when East St. Louis was consistently one of the most crime‑impacted communities in the country. For years, incredibly high violent crime rates paired with profound corruption made life unimaginably hard.

I’ve told you before about Chet and Michelle Cantrell, who toiled for 30 years serving disadvantaged and underserved children and youth, and about Dr. Steve Phillips, who on his first Sunday in the pulpit at Winstanley proclaimed, “It’s all downhill from here,” reflecting our call to be servant leaders in the community and world around us.

That regeneration—that renewal of spirit and mission—turned a white‑flight church into a powerful force of good works and justice in the world around it. And that legacy of transformation left an indelible mark on me.

That mark isn’t just because of the works. It’s because of who Winstanley was. Over the years, we counted among our membership clean‑cut Air Force officers alongside battle‑scarred enlisted men from Korea and Vietnam. I sat in Sunday school with two Matts—one from a family of leading auto dealers and the other the son of a truck mechanic whose hands were permanently oil‑stained.

It was a church that taught me something profound about being a servant, about being a Christian in this world—but also about the humanity within each and every one of us. The imago Dei—the image of God—that each of us is endowed with by our Creator.

This night, more than any other night of the church year, reminds us of these parallel realities. Christ, in his service to his disciples, models for us the way we are to be servant leaders in the world around us.

If we really put Jesus in context and remember that many of his life experiences were not so different from our own, we begin to see how we are to be in the world. He could have been a zealot—a fighter and protester in the streets, zealous for the law but focused solely on external transformation of systems and institutions. He could have been a Pharisee—or even a Sadducee—focused on the law as a way of living a righteous but detached life, removed from the struggles of inequality.

But he does neither.

He is the Word of God made flesh. He comes as a presence of service—one who builds relationships. He does not take sides, because he offers transformation and healing for all.

What Jesus teaches us—both in the institution of the Eucharist and in the hidden sacrament of foot washing—is that we are to be involved in the dirty, grimy work of service, healing, and transformation that the world so desperately needs. But we are always to do such work within the context of relationship.

Remember too, tonight, that Judas is here at the table. Judas too gets his feet washed. Judas too dines and reclines with Jesus.

Even the one who seeks our death—we are to wash their feet too. We are to invite them to the table.

Years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. observed, “I think it is one of the tragedies, one of the shameful tragedies, that eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in Christian America.”

And yet, research in the last twenty years has shown that churches and places of worship remain some of the last bastions of diversity—of relationship across economic, social, and cultural lines.

Blessedly, that was my experience at Winstanley. And I pray that can be our experience here at St. Anne’s too. And in many ways, it is.

But my invitation to us tonight, friends, is this: as we follow Christ and his instruction—as he institutes the Eucharist and teaches us to care for one another and wash one another’s feet—let us remember the central and fundamental call that Christ gives us:

To be people of relationship.

Relationship grounded in justice. Relationship grounded in the works of the Kingdom. Relationships that do not tolerate or accept systems of oppression and injustice, but that are always open—to new life, to transformation, to a new way of being.

The door to relationship is never shut. It is never shut for Christ. And it should never be shut for us.

So tonight, as we receive these admonitions, I pray that not only do we embody them in this moment, but that we carry them forward—this call in a world so divided, in a moment so polarized—to be the people of relationship.

And in being people of relationship, to be the people of transformation that Christ calls us to be.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.