Maundy Thursday

 We are now engaged in the first of the three liturgies 

         referred to as the Triduum, the Three Days:

                  Maundy Thursday,

                  Good Friday

and, if you were to celebrate it here, the Easter Vigil of Holy Saturday.

I invite you to participate deeply in this liturgy and the next, Good Friday, 

to let your hearts be open to the full scope of meaning 

for the events we are commemorating, 

to follow Jesus as faithful disciples.

The importance of the narration of the events of Holy Week 

is reflected in the Gospels very clearly.

It is thought that when the Gospels were written down,

         they started with the Passion narrative

         and worked backward from there.

At least two full and long chapters in all four Gospels are devoted 

         just to the events of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday alone

                  not counting the entry into Jerusalem 

                  or the Resurrection stories.

Compare that with mere paragraphs for every other event.

 

So much is crammed into this one liturgy:

There are 3 distinct themes, each so rich and full 

that desire all the attention we can give them.

The first is what Jesus did by taking the role of the lowest household slave 

to do the most menial task of service as an example to all of us 

of how we are to serve one another.

The second 

is what Jesus did with the bread and wine of their table fellowship, 

how he transformed that forever 

and released through those common elements 

the grace of his abiding presence in a very material way.

And the third is what happened next, what happened in Gethsemane.

 

1.  Washing feet symbolizes so much, 

                  and a great part of it has to do with human touch,

         but this is a “touchy” subject.

We may notice that the way we relate to one another 

         has become less and less face to face 

         and more and more via electronic means: 

                  cell phones, email, text messaging, Zoom.

Our culture is more and more high tech, but low in actual physical touch.

 

Now, in the time of Jesus there were taboos 

                           about touching lepers 

                           or touching dead bodies. 

This would make a person ritually unclean, 

                  let alone susceptible to a health risk.

And Jesus touched both the dead and the lepers

         and the result was healing and restoration to life.

 

So foot washing, touching a vulnerable part of the body today,

                  a part of ourselves we don’t usually let get touched,

becomes a bridge between people

         for coming into relationship on a new level.

 

And so you will be invited to experience the foot washing

         as a low tech, high touch way of communicating.

 

Let your feet be washed by someone else.

         Let yourself be vulnerable.

         Let yourself be ministered to.

         Let yourself be loved.

Then take that same gift of being lovingly cared for

         and give it to another.

As you wash someone else’s feet,

         don’t hurry the task.

Do it wordlessly, but with graceful, slow and generous motions.

Make eye contact.

         See how much gets communicated without words.

 

2.  After the washing up, the bread and the wine --

Through sheer familiarity we lose the impact 

of the radical action Jesus took in the midst of the meal.

He took the familiar bread and wine, part of most all their meals, 

bread and wine, which symbolized hospitality, nourishment, 

bread to strengthen the body

and wine to gladden the heart.

 

Jesus took the common elements of most every meal

         and changed forever how we would look at them.

This is my Body.  This is my Blood.

         A mind-blowing way to look at the intimacy of love

                  that goes to the extreme of self-sacrifice,

                                             of giving one’s life for another.

 

But always, every day, it is a matter of one life ending for another to live.

This is involved in every meal,

                  life sacrificed so that I may live

                  right down to the very last lettuce leaf, sacrificed for me.

 

Were we to eat mindfully, 

         we would become aware of the intimate communion of relationship

                  going on between what’s on our plate

                  and what we are:

         the digested fuel for our bodies 

         and components being used by the body to generate new cells.

Biologically it’s an interconnection between self and environment

                           down to the molecular level.

 

Every meal can be seen as a holy communion.

You are what you eat.

So – may we recognize that 

                  in the Bread and the Wine, Christ’s Body and Blood.

 

3.  What happens next in the liturgy,

         the stripping of the altar.

We do this to create the starkly simple setting for the Good Friday liturgy,

         to have a space so sparse that the only thing to draw our attention

                  is the Cross, so that we may place devotional attention there.

 

But in the stripping itself, here is a way 

         for you to enter into that very personally 

                                             as you observe the action at the altar.

 

On that altar in the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Jesus

         all our sin, all our suffering, all the hurt of the world 

                  is stripped away.

May our hearts be like this altar, stripped and then scrubbed clean

         by Jesus and his intentional action of the cross –

dying in order to serve us most fully,

         to absorb our suffering,

         to take upon himself the sins of the whole world.

 

Let your heart be stripped of the grief, the fear, the woundedness,

         the suffering and the sin.

Let go of what Jesus has already drawn to himself 

         and returned to you as the New Creation of Resurrection Life.

 

And so we are invited to be with Jesus 

                                             during these liturgies of Holy Week,

         to watch, watching for just an hour at a time,

                  the usual length of a Sunday service.

In these liturgies we can draw even nearer to Jesus

         as we follow the events,

and offer our worship, our profound sense of awe and wonder,

                  the gratitude of our hearts.

 

Remember, the events of this week

         are the whole reason for Christ's coming.

THE one major purpose of Jesus' life

         was to lay it down, to die.

All the events prior to Holy Week -

         - all the miracles, all the parables, all the Sermon on the Mount

- all were only preliminaries, setting the stage for what was to occur now.

 

Each of us is faced with Jesus' death in a very personal way.

         - what that means to me.

The audacity of one human being 

         intentionally dying as a way to bring me into life.

 

This whole week is a love song from God to us, 

a hard love song, but the ultimate love song of deepest, fullest love.

How can we turn our backs on such love?

And how can we also express our love in return?