A Love Story: Speaking to the Soul, April 6, 2023

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

A table.
A robe.
A towel.
A basin.

Water.
A cup of wine.
A loaf of bread.

Blessing. Thanksgiving. Service. Love.

These are the images that flash before us tonight as we gather for the Maundy Thursday service.

Can you picture yourself in that room? Can you see the dust from the triumphant march through the crowded festal streets of Jerusalem still clinging to the disciples’ feet, as we remembered on Palm Sunday?

As the disciples lean back after their meal, they can probably still hear echoes of the crowd’s “Hosannas!” ricocheting off the stone walls around Jerusalem. And now they have shared a meal with their teacher, their brother, their Messiah. The disciples are gathered around a table where everyone is loved. Where every one is loved.

Tonight is the night for a love story.

The first sentence that jumps out to me is this one: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” Jesus is getting ready to leave his disciples—and he wants to show them what true love is.

There is just one lesson left to impart. There is just one commandment left to give. The lesson is service. The commandment is love.

Love is thanksgiving. Love is sacrifice. Love sometimes includes heartbreak. On this night we will dwell between the two poles of our existence- the agony of loss and the call of love.

A few years ago I was sitting in class with Dr. Clint McCann, who is a renowned scholar of the psalms. We were discussing psalms of lamentation, especially the ones that are quoted in the Passion narrative this week. Dr. McCann noted that the gospel writers could not understand the story of Jesus during Holy Week without the lamentation psalms, psalms in which the psalmist asks for help when feeling abandoned, and laments being turned upon even by his closest friends.

Yet Dr. McCann also pointed out that every one of those lamentation psalms quoted in the story of Jesus’s passion turns to praise at the end. And that’s often how it is in our lives, too. Our lives are shot through with both sorrow and joy.

As we turn toward the cross, may we never forget: it is love that remains at the end.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on April 6, 2023

Beauty Broken Open: Speaking to the Soul for April 14, 2022

(Maundy Thursday, 2022)

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 observe Maundy Thursday—a day when we ourselves are invited to be broken open to the beauty and pathos of these next three holiest of days in the Christian calendar. 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 before Passover will begin for our beloved Jewish kindred after sundown tomorrow.

It is traditional for Christians to meet for a simple meal, engaging in foot washing as a sign of our servanthood, just as Jesus set an example for us, and then have Holy Communion one last time until the Great Vigil. And as we share together this Holy Communion, we are called to re-member that 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, in the same way that geode must be broken in order to allow the beauty within to dazzle our eyes.

Tonight, we are reminded 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.

Tonight may we be willing to be broken open ourselves, broken open to the call of love and community and service to our neighbors and to creation, especially during these next beautiful three days.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on April 14, 2022.

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

Prayer 2628: Maundy Thursday in time of COVID-19

Photo from 2019; this year COVID-19 will prevent us from worshiping in person.

Lord Jesus,
you taught us
that to serve others
is the greatest way to love and serve God:
help us also accept the honor
of being cared for with grace.

May we be fed and filled
by serving and being served,
and feel your tender hands
take hold of our feet, and our hearts.

Holy One,
help us shed our fear of being vulnerable,
that we may love You and each other fully,
and be healed by love ourselves.

Help us to join hand and hearts
in the true spirit of thy Holy Communion, Lord,
no matter how the space between us is measured,
to be strengthened and united,
giving thanks to You
and interceding for the entire world and its cares.

Bless those for whom we pray,
O Merciful One,
and pour your comfort like a balm over them.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2274

Almighty God, we wait in the darkness
before the dawn of your Son,
remembering and blessing him, now and forever.

In stillness the earth pauses,
and awaits the resurrection:
hear our prayers, O Comforter. 

We turn our faces toward hope,
awaiting the coming of the third day:
we know You share our sorrows and pain. 

Help us renounce the evils that chain us, O Lord:
roll away the stone of our hearts, we pray. 

Lord Christ, you prayed forgiveness for your enemies
even upon the cross:
help us so renounce vengeance and strife.


Bless those for whom we pray, O Merciful One,
and pour your comfort like a balm over them.

Amen.

Prayer, day 1890: Holy Saturday

Almighty God, we wait in the darkness
before the dawn of your Son,
remembering and blessing him, now and forever.

In stillness the earth pauses,
and awaits the resurrection:
hear our prayers, O Comforter. 

We turn our faces toward hope,
awaiting the coming of the third day:
we know You share our sorrows and pain. 

Help us renounce the evils that chain us, O Lord:
roll away the stone of our hearts, we pray. 

Lord Christ, you prayed forgiveness for your enemies
even upon the cross:
help us so renounce vengeance and strife.


Bless those for whom we pray, O Merciful One,
and pour your comfort like a balm over them.

Amen.
1159


Image: Andrea Mantegna, Lamentation Over Christ, ca. 1475-1478

Prayer 1540: Maundy Thursday

Harvest field. Baruch atah Adonai, Elohainu Melech Ha-Olam.

Beloved Savior,
you gather us
and give us a final command:
"Love one another,
as I have and still love you,"
even as darkness draws near.

You show us in word and act
that the heart of love is service,
humble and tender:
may we ever do likewise,
remade, restored, renewed.
From this good earth
and the work of human hands
you feed us-
drawn around one table,
one bread,
one cup:
Blessed are You, Lord God.
May we also be broken open,
and used to bless the world,
O Adonai, King of the Universe.

Let us make our prayer to you
to be faithful witnesses,
into the darkening night
which you have shared with us.

May we be brought anew
before the light of your countenance,
and reflect that light
into the darkest corners of our hearts.

Lord Jesus,
our companion,
our brother,
our king,
bless us and heal us,
we humbly pray.

Amen.

Prayer 1157- Maundy Thursday

Pope Francis shocked many when he broke the tradition of washing only the feet of Christian men.

Prayer for Maundy Thursday

Lord Jesus, you taught us that to serve others is the greatest way to love and serve God: help us also accept the honor of being cared for with grace. 

Holy One, help us shed our fear of being vulnerable, that we may love You and each other fully, and be healed by love ourselves. 

Jesus washes the feet of a disciple (Mafa Jesus tradition from Cameroon).

Help us to join hand and hearts in thy Holy Communion, Lord, to be strengthened and united, giving thanks to You and interceding for the entire world and its cares. 

Bless those for whom we pray, O Merciful One, and pour your comfort like a balm over them.

Amen.

La lavanda dei Piedi, by Tintoretto.