Online Sermons
Maundy Thursday: April 9, Claudia Whitney
Welcome to our website. You are here: The Word --> Online SermonsHave you ever seen one of those optical illusion pictures that contains ever smaller replications of the original until they seemingly disappear into infinity? That’s what we are doing here tonight as we celebrate an ancient feast (the Agape Meal of 33 AD or so) that was a celebration of another ancient feast (the Passover Seder of Jewish antiquity some 1500 years or so earlier yet. We are really re-enactors of these ever repeating celebrations tonight. We are doing deep into an eternal drama. We eat, we wash, we break bread and drink wine together. We wait. We sleep, we deny, we weep, and then when death is vanquished once more, we rejoice!
We think of ourselves as taking a look through a long lens at a time far past on nights like tonight. The age old Passover question is, “Why is this night a night like no other?” There are many answers to that poignant question. I will attempt to give just 3. Tonight is a night like no other because if we try we can see far into the past of our Judeo-Christian history this evening. Our Agape Meal is a reenactment of the Last Supper, which is a reenactment of the Passover in ancient Egypt. Jesus and his disciples were celebrating an ancient ritual feast which none of them could relate to as a contemporary event anymore than we can relate to the Christian Maundy Thursday ritual as contemporary. They came together then to remember and hear the old stories and to carry forward the new traditions and interpretations on the shoulders of the old. But just as we do tonight, they also sought a contemporaneous interpretation to add personal meaning to the ritual. They met with Jesus to share a meal, to break bread and to drink the four ritualistic cups of ceremonial Seder wine. They met to find companionship and to hear their friend and teacher expound upon the stories.
The word companion means literally to eat bread with. They did not meet because they knew they were about to witness Jesus’ crucifixion. They met to celebrate a religious tradition with their companions. And, unlike Di Vinci’s painting of The Last Supper, they were not likely all facing one direction but rather reclined around a table face to face. Today how many meals do we eat without being face to face? Too many, I fear. Often we face the windshield, the back of another automobile seat or a television screen. Are we really sharing a meal? Is this true companionship when two or three of us are gathered together in the drive through lane?
Tonight we reaffirm the importance of ritualistic tradition; the importance of the servant mindset, a recommitment to loving God, a promise to love one another, a promise to remember Jesus and the painful reminder of how easy it is to forget all of this-to fall asleep on the job, just like the disciples did that night in Gethsemane and as a result find ourselves in the darkness of disenfranchisement, stripped bare of community, of hope and of essential connection with God. And so our experience tonight is like no other. And yet it ties us together down a common history that now spans millennia. People have gathered to dine with each other and with Christ through many ages. Through the ancient years, the Dark Ages, The Enlightened Ages, The Reformation Age, The Industrial Age, The Age of Reason, of Information, The Modern Age and the Post Modern Age . We do not dine alone tonight. We dine in the company of ancestors so numerous we cannot imagine them all. The table is crowded with a host of saints and sinners, not one of us worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under the table; nevertheless, companions one and all.
But back to you, back to the future, back to today:
What if you had gone to the mailbox earlier today and found a lavish formal invitation. What if you opened it and read in perfect script that you are invited to dinner with Jesus of Nazareth. April 9th, 7pm, The Olive Garden. What would you do if you received this invitation? Several years ago the book, Dinner With the Perfect Stranger, explored this tempting scenario. Do you think you could imagine such an incredible invitation coming to you? Well you’ve already received it. Don’t bother checking your mailbox when you get home. It’s not there; it is, however in Revelations Chapter 3 Verse 20: “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to them and dine with them, and they with me.” You have dined with your Christ Church brothers and sisters in the Seder style of the Agape Meal and in just a few moments you will have the chance to dine with Jesus himself, personally, right here, tonight. It will be a candlelight dinner. He will tell you of his love for you. He will remind you that he has become your companion as you make your journey through life. He has washed your feet of the dust and dirt of your busy life, and now he will bind up your wounds as gently and as softly as only someone who has been wounded him or herself can do. He will lift you on his shoulders from where you can see forever- both to the distant past of our Jewish ancestors and ahead to Heaven. What an incredible view!
But in order to really understand this passionate feast you must be willing to see Jesus of Nazareth as Jeshua, the man who wishes to be your companion, - not only as Lord Christ who is couched in the image of a remote religious superhero who can do things that are super human but wears a cloak and sandals instead of a cape.
Imagine yourself at a table for two over at the Olive Garden. The man across from you is intently interested in seeing that you enjoy your meal. He listens to you with rapt attention and is willing to answer any questions you have of him. He really understands you. He makes a commitment to do whatever you need of him to assist you as you seek to solve your thorny personal problems. He empathizes with your pains. He understands how vulnerable you feel deep down. You finally get it, this Christianity concept. You feel, well, what else could you call it?- loved! - unconditionally. Just the way you are. And he tells you, as you finish your meal, that he wants to dine with you,- frequently. He will be away for awhile on business but he will look forward to seeing you again very soon. In the meantime he asks you to keep him in your thoughts; to think of him when you are here dining with your friends and family. You are so smitten by this evening you are floating as you walk back through the lobby. He has just answered so many of your burning questions and cleared away so much confusion and insecurity. You feel so grateful you insist on picking up the check but he won’t let you because tonight it was his pleasure to treat you-with the utmost respect, with compassion, with love.
You drive home in a thrall. You can hardly believe this has happened to you. You make a promise to yourself never, never to forget this. And you park your car, get ready for bed and fall blissfully asleep. But the next morning you are busy with your real life again. You are delayed in traffic; you find you still have a mountain of problems facing you at work. People are still a pain. Life is still hard. You begin to look at last night’s dinner with a more practical eye. You decide it’s going to be impossible to explain this experience to your coworkers, friends, heck!- not even your family would believe that Jesus himself, in the flesh took you out to dinner last night. And so you don’t even try. In fact, except when you are actually at the Olive Garden dining, you don’t remember the evening all that well. You find yourself drifting back to that table every week or so, and then you let it all fade into the background until the next celebratory meal there. It’s not that hard. Jesus is still away on business, and it isn’t the same when he’s not right here to talk to over a nice glass of wine and some crusty bread.
I used to be one of those people who believed sincerely and with a childlike faith in God and saw Jesus as a big brother kind of figure who in times of food or health emergencies could become a super hero and work miracles. I still believe sincerely in God but my childish view of Jesus has been replaced by an adult appreciation of his nature. My journey is probably not that different from that of any other person of my time and place. I was baptized on September 28, 1952, when I was 6 months old at St. John’s Episcopal Church, and marked, the same as you, as Christ’s own forever. I attended church with my family every Sunday and loved my Sunday School lessons. I had a picture of Jesus knocking on a door hanging above my bed and I had a bookmark of Jesus praying near a rock in Gethsemane. He looks placid in those pictures, nothing like I began to realize, as a young adult that he should be feeling as he faced his arrest, torture and execution. And that began my confusion with Jesus as being not at all like me. Facing those same situations I would be afraid. I would be in great distress. And as I grew older the seeming distance grew between my imperfect, fearful, anxious self and the figure that popular religious culture depicted in those paintings.
In 1964, I was confirmed here at this altar and began my adult Christian walk. The next several years were tumultuous times. Soon 1967-the infamous Summer of Love in San Francisco -morphed into a year of violence. 1968 gave us the Tet Offensive, the Mai Lai Massacre, and just a week before Holy Week, the assassination of Martin Luther King. I was in Washington DC with a government class field trip on that day. When the news of his murder ricocheted around the country riots broke out and none was as livid as the one in DC. The bus my class was on was rocked from side to side by angry protesters. Fires burned in the streets, cars were overturned and shops everywhere were looted. We returned home from that trip,- a trip that began in New York City watching Fiddler On the Roof on Broadway and pondering Tevya’s Jewish enmeshment with tradition versus change,- and ended with teenagers in tears, our tender idealism colliding with the fruits of a tradition of racial intolerance. The only fire that came readily to mind that holy week was that from napalm on the nightly news and burning cars and crosses in the American south.
The Thursday after my return from that experience was Maundy Thursday and I was sitting right over there with my mother, father and brother, about where Paula is tonight. I watched the ritual foot washing and took communion and then watched as the altar was stripped and the lights were extinguished one by one until at last the sanctuary candle went dark. The cheery, red, vibrant candle that warmed the whole sanctuary with the symbolic light of God during the rest of the year and it was now a dark, bleak, barren glass vessel. The tabernacle was empty, its door yawning wide on its hinges and I experienced what I can only now call a conversion experience. Unlike Paul, I was not blinded by the light. I was awakened in the dark. Struck wide open. And in my unguarded state of openness Jesus of Nazareth came close to my heart and in his symbolic absence ignited my personal relationship with him.
Gone was the eternally placid big brother figure, gone was Jesus Christ Super Hero, and here instead was Jeshua the man who was the child of God, who came to show us the Way to live a godly life. The Jeshua who wanted me to know he loved me and cared about my life. ‘Look,” he seemed to say to me in the cold and dark shadows that night, ‘don’t let the supernatural attributes of my life eclipse the human companion I am. Remember me as Jesus; let my humanity speak to the humanity in you. Let the divine spark I carry light the darkest places in your life. Don’t forget me. Don’t lose me in the liturgy. Find me here in your heart and celebrate me in the liturgy, - today and all of the rest of your days. My light is strong enough to scour out all the hate you see in the world. Trust me. I am always here. I am always stronger than the darkness of evil, of intolerance, of injustice.’
I stood up and walked back through the narthex into the cool early spring evening air a totally changed person. I felt such relief when Easter brought the return of the light to the sanctuary but I knew deep in my heart that only the darkness had obliterated the noise and hurry of my life enough to introduce me to the Jesus that would give meaning and authenticity to my Christian journey. I was 16 then and in the intervening 41 years I have lost people dear to my heart, lost hopes, lost dreams, lost my idealism, lost my naiveté and in those dark days sometimes the only light left shining was that divinely sparked light that came to me from the darkness of that Maundy Thursday. But the lesson learned also was that dark times often presage times of joy, of marriage, of births of children, of grandchildren, of family, and of friendships— each and every one, companions along the Way. True gifts of God. And so tonight is a night like no other night because it is the anniversary of the night when I found Jesus, - not remotely in Bible stories but right here in my own heart and in doing so, learned not to fear the darkness because, as I now know, it always heralds the coming light.
And finally, tonight is a night like no other night because in spite of the emotion we feel opened to, we, like the disciples before us will go home and go to sleep, leaving Jesus alone in his vigil. Many cocks will crow between tonight and the great sunrise of our first morning in Heaven. We will be imperfect in our Christianity and we will be forgiven our imperfections. We will gradually learn that Jesus loves us even in our imperfectness. And like the disciples who fell asleep when all that was asked of them was to remain awake in the garden, we will find our way out of the darkness to that Heavenly country that God has fashioned for us. The Apostles who so poorly companioned Jesus in his hour of agony eventually found enough light and courage to spread his Gospel throughout the world; although the personal cost was that all but one of them were martyred for it.
That light, when it ignites, burns so brightly that death cannot extinguish it, - in Jesus, in the Apostles, in you or in me. And so this night is unlike any other night because if you let yourself look into its darkest depths you will find a light so bright it will make your soul shine like a thousand suns. We will depart tonight in silence after we dine with Jesus. We will feel the emptiness carve a deep place in us and then we will watch it fill up, first with tears of Good Friday sorrow but then with the life giving baptismal waters at Saturday’s Great Vigil Service and eventually with the radiant light of God on Easter Sunday. You will be absolutely brimful of love. And the energy of that love will empower you to be able to go the rest of the distance of your life in peace, not fear, because, like Simeon, your eyes will have seen the Savior whom God has prepared for all the world to see: A Light to enlighten the nations and the glory of your people Israel.
And what’s the flip side of seeing that light? It would be to see it and forget it. The Song of Simeon closes our compline service. Simeon sees the light.
Years ago when I was a youth program coordinator with the Diocese of Olympia we used to ask teenagers on retreats to choose contemporary secular songs which when listened to with a discerning ear contained sacred lessons. One of their all time favorites was a rock hit of the 1980s by a group called Glass Tiger called Don’t Forget Me. Its lyrics went something like this:
‘You, -You take my breath away.
Love thinks it's here to stay.
There's still so much for me to do,
And I can't stop loving you
Oh can this be true?
If you could see what I have seen,
(The) broken hearts and broken dreams.
Then I wake up and you're not there.
Pain finds me everywhere.
Oh! but you don't care!
Don't forget me when I'm gone.
My heart would break.
I have loved you for so long.
For Heaven’s Sake, its all I can take!’And that’s the contemporary lesson for this night. Don’t see the light of Jesus and then forget him while he’s about his Heavenly business. His heart will break. He has loved you for so long. Will your night this night be unlike any other night? I pray that it be so.
God bless us every one. Amen