Between noon and three

…spare us in the youngest day when all are shaken awake, facts are facts, (and I shall know exactly what happened today between noon and three); that we too may come to the picnic with nothing to hide, join the dance as it moves in perichoresis, turns about the abiding tree. — W.H. Auden, "Compline"

Category: Holy Week

April 1, 2018

The Easter Vigil 2018

Collect: O God, who made this most holy night to shine with the glory of the Lord’s resurrection: Stir up in your Church that Spirit of adoption which is given to us in Baptism, that we, being renewed both in body and mind, may worship you in sincerity and truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Readings: [Vigil Readings], Colossians 3:1-4, John 20:1-18

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

Well, here we are. It’s been quite a journey over the last few days, not least for Brock, who was just baptized! We’re at the end of the Triduum, and you might expect a sermon that wraps up what I’ve said so far, and what we’ve all experienced; something which synthesizes the theme we’ve been exploring, that Holy Week is a “moment that does not pass away,” along with the events of Jesus’ last days.

And you’d be forgiven for thinking that, forgiven but ultimately disappointed: I have no last words for you tonight, only an assertion. The event we celebrate tonight, Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead, is an event which does away with last words altogether. Christ is risen from the dead, and there can be no more foregone conclusions. Christ is risen from the dead, and there is no sin so foul that has not been forgiven. Christ is risen from the dead, and there is no prison left standing that can keep us forever. Christ is risen from the dead, and to borrow the Recovery phrase, every today is the first day of the rest of our lives; every conversation is an opportunity to begin again, every person is a chance to learn and love afresh.

In school they tell kids to make a good beginning of their lives: “Study hard so you can get a good job and live a happy, fulfilled life.” In college they say the same thing: “This is the beginning, you are laying the foundation for what will come later.” When couples get married, they are sagely told, “This is just the beginning!” And when they have children they say the same thing, “This is only the beginning.” As human beings we love stories, and stories have beginnings and middles and ends. A dragon invades the kingdom. The noble hero goes out to slay it, and when the deed is done everyone lives happily ever after. With so many beginnings in our own stories, we might be forgiven for getting frustrated at times that we rarely get to the middle let alone to the end, while the happily-ever-after seems perpetually out of reach.

Tonight’s Easter Vigil, though, reveals that there is something deeply Christian about so many beginnings. When we reach the end of Jesus’ story, we find out, with an explosive surprise, that it was really just the beginning. The tomb was not the end; rather the resurrection was the beginning, and now Jesus is alive, risen from the dead, whose life continues in his Church both on earth and in heaven.

For that matter, the Vigil readings suggest the same thing: Israel’s captivity in Egypt was not the sad end of the story after all, but only the beginning, as they made their Exodus through the Red Sea to the Promised Land. The exile in Babylon so many centuries later was not the end either, only the beginning of the life of the people of God spread abroad throughout the whole earth. Or in baptism: we find our earthly lives, comparatively well ordered and planned, opening onto eternity, our own persons now the doorstep of heaven, inexhaustible in capacity for surprise, wonder, and love.

So many beginnings! What does that mean for our Christian life, then? Surely not that we just keep going in circles, starting over time after time. When do we get to the middle, and when can we enjoy the end?

The short answer is, those will come in time; the most we can do at the moment is make a good beginning. The most we can do tonight is to make a good celebration of our Lord’s resurrection from the dead, and of Brock’s baptism into his mystical Body. You’ll notice there is no Peace exchanged at the Liturgy tonight, and that’s to allow, for tonight only, our Eucharistic celebration to be the peace we both offer and receive; I invite you all to continue the celebration in Lion’s Hall afterwards at the reception which Betsy and Sterling have so graciously provided. The middle of the story will come in time, and the end too. But tonight we celebrate.

One of the stories that has moved me the most as a priest and a pastor, was one a man told me years ago. He had been married to his wife for some sixty years, and he was still very much in love with her. I said something like, “You must know her very well by now then!” He laughed and said, “Yes, I suppose I do. But you know, every day I still learn something new about her. You spend that long with someone and you think you’ve got them all figured out. But sometimes she comes up with something so completely out of left field that I wonder, who on earth is this person I’ve married? Over all these years I’ve had to realize again and again that I don’t have her all figured out. There’s more to her than I will ever know, and it’s just part of the fun to keep learning.”

This is the kind of beginning we continually make as Christians. The middle, and even the end, come and go; but it is the beginning that remains, as every day we continue to plumb the unknowable depths of God’s creative, redeeming love, and the echoing deeps of human persons made in that image.

Tonight, as we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord from the dead, we begin afresh the great rejoicing which Easter initiates. Let it be for us another beginning, but more than a repetition. Let it be for us that new beginning which will carry us through all our middles and all our ends, the new beginning that pushes right through death itself into the far undiscovered country on the other side of the tomb.

At the altar tonight, as we come to make our communions, may we catch a glimpse of the same joy which sustains all who have gone before us, and all who will follow after. United with them in the Paschal Mystery, let us render eternal praise and glad thanksgiving to the God of heaven: whose Son has harrowed hell, and made the earth new.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.

Leave a comment
March 30, 2018

Maundy Thursday 2018

Collect: Almighty Father, whose dear Son, on the night before he suffered, instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood: Mercifully grant that we may receive it thankfully in remembrance of Jesus Christ our Lord, who in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life; and who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings: Exodus 12:1-14, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, John 13:10-17, 31-35

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

Maundy Thursday. Today we continue the same dramatic reenactment we began on Sunday with palms and the triumphal entry. We continue our reenactment, but we also increase its intensity: in a few moments we will wash one another’s feet, in imitation of Jesus at the Last Supper the night before he died. Later we will take the Sacrament from the Chancel to the Altar of Repose, echoing Jesus’ own departure from the Upper Room to the Garden of Gethsemane. We will keep vigil there after the service in partial response to his request to Peter, James, and John, “Remain here and pray with me,” while he goes to his own Agonizing prayer. We will strip the church of adornment, and wash the altars clean at Jesus’ betrayal and arrest.

In our liturgy tonight, as on Palm Sunday, there is a difficult emotional transition: we begin with celebration, giving thanks for Jesus’ triple gift on this night: first his example of humility, leading his disciples by washing their feet. Second his new command that they love one another as he has loved them. And third by another new command, “Do this in remembrance of me,” introducing them to the gift of the Eucharist by which he remains with his church from age to age, nourishing us continually with his own body and blood. But then a spirit of trouble and even desolation descends on the liturgy, and we leave in silence to face the starkness of tomorrow’s death in a bare, evacuated church.

On Palm Sunday in my sermon I observed that all this drama is a way not of adding or creating what is missing, but of revealing what is already present. Today I want to reflect a little on how this liturgical remembering also accomplishes a reversal of our vision. If this kind of revealing adds clarity about the events at the core of our faith, it also increases the murkiness about how we view the world and the rest of our lives.

If you remember the story I told about King Nebuchadnezzar, the fiery furnace, and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, Nebuchadnezzar could see clearly that God was present with the three young men in the midst of the king’s attempt at execution; the episode certainly added clarity on that point. But if you’re Nebuchadnezzar, now what? What kind of world is it, where flames in a fiery furnace refuse to do their jobs, where angelic visitors side with prisoners against royalty? Without trying to elicit undue pity for the king of Babylon, it must have been a disorienting experience to say the least. Simply put, the world is not what he thought it was, and its mysterious powers not all under his thumb.

How many times has something similar happened to you? A surprise cancer diagnosis, or a compliment you weren’t looking for; a friend or cousin cuts you off, or a piece of particularly bad news brings you to your breaking point. Maybe it’s a pleasant surprise, or maybe it’s an unpleasant accumulation of small but lethal slights, or maybe it’s a death. Whatever the case, it disorients us. The world is not what we thought it was, and the news we’re given makes us rethink our assumptions and forces us into a new posture, a new manner of approach, a new way of seeing and thinking and imagining. When we’re in the middle of it, all we want to do is to come out on the other side intact. But on the other side, we see we’re anything but intact. We may have the same spirit, we may be made of the same physical stuff, but we can never go back; something is fundamentally different now.

Okay, so far so good. The question is, what reversal does Maundy Thursday accomplish? What disorientation does it initiate in us as we remember it liturgically, publicly, and inwardly? We call it Maundy Thursday from the Latin “Mandatum” for “Commandment” and we remember that tonight Jesus gave his disciples a new commandment, that they love one another. But that’s not the only commandment he gives. Jesus gives at least three commandments tonight. The first is the famous “Love one another” which concluded our Gospel passage tonight, symbolized by Jesus’ example of humbly washing their feet. The reversal here might be obvious, but it’s worth stating directly: whatever kind of authority we might associate with God, whatever kind of majesty or dominion, God exercises it not by edict, fiat, or imposition, but by washing feet, by serving the basic needs of creatures, granting them the dignity of God’s own attention and care. Any earthly authority that would claim God’s blessing or approval must do likewise, or be revealed a fraud. That goes for parents as much as it does for presidents, for priests as much as for police. If we wish to claim God’s approval on whatever leadership we exercise, we must do it wearing the servant’s towel. The further irony is that only one who serves in this way is free; any who would coerce or impose is a slave to violence and fear. This is a strange world that Maundy Thursday begins to reveal.

The other two commands come in the other Gospel accounts of tonight’s events, but no doubt they’re familiar ones. The second command Jesus issues tonight is, “Do this in remembrance of me.” And so we do, every week, nearly every day, and tonight especially. Scholar Dom Gregory Dix once wrote poetically, “Was ever any other command so obeyed?” The Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Communion, the Mass, has come to define the contours of corporate Christian worship, and has done since the earliest days. But obedience to this command is more than a memorial. There is a reversal here too. We generally think of the bread and wine as symbols which convey a deeper meaning, a deeper presence. But the meaning, the Presence of Christ himself changes the nature of the symbols as well. So for those who partake of the Eucharist, all bread in every setting now points us to Jesus, the Eucharistic Lord, not only the bread consecrated here; all wine points us to his passion, not only this chalice. All eating, all drinking, all human fellowship is a sign of his once and future presence among us and the unity of all creation in him. In short, the symbols themselves become signposts of the kingdom of God, and the world we live in becomes suddenly planted thick with the seeds and occasions of forgiveness, faithfulness, and light, despite the darkness brooding everywhere.

Finally, the third command Jesus gives tonight is perhaps the most disorienting of all. He turns to Judas and says, “Go, do what you do quickly.” Judas gets up from the table and goes to betray Jesus to his death. Recently I heard someone observe, that throughout most of history, people were scandalized not by the resurrection — what else would you expect from the Son of God? — but by the crucifixion, by Jesus’ death in the first place. Death is not something we expect of a savior or a god, let alone betrayal by one who was so close. In our world today, the reverse is true: we expect Good Friday, we’re not surprised by injustice, it’s not shocking for trust to be broken or honor discarded for profit. It’s the resurrection that surprises us, the resurrection that we find difficult to defend or explain. However we react to it, Jesus’ command to Judas, “Go, do what you do quickly,” introduces another reversal: here is someone not afraid to face death head-on, who knows he goes to suffering and worse, who will agonize in the Garden over whether or not to go through with it; who yet, at almost the critical moment, encourages his betrayer to go, and get it over with already. It really is an intimate moment, quietly spoken; it’s unclear whether the rest of the disciples even hear what Jesus says to Judas. His tenderness towards his betrayer reveals the last great reversal of the evening: here is the same Jesus who will say to the thief on the cross tomorrow, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” The stupendous gentleness of Jesus before all the forces of rack and ruin, destruction and dissolution: this gentleness of his person, a trait so often considered in this world as weak and easily taken advantage of, proves stronger and more enduring than death itself.

What does it mean for us? Find the gentlest person you know, and discover the invincible vanguard of heaven. Put aside the brash, the caustic, the pompous, and the self-promoting: they are nothing, a desert of ambition and vanity. Embrace the gentleness of Jesus and find an oasis of life.

In a few moments we will wash one another’s feet, share in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, and before the end strip the altars and keep watch before we all depart in silence, while the shadow of death grows over the church and over our hearts. But as the drama continues, let the reversals which Jesus’ commands initiate, refocus our imaginations and recalibrate our expectations. The world we will discover is a strange one, bearing little resemblance to the powers that hold sway over the news, shareholder meetings, and geopolitics. But these days of remembering will help us put our feet on firmer ground and lift our heads above the fray, to see lasting joy springing from the mouth of despair, life emerging from the tomb, and love greeting betrayal with a kiss.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.

Leave a comment
March 25, 2018

Palm Sunday, 2018

This sermon was preached at St. Mark’s, Berkeley, on Palm Sunday, March 25, 2018. (The Annunciation normally falls on March 25, but because of the weight of Palm Sunday, Holy Week, and Easter Week, it will get pushed to Monday April 9. At St. Mark’s we will observe the Annunciation at Evensong on April 8, the second Sunday of Easter, though I know this bends the rules a little!) I have not announced a “theme” for my Holy Week sermons this year, but they are a continuation of the same ones begun earlier at St. Mark’s on worship and life with God. In hindsight, I might have titled these, “The moment that does not pass away,” borrowing an observation on the crucifixion by Br. Jeremy Driscoll, OSB, in his book “A Monk’s Alphabet.” — the point is, the events of Holy Week and in particular the Triduum are the heart of Christian life and identity, the focal point around which everything else, including the cosmos, revolves. These sermons explore that conviction, and try to offer a few different points of entry.

Collect: Almighty and everliving God, who, of thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the sample of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also be made partakers of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings: Isaiah 50:4-9a, Philippians 2:5-11, Mark 14:1-15:47

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

After the Passion Gospel a sermon needs hardly to be preached; you’ve already heard most of what there is to say! But all the same I’d like to spend a few moments sketching out the territory for the week ahead.

We began this morning with one of the most ancient collects in our prayer book: “Assist us mercifully with thy help, O Lord God of our salvation, that we may enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts, whereby thou hast given us life and immortality.” The contemplation of those mighty acts. How do we accomplish this contemplation? In large part by dramatic reenactment.

We began this service out in the courtyard and sang the same Hosannas, waving the same palm branches as the crowds in the Gospel. We’ve just heard a dramatic retelling of the same episode. In my last parish we began out on the front lawn, even invited a local petting zoo to be a part of the day. The star visitor was a venerable donkey named Donatello, a fifteen year veteran of the festivities, who always proudly led the procession into church.

Over the course of this coming week we’ll undertake to wash one another’s feet, carry the Sacrament to the altar of repose, strip the altars, venerate the cross, and carry out a vigil as after a loved one’s death — all dramatic retellings of this series of events which is right at the heart of the church’s identity.

So, with God’s help, we enter the contemplation of these mighty acts. A big part of this is remembering what happened, and who were the players, and what were their motivations. We tell the story dramatically over the course of these days In part to jog our memories, and to give us the time we need to consider the scope of the drama and to offer us various points of entry into the unfolding narrative.

Remembering in this way, just like revisiting the story of the Pilgrims on Thanksgiving or Thomas Jefferson on July 4, helps to create a common set of reference points for who we are as a people, as a family of faith. It creates a baseline of shared memory: none of us were there ourselves all those years ago, and yet we are the common heirs of the memories all the same. Sharing them with one another creates and sustains the succession of generations for whom this holy week is their own inheritance, their own treasure.

It’s a remembrance, but it’s more than a remembrance. This past Wednesday, at the regular 12:10 service, the appointed first reading was from Daniel — that episode where Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego get thrown into the fire for not worshiping the king’s golden image. You know the story: instead of burning up, they walk around in the flames together, saying prayers and singing hymns. Meanwhile, as they walk around, King Nebuchadnezzar is watching to make sure they burn up like they’re supposed to — but he notices it’s taking longer than usual, and also he notices a fourth person in the flames with them, who wasn’t there when they got thrown in: he looks like a son of God. The king is so confused he lets them all out, and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are all unscathed — but no trace of the fourth person. The implication is, that, as the three of them said their prayers and sang their hymns, God himself appeared beside them.

We tell ourselves the same thing as a way of encouraging us to pray, and to come to church: especially this week! — when we remember together as a group the events of Jesus’ passion and death. As we pray together and sing, God appears among us, affirming our faith and leading us to the other side of whatever challenge we might be facing. Jesus promises that wherever two or three are gathered together in his name, there he is in the midst of them.

But it’s important to remember, praying is not a way of coercing God to show up. In the fiery furnace, the angelic visitor did not show up because he was impressed by Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego’s faith, or by their discipline, or their conviction. And for that matter on the cross: God does not decide to forgive our sins just because Jesus says, “Forgive them, father, for they know not what they do.” No, the thing about prayer, and the thing about remembering in the context of prayer, is that it does not coerce God into doing something that wouldn’t otherwise happen; rather, prayer reveals what is already true, shows what is already present, and enables us to recognize what was there all along but we couldn’t see or notice.

In the fiery furnace, Nebuchadnezzar could finally see for himself that God was with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego no matter how badly the king might try to isolate and shift their loyalties to himself alone. When a priest anoints the sick and prays for healing, it’s not magic for manipulating germs or enchanting the body’s powers of recovery. It’s merely to reveal that God the source of life is present even in the midst of illness, suffering, and death; and that the sight, the glimpse, the touch of God which anointing reveals allows for a more profound healing than any miraculous cure or magical incantation. On the cross when Jesus prays, “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do,” he reveals to everyone present and to all of us that God’s mercy runs far deeper than any sin, violence, mockery, or injustice, and we can only be silent in awe before the mystery.

So it is with Holy Week, and with all our liturgical remembering — and for that matter with all our prayer in whatever context we offer it. We do not create what was not present already; we do not coerce the nearer presence of some reluctant or faraway deity. We merely open a window on what was there all along, and which will continue through endless ages, closer than the closest friend or brother, or even thought or feeling.

The events of Holy Week, its characters, and chief of all its God do not pass away. In remembering them together, we open a window onto a deeper reality than we can see most of the time.

In Holy Week, we see again as if for the first time a God whose chief characteristic is generosity, free and open and continuous to the world he has made, full of mercy and loving-kindness. We see a world gathered together around a death, uneasy with the wickedness that has been done, implicated in more ways than one, but powerless to stop it from carrying on. We see a Savior betrayed, but who in betrayal forges a way through death: that what was once an ending, the only ending, ending every story ever told, is now the continuation of my story and of every story in the further reaches of divine Love.

In Holy Week we see everything orchestrated together into a music which all creation sings. As we reenact, and remember, and pray, and sing together, we take up our parts and join the harmony of the whole. This year may God grant us a special glimpse of this music in which the whole world is caught up, along with life and death and all time. As we retrace the final steps of Jesus’ earthly life, may we see all the more clearly that pattern, that rhythm, to which the whole world moves. Seeing more clearly, may we love more truly; and loving more truly, may our joy overflow.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.

Leave a comment
March 24, 2018

Good Friday 2018

Collect: Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings: Isaiah 52:13-53:12, Hebrews 10:16-25, John 18:1-19:42In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

As many of you know, or may have discovered thanks to the suddenly eased traffic, this week is spring break at Cal. It’s the first time since I’ve come to St. Mark’s that class has not been in session, and I’m struck by the very noticeable quiet of it all. This isn’t the first time I’ve been in a university community during spring break, but for some reason I’m particularly struck by it this year. It’s certainly not silent: buses continue their routes, HVAC units continue their hum, the construction project up the street carries on, and planes fly overhead like they always do. But the human bustle is much reduced: I notice far fewer random bits of conversation and general hilarity rising above the fray, while the groups of pedestrians walking past my office are gone, leaving only solitary, somewhat harried graduate students. The coffee shops are empty, and for the first time, I don’t have to wait in line when it comes time for lunch. It’s not an easy kind of silence, like summer break, but the gathering of a breath, a waiting kind of silence, for the press and stress of the last weeks of the year suddenly to descend.

For whatever reason, this silence has impressed itself on me this week, and has put me in mind of Good Friday all week long. There on the cross as Jesus hangs from noon until three, a darkness covers the whole land. The sun goes out, I imagine the birds have stopped singing, and the onlookers, frightened out of their mocking, have gone home. They leave only a dry hill with three dying men. The wind blows in the grass, and all creation waits for the last breath.

I post the texts of my sermons to a WordPress blog, which I’ve named, “Between Noon and Three.” The title is a phrase I’ve borrowed from W.H. Auden, who uses it repeatedly in a number of the poems in his series on the Divine Hours, the traditional offices of prayer throughout the day. Today here we are, literally “between noon and three” as we meditate on the last hours of Jesus’ earthly life, the period of time he hung upon the cross.

One of the things I like about Auden’s poem cycle is that every one of them seems to take place on Good Friday: it is a day that does not pass away, that remains forever. But despite the way the crucifixion pervades the poems as well as the poet’s consciousness, the narrator never quite manages to figure out what to make of it. To Auden, Jesus’ death is the sort of thing that seems inevitable and long-planned, as if the whole arc of human history has been leading up to the murder of God; and at the same time it seems the sort of thing that comes upon us from who knows where. Suddenly the deed is done and we’re left struggling to figure out just what it is that’s happened, let alone what it means.

Auden describes, near the end of the cycle, his dream that one day he might finally discover “Just what happened today between noon and three.” The Church locates the salvation of the world in these three hours, although it has never explicitly defined how, or satisfactorily explained why. Why this solution, of all solutions? To answer, we have to take stock of the silence which prevails from noon until three, silence that defies easy explanation or understanding, silence that seems eternal and yet stings as a sudden wound.

Like the silence here in Berkeley these last few days, but in a much more profound way, this silence at the cross is not an absence or a void, but a watchfulness, a waiting, a regard even, where God and creation are intensely aware of one another. Our collect for today reflects the same stillness, the same awareness: “Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross.” We pray God simply to behold us; for God only to just look at us. It’s as much as we can muster on Good Friday. And the silence of the Cross is the surest sign we can point to that God is answering our prayer. “Just look at us,” we pray. And on the cross God does.

There is a dialogue here in the silence, a kind of speech that’s exchanged within this mutual regard, this mutual beholding. Dare we say that there is love here, somewhere, in the sight of God and in our own sight, as we behold one another? That, at any rate, is the conviction of the Church: that somehow, mysteriously, as Jesus is exposed to all the world and death itself; as we stand exposed to God for all our beauty, all our shabbiness, and all our sin, we are reconciled to one another. The silence enables us to know one another more profoundly than before: God is known to humanity in infinite compassion; and humanity is lifted up into the nearer presence of God.

It’s not really so hard to believe. Years ago, in one of my adult confirmation classes, there was a mother who had a son in college. His school was in the same town, and he would come home frequently, for laundry and all the rest. But she was missing him, and lamenting the fact that they didn’t talk much anymore. What would become of their relationship? She felt he was slipping away and that she was, too; that they were fast becoming strangers to one another. This caused her a lot of grief and worry.

One day she appeared in tears, having just received a diagnosis of breast cancer. But it wasn’t the cancer that had caused her tears. She had managed to corner her son because she wanted to share the news; she was afraid how he’d react, but instead he just looked at her: really looked, and she felt as if he’d actually seen her for the first time in a long time. He didn’t say much except “I love you, Mom.” But that look was all she needed. Her tears were from bittersweet happiness, from learning afresh that she really was seen and known and cared for, despite a terrifying diagnosis. She didn’t worry after that: about her health certainly, but not about her son.

This kind of love is what the silence of Good Friday enables. This is what we assemble together here today to remember, to encounter, and to venerate: to see, and hear, and say, and touch, what we cannot understand or communicate by words alone. We are here today to pray God “To just look at us,” and in the looking, to be known and reconciled and loved.

This is why Good Friday and the moment of Christ’s death is a moment that does not pass away but remains forever. The silence of mutual beholding, between God and creation, is the still point in a turning world, the seed of hope and an everlasting comfort. It is the moment where love reigns supreme despite all the forces of death arrayed against it.

Whenever we are tempted to think all is lost, or to throw up our hands in the face of chaos, or to despair at so much wickedness in the world and in our hearts: the cross is there, its silence is there, speaking loudly and clearly of God’s gracious beholding, calling us to new life in a Love that does not pass away.

Leave a comment
April 14, 2017

Maundy Thursday Family Service

I preached this sermon on Maundy Thursday, April 13, 2017. Our Holy Week Preacher this year was the Rt. Rev’d Frank Griswold, former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. His sermons for the week can be found here. This “Family Service,” geared towards children, took place before the principal Liturgy of the day.

Collect: Almighty Father, whose dear Son, on the night before he suffered, instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood: Mercifully grant that we may receive it thankfully in remembrance of Jesus Christ our Lord, who in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life; and who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings: 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, John 13:1-17, 21-32

Today is Maundy Thursday. This day is so special we have a special worship service to mark it. Today is the day when Jesus had the Last Supper, in the Upper Room with his disciples.

We do three things in order to mark today: First the Celebrant, Mtr. Ezgi will wash your feet. As we just heard in the Gospel, Maundy Thursday is the day when Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, before they all sat down to supper.

Have your parents ever told you, “Go wash your hands, it’s time for supper?” My parents did that all the time: no matter where I was in the house, when I heard the shout, “Blake, time to wash up!” I knew that we were about to eat. I always dropped my homework, or stopped practicing the piano, or put down my book, or stopped playing my game, and went straight to the bathroom to wash my hands. Dinner was important in my family. We almost always ate together, and washing our hands beforehand was a way to make sure we were germ-free before eating — but it also became the way I prepared myself mentally for enjoying the meal I was about to eat with my family.

The same is true for Jesus and his disciples, and even more so. He doesn’t just send them to wash on their own, he washes them himself. And not their hands, but their feet – when you wear sandals all day every day in a dusty climate, your feet quickly become the dirtiest part of your body. Dirty and smelly! Jesus washing his disciples’ feet was a way of saying just how important they were to him, and just how much he was looking forward to this meal together. 

We wash each other’s feet to remind us of Jesus’ example, and to teach us that serving the people we love is one of the best ways we have to love them.

The next thing we do on Maundy Thursday is to have Holy Communion. We do this all the time in church, but on Maundy Thursday it’s especially meaningful because this is the night Jesus gave Communion to his disciples for the first time. 

After he washed their feet, they all sat down to supper. It wasn’t just any normal supper, it was the Passover supper, when they celebrated the people of Israel leaving Egypt, led by Moses out of slavery. Jesus at supper with his disciples is celebrating a holiday meal, a festive meal, recalling God’s power to rescue and to save his people. 

And when supper was over, Jesus told them all that this Passover meal wasn’t just about remembering something that happened long ago. He told them that he himself was going to his death, to be the Passover Lamb of God; and that every time his followers gathered around that table again, he would be with them in the Bread and the Wine. “This is my Body, This is my Blood.”

Tonight we celebrate that Jesus gave us this way to remember him, that Jesus gave us this way to be with him, long after he ascended into heaven.

The last thing we do tonight, after communion, is to strip to Altar. After that last supper, Jesus and his disciples stopped in the Garden of Gethsemane to pray, before continuing on to where they were staying in Bethany. While he was there, Judas led the soldiers to arrest Jesus, and he was carried away to the High Priest and then to the Governor for trial. He was condemned to death, and the next day, tomorrow, he was crucified.

After communion tonight, we will strip the altar, we will take away all the decorations inside the church, to symbolize Jesus being taken away. It is a sad and somber moment: just as we are given the chief tokens of celebrating his presence, the Bread and Wine of Holy Communion, he is taken away from us in almost the same moment. And so we strip the altars bare.

Tomorrow we will remember his crucifixion, and Sunday we will celebrate his resurrection, when we will be glad that death itself cannot keep Jesus down.

But tonight, we do these three things for a very important reason: we wash feet, we celebrate communion, we strip the altar, to remember what Jesus did and what happened to him tonight so many years ago. But more than that, in doing these things we imitate his own life. We grow in his example. And most of all we learn that Jesus’s authority, the way Jesus is king, is not by force or by order, but by love.

Washing feet is an act of love. Sharing a meal is an act of love. Jesus goes to his death out of love for you and me. And so on this Maundy Thursday, we commit ourselves afresh to love one another as Jesus loves us: not counting the cost, not demanding our due, but loving as though nothing else in the world matters.

Because in truth, nothing else does matter but to love others as Jesus loves you. This Maundy Thursday, may you grow in his image, and find yourself more and more able to love, with his heart giving strength to your own.

Amen.

Leave a comment