Never Cast Away: Sermon for Maundy Thursday, 2020

In 2000, Tom Hanks starred in the movie Cast Away. It told the story of Chuck Noland, stranded on a deserted island in the South Pacific after the cargo plane he was traveling on crashed in a violent storm. As a systems analyst for FedEx, Noland was obsessed with efficiency and was a workaholic, which is why he never managed to marry his longtime love, Kelly. 

 Chuck survives the crash over the ocean, and awakens on shore of an uninhabited island the next morning, having no idea where he is because the storm had pushed the plane far off course, and this means that no one will know where to look for him either. 

Thanks to Chuck’s incredible attention to detail and experience as a sailor and outdoorsman, as well as the providential washing up of many of the packages that had been on the downed plane with him, Chuck manages to survive his initial first few days, dancing with joy when he is able to start a fire, subsisting largely on a diet of coconut and crab. 

He tries several times to escape the island, but the combination of a sharp coral reef and devastating surf always pushes him back to shore, sometimes injured. He contemplates killing himself, hating his feeling of helplessness and isolation. He suffers from terrible loneliness, and the only human face he ever sees is inside his now broken pocketwatch, a photo of his beloved Kelly, whom he often stares at as we tries to sleep. One day a volleyball washes up on shore, and he draws a face on it and names it Wilson after the manufacturer, giving him someone to talk to. 

Eventually he resigns himself to remaining there on that island, to keep a signal fire going, living in a cave during the rainy season, keeping track of the winds and the tides. After four years, two fiberglass walls of what looks like a port-a-potty wash up on shore, and Chuck realizes that the tide has brought him a way to escape, as he can use this as a sail to propel him past the surf and the reef if the wind and tide are right. 

He spends weeks making rope out of bark, and lashes tree trunks together, waiting for the wind and tide to be most advantageous, and then finally sets off. 

Once he gets out into the open sea, his sail blows off and he is adrift again. He even loses Wilson as his raft loosens and the volleyball falls overboard. Overcome with grief, he collapses on the raft and continues to drift, only to miraculously come into sight of a passing freighter ship. 

He is rescued and returned to his home, only to find that he had been declared dead and buried, and that Kelly has married and had a child. Although they eventually meet and realize they still love each other deeply, they come to the realization that she has a new life, and let each other go. 

Heartbroken, Chuck goes and visits Stan, one of his good friends from work, and talks about what he has lost and gained since being stranded and returned. As the rain falls outside, Chuck recounts what had happened: 

“We both had done the math. Kelly added it all up and... knew she had to let me go. I added it up, and knew that I had... lost her.

Because I was never gonna get off that island. I was gonna die there, totally alone. I was gonna get sick, or get injured or something. The only choice I had, the only thing I could control was when, and how, and where it was going to happen. So... I made a rope and I went up to the summit, to hang myself. I had to test it, you know? Of course. You know me. And the weight of the log, snapped the limb of the tree, so I-I - , I couldn't even kill myself the way I wanted to. I had power over nothing. 

And that's when this feeling came over me like a warm blanket. I knew, somehow, that I had to stay alive. Somehow. I had to keep breathing. Even though there was no reason to hope. And all my logic said that I would never see this place again. So that's what I did. I stayed alive. I kept breathing. And one day my logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in, and gave me a sail. 

And now, here I am. I'm back. In Memphis, talking to you. I have ice in my glass... 

And I've lost her all over again. I'm so sad that I don't have Kelly. 
But I'm so grateful that she was with me on that island. And I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. 

Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?”(1) 

As we enter into the last days of this extraordinary Lent, we too may feel we are adrift. Like Chuck, many of us are struggling with uncertainty, anxiety, fear of the unknown. All that we have known has been changed by this terrible pandemic in much the same way that Chuck was on that island all alone. 

Our tendency to take pride in our own independence has been brought up short by a growing realization that we are all deeply dependent upon each other and interconnected, as we have talked about previously since this global health crisis has caused us to suspend in person worship. We've instead been urged us to stay apart from our friends and neighbors and remain largely in place if we can. 

And just this week, we have suffered the death of one of our own here at St. Martin’s, and many of us feel a profound grief and sense of loss as this pandemic has touched us personally and heart-breakingly. 

Like Chuck, many of us are coming to the realization that we are not as in control of our circumstances as we once thought we were. Like Chuck, too, though, as people of faith we understand the power of love to sustain us. 

And so here we are at Maundy Thursday—a day when we celebrate the institution of the Eucharist in a time when we can’t celebrate it together. Yet we have each other. We have community. We keep on going, upheld by bonds of love—love, even in the midst of heartbreak. 

In our readings, we hear the beautiful story from the book of Exodus, and are reminded of how we stand in solidarity with our Jewish neighbors as they begin Passover. We hear Paul’s recounting to the Church in Corinth of how the Holy Eucharist was instituted—the same precious words we have been fasting from for the last weeks. We hear the gospel story of Jesus humbling himself and washing the feet of his disciples at a time when we haven’t been able to touch each other for nearly a month. 

Yet we are not cast away or adrift. For tonight we are reminded of the power of love, love that sustains us despite separation or distance, just as it did for Chuck in that movie. Because Maundy Thursday recounts the last night Jesus was with his friends and disciples, knowing he was about to be betrayed. 

Jesus is getting ready to leave his disciples—and he wants to show them what true love is. 

Love is service. Love is sacrifice. Love is being vulnerable. 

Maundy Thursday inaugurates a holy period of three days’ time which our forebears called the Triduum- the “three days.” This is when the movement toward the cross becomes inexorable. If Jesus was crucified and died on a Friday, then that means he was betrayed on a Thursday- tonight. This is the night we are reminded that, no matter what happens, Jesus loves us, and we are to love each other just as extravagantly and open-heartedly. 

 Love literally surrounds the story we hear tonight. It is LOVE that marks us to the world as followers and disciples of Jesus. Love for each other. Love that is tied up in ACTION, not in sentiment or mere warm feelings, but love that calls us to truly serve each other—love wrapped up in justice. 

Love that is tied up in each precious breath. Love that is tied up in hope for what the tide might bring tomorrow. Love that right now is embodied in doctors and nurses and care-givers giving of themselves for the care of others, often at their most vulnerable. 

It is not only Jesus’s love for the disciples that glorifies God—it is by the disciples’ love for each other that everyone in the world will know the name of Jesus. Not by judgment, or by cherry-picking Bible verses, or by fear-mongering with threats of smiting. But by putting on the armor of love and commitment to each other in the face of a world beset by fear, loss, and anxiety. 

It is a holy time for us. As our first reading reminds us, it is also a holy time for our Jewish neighbors. We are united with them in remembering, as our reading in Exodus reminds us: “This shall be a day of remembrance for us.” It is a time to remember that God’s reconciling work is our work too. We are both drawn together around tables of remembrance--as they begin to celebrate Passover, and as we remember and move toward the sacrifice on the cross that Christ continues to make for us. 

We are called to receive and then embody a love supreme that admits no lessening due to mere distance. An all-encompassing, active love that we are asked to allow to reign over us from the cross to the tomb and beyond. A love that we remember and give thanks for every time we gather. 

During this Coronatide, we are being sent out into the world in reality as we have never been before—literally dispersed and deployed for the life of each other. The words are more than just words this year-- we are truly sent out into the world, to remember that we are called to serve God by serving others as well in a time when so many need that love and connection and care. 

We are being called to a new awareness of how vulnerable we are, certainly, but also to see that as a gift and blessing for us in our relative comfort. However, we must then consider how much more that is magnified for the poor, the homeless, the outcast, the sick, the friendless, refugees. 

And then we are called to act. 

Our gospel imperative is more than just words. The balm of Christ’s love calls us to action right now—all of us woven together into a web of mutual love and dependence. Sinners. Saints. Happy people. Scared people. Angry people. Hurting people. All one. 

This is how we are called to live. Together. Serving each other. No one expendable. No one unworthy of grace and care. 

Declaring our unity with each other, even as we remember and also look forward to sharing Communion in person as well as in spirit once more. We’re called to gratitude in letting down our barriers and allowing other members of our beloved community to care for us in a way that is completely opposed to the rhythms of most of modern life. 

Nourished and called to peace. Called to be vulnerable together so that we can remember what it is like to allow ourselves to be cared for with nothing to gain, and to remember the example of Christ calls us to serve each other in complete purity and parity, that there will be no outcasts among us, and none will be left adrift. For where there is community, there is love, and there is hope. 

Tomorrow the sun will rise, and who knows what the tide might bring? 

Amen.

Preached at the Maundy Thursday service online from St. Martin's Facebook page, and recorded in my basement during a time of pandemic, April 9, 2020.

Readings:
Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14 
Psalm 116:1, 10-17
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17, 31b-35