Sermon

6th April 25

Because the services of Holy Week and Easter include scripture at its most powerful, and liturgy at its most dramatic, there is little useful that a preacher can or should add.  But as we look forward to those services, I want to talk about something that I think is easily overlooked.

Immediately after the sharing of holy communion on Maundy Thursday evening, the altars are stripped.  The frontals and other moveable decorations are taken out of the Church, leaving it relatively plain and bare.  But, because there are so many things happening at so many special services over Holy Week and Easter, I think that the significance of this action is easily missed.

It is easy to think of it in purely practical terms, and I have heard it described in these ways.  I have been told that it is done because, after the Last Supper, the disciples had to clear away the table, before returning it to its owner.  Well, even if they did, that hardly justifies us re-enacting that in Church.  

Or, I have been told, it’s because the soldiers stripped Jesus both to be flogged and later to be crucified.  But, if true, that would surely form part of the liturgy of Good Friday.

Or, I have been told, it’s because we traditionally have the Church as stark and bare as possible on Good Friday as we commemorate the death of Jesus.  But that alone wouldn’t justify this being done in such a public way.  We don’t ask the congregation to stay in Church when we change the altar frontals from one colour to another as we move through the seasons and feasts of the Church’s Year.  Why do it on this occasion?

I think that the stripping of the altars has a profound significance beyond re-enacting the final hours of the life of Jesus.  I suggest that it should remind us of the need to strip away from ourselves all the things that we rely on to hide the real self.  I’m not talking about clothing in the literal sense – heaven forbid!  Rather I’m talking metaphorically about the things with which we surround ourselves: the things we use to cover our real selves.

Different people use different things.  Certainly that includes the wealth and material possessions that we think will impress others and stop them seeing beyond that.  For many it is power and status to encourage folk to look up to, rather than down on us.  Different people use different things: we need to examine ourselves to see what defences we are putting up.

The invitation to confession in the Prayer Book services of Mattins and Evensong includes the words: “the Scriptures moveth us … to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness; and that we not dissemble nor cloke them before the face of Almighty God our heavenly Father”.  We need to see ourselves as God sees us, at all times certainly, but above all on the eve of Good Friday, as we are about to enter into the death and resurrection of Jesus, which are our only hope of salvation when we must face that “dreadful day of judgement when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed”.

The stripping of the altars on Maundy Thursday should remind us of the need to strip away all the things that separate from God and from neighbour, so that we are properly prepared to share in the death and resurrection of Jesus on Good Friday and Easter Day.

Amen