When I was a child, our neighbors across the street, Veta and Myron, were a retired school principal and a retired school counselor. They were generous with their time—inviting us over to play on the swing set they still had up even though their son was long grown and gone. In a rarity for Tulsa, their home sat atop a cellar, and there our neighbor had a collection of rocks, semi-precious stones, and fossils. There were dozens of rose rocks, the State Rock of Oklahoma. He told me about the great inland sea that had once covered the central part of North America, and showed me rocks he had brought back from trips all over the continent. It didn’t take long until I was hooked, and I spent hours over there learning.
One day, he handed me a mud-colored gray-brown orb. It was perfectly round, and surprisingly light—about the size of a croquet ball. I thought it was pretty cool. Then he handed me a hammer. I was confused when he told me to put the rock on the work bench and hit it. But eventually I realized he was serious and did as I was told, not too hard. After a couple of whacks, the thing cracked, and he gave one more expert tap and the orb cracked open. Inside there was a glowing array of light lavender colored crystals. He told me it was a geode. He then let me take my treasure home. I wondered that something so drab and nondescript could be so beautiful when it was broken open.
Tonight, we ourselves are invited to be broken open to the beauty and pathos of these next three days. Our service tonight begins what's known as the Triduum, the great three days leading up to Easter Sunday. In the early church, the Maundy Thursday service always began after sundown, just as Passover begins after sundown right around this time. It is traditional for Christians to meet for a simple meal, engaging foot washing to as a sign of their servant hood just as Jesus set an example in the common gospel reading from the book of John, and then have Holy Communion one last time until the Great Vigil. At the end of the Monday Thursday service, it is customary to read Psalm 22, that great Psalm of lamentation whose first verse was quoted by Jesus upon the cross, while all decoration in the church is removed as the lights grow dimmer and dimmer. The maundy Thursday service traditionally ends with a simple washing of the altar and it's an extinguishing of the Tabernacle light and utter darkness.
Tomorrow then, we will hear again the Passion narrative, and we will also be led through the stations of the Cross. But tonight, we celebrate the gift of the Eucharist to us.
In his book Being Christian, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams focuses first upon the Eucharist as being about hospitality and welcome. Doctor Williams points out that stories of Jesus hosting friends and being hosted by the most unlikely people abound in the gospels:
“…Jesus is not only someone who exercises hospitality; He draws out hospitality from others. By his welcome he makes other people capable of welcoming. And that wonderful alternation in the gospels between Jesus giving hospitality and receiving hospitality shows us something absolutely essential about the Eucharist. We are the guests of Jesus. We are there because he asks us, and because he wants our company. At the same time we are set free to invite Jesus into our lives and literally to receive him into our bodies in the Eucharist…. This giving and receiving of welcome … is the actual visible way in which [Jesus] engages in remaking a community. Who are the real people of God now? The ones who accept Jesus invitation…. The meals that Jesus shares in his ministry are the way in which he begins to re-create a community, to lay the foundations for rethinking what the words ‘the people of God’ mean.”
It cannot be emphasized enough that in the ancient world the sharing of a meal was fraught with symbolic meaning. Sharing a meal together conveyed status, obligation, and patronage. Meals demonstrated who was out, and who was in, and were governed by rules about cleanliness, attire, and seating order, much like you see in movies about 18th century and 19th century England like Downton Abbey. In welcoming people to his table, and in the people came along with him when he sat down at someone else’s table, Jesus continually shocked the sensibilities of proper citizens. when you stop and think about it, meals are centerpieces of Jesus's teachings in the gospel -- it's amazing how often food is involved near one of his discourses.
Jesus takes and blesses the bread before the meal itself has really started—he takes it and urges that it be broken and shared among those who sit with him at table for the meal. That bread cannot be shared unless it is broken. It cannot be used for eating the rest of the food. It must be broken in the same way that dawn must be broken.
Jesus is preparing them for that day when his body will be broken—both his own human body, strong and young and resilient, and the body of his followers who, except for the women, will scatter and run for cover in literally what is just a few hours’ time. And once that body will break, there we will be reminded that as much as we talk about the presence of God, we also talk about God’s absence—symbolically. I don’t mean that God is ever really apart from us. But for all that we want to claim that God is in control of everything—especially when things go bad, when the test results come back positive and the diagnosis is sobering, when the loved one departs and the relationship ends, when the wheels on the rain-slick road scrabble and whine as they try to maintain their grip on the road—there are also plenty of times when life throws us upon our own resources and we are expected to use what we have learned from Jesus to decide for ourselves which road we are going to take. Freedom is intrinsic to the human life, and sometimes, that leads to joy and sometimes that leads to pain.
As the great Christian writer Henri Nouwen once noted, “The great temptation of the ministry is to celebrate only the presence of the Lord while forgetting his absence … As we become aware of his absence we discover his presence, and as we realized that he left us we also come to know that he did not leave us alone.” Justo Gonzalez notes that Jesus tells parables sometimes depicting God’s absence, often about stewardship, such as the Parable of the Tenants or the Parable of the Dishonest Steward. These Gonzalez calls “Parables of Absence” because they are meant to provoke us to consider what we will do with our freedom when our discipleship will cost us something—either money, or the chance for revenge or he effort it takes to love someone rather than ignore them and push them away from us, denying their shared humanity with us so that we may stay safely immune from the demand of community that is at the heart of Jesus’s Gospel.
The main elements of the eucharist are bread, wine, and water. We ourselves bring forward the bread and the wine. The water reminds us of our baptism, in a way, and it comes from the earth. It is given in nature, and we are called to protect it and make sure it is available for all. But the bread and wine point to human contribution to this sacred mystery. Baptismal water points toward the grace of God, given as a free gift; but the bread and the wine Remind us of the stewardship that we were all called to share. God gives us wheat and grapes, but human labor turns them into bread and wine. And so God gives and we give and together we share in helping to bring about the Kingdom of God. Being a Christian calls us to break open ourselves and share in ways that threaten to remake the world. It’s a perilous calling we hear—one that will cost Jesus his very life. At least for a while.
This is our second Holy Week under pandemic. In this time of separation, isolation, and distancing that still continues, we are reminded more than ever that Jesus inaugurated the Eucharist as a sign and symbol of the importance of unity and community. As many of us have had to fast from Eucharist for much of this year, it is more important now than ever to commemorate the giving of the Holy Communion to us for our strengthening as one fellowship in Christ. And God knows many of us are weary of the precautions that are required to starve this pandemic of victims. But now is not the time to surrender our efforts to keep each other safe, and remembering the gift of communion can help renew our resolve to put the welfare of those around us among our own vanity and self-centeredness..
And so, as we consider on this night the demands of community upon ourselves, the very real obligation toward each other and even toward imperfect people that we do not know who are nonetheless fellow children of God, as we are called to focus our eyes at the passing crowd and see in each face a specific beloved of God and therefore a person whose well-being is our concern because they sit right here next to us at the table, as we sit here at this universal table, we are being called upon to see how we would react once theory becomes reality. Are we going to move from sitting back on our couches and enjoying the feast to taking off our outer garments and putting on an apron and serving everyone? Are we going to kneel down and wash and care for the calloused, scarred, marred, imperfect feet of strangers as the humble servants we are called to be?
Tonight, we remember that Jesus gathers us just as he did those apostles on that night long ago, and offers us the Peace of God, not for our own comfort only, but so that we can share and embody that Peace and Grace to those around us. Tonight we remember that Jesus showed us that the heart of love is service—humble, tender, and compassionate. Jesus shows us in word and action how to live the best life we can have. Tonight Jesus shows that only in breaking ourselves open can we be then filled with eternal life and love.
From this good earth, and the work of human hands we come as both guest and host, we offer and awe receive until we are reminded that it is all one--- giving and receiving, loving and being loved, living and making a difference in the world around us. We are drawn here around one table.
This is sacrament: a making holy of ourselves regardless of place, rank or time. And tonight we will be called to remember the grace of the sacrament of Holy Communion that we received as a gift of Jesus even before his Passion, death, and resurrection. We were given this gift for our benefit, and for the benefit and service of the entire world—no exceptions.
May we also be broken open, like that bread, and used to bless the world.
Amen.
Preached at the 8 pm Maundy Thursday service online and limited in person in time of coronavirus restriction.
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