Symbols of the Paschal Triduum: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter.
Maundy Thursday
Come risen Lord and deign to be our guest. In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
And so it begins. Our
final walk with Jesus , what we call the Paschal Triduum—the Passover of the
Three Sacred Days—one worship service spread over three days. And we begin in that upper room on a day that
we call Maundy Thursday, Maundy meaning “mandate.” This is the night when Jesus gives us the new
mandate, the new commandment, to love another as he loves us.
Can it really be that simple?
Surely the disciples must have been hanging on to Jesus’ every word,
hoping that he would open up the secrets to the kingdom of heaven, the meaning
of life, something grand and glorious.
Is it really all so simple as “love one another as I have loved you”?
Hmmm. It sounds simple, sure. But this day
and age, when there are so many distractions all around us, I’m not so sure it
IS that simple. At least, not the way
Jesus presents it. Here in the Fourth
Gospel we get a moment that is only told by John’s community—Matthew, Mark, and
Luke do not contain this moment. In this
moment, in the washing of the feet of his students, his friends, his disciples,
Jesus is giving us an example of love that, quite frankly, is pretty hard to
actually follow. Because it means
letting go of everything that the world has taught us about ambition and power
and taking on a role that none of would dare choose: the role of a servant.
In order to understand just how big a deal this action was, you’ve
got to understand travel in first century Palestine. The roads were unsurfaced and unclean. In dry weather they were inches deep in dust,
and in wet they were liquid mud. The
shoes ordinary people—like Jesus and his friends—wore were sandals, which were
simply soles held on to the foot by a few straps. They gave little protection against the dust
or the mud of the roads. For that reason
there were always great waterpots at the door of a house; and a servant was
there with a pitcher and a towel to wash the soiled feet of the guests as they
came in. Jesus’ little company of
friends had no servants. So Jesus does what none of them appears prepared to
do: he stoops down and takes the role of
a servant.
“I have set you an example, that you should do as I have done to
you.” In this moment when Jesus may have
been tempted to hold supreme pride, to show his power and his majesty and his
glory, he chooses instead to humble himself, to show the disciples what real power
looks like. It doesn’t look like the
military might of Rome, it doesn’t look like all of the houses, cars, and other
stuff that we accumulate, it doesn’t look like the size of our pension or the
fancy job title we have. It looks like
this! It looks like someone taking care
of the needs of someone else, choosing the part of the servant, instead of the
one being served. It looks like
forgetting everything we're taught about the way the world works.
Love is always like that.
It always puts the needs of others ahead of the needs of the self. This week, as most of y’all know, I was
struck with a bug that put me on the shelf for a few days (that’s what I get
for being so dang active just before Holy Week, huh?) . So many of you sent me messages, so many of
you offered to buy me groceries or take Casey for a walk. Some even brought me medicine. Now THAT is
love, setting aside your own needs for mine.
Thank you!
I wish he were here tonight because I am always humbled to share
the liturgy with my brother, Deacon Jack Ogburn, but sadly he had to back out
due to an impeding procedure tomorrow to remove a kidney stone. His very ministry, that of the deacon, is
one that has embodied the servant-like love of Jesus to this community for 3
decades! Whether it was visiting someone
in the hospital, or just being a comforting ear, he has shown me, and you, what
it means to be a servant. I thank him
for that and pray that I may do likewise!
In a few moments we will come forward and take part in this
ministry with Jesus, will we need Jesus' words to Simon Peter? "If you do not let me wash you, then you
have no share with me." It is
uncomfortable, it is smelly, it is not my favorite part of this liturgy, let me
tell you. That, however, is the point of
this evening, of this Christian journey that we have collectively undertaken.
It is not always comfortable; in fact, it seldom should ever be comfortable. He
rattles us, challenges us, gets us out of our comfort zones, and in so doing,
it frightens us and causes us to stand firm, unwilling to compromise or
move. But on this night, maybe just this
once, we can step outside our comfort zone. Maybe we can set aside our pride,
just for a moment, and come forward and be washed, knowing that it is not just
our brothers and sisters who are washing our feet, but it is Jesus
himself. It is the one who came not to
be served, but to serve, and who tells us to go and do likewise.
If you’ve ever been to a church camp, or a Cursillo or Emmaus
Weekend, or if you have hung out with a youth group, you know the Servant Song:
Won’t you let me be your
servant
Let me be as Christ to you
Pray that I may have the
grace to
Let you be my servant too
Nobody strives to be the servant.
We don’t got to fancy colleges to get degrees and make tons of money as
servants. Yet in spite of what this
world would have us think, there is no greater honor, no glory higher, than
servanthood. The world is full of people
who are standing on their dignity when they ought to be kneeling at the feet of
their brothers and sisters, washing their feet.
In ever sphere of life desire for prominence and unwillingness to take a
subordinate’s place wreck the scheme of things.
Tonight we have the opportunity to say no to such a desire. We have the opportunity to take a pitcher and
towel, and for one moment, truly be the servants Jesus has been calling us to
be. It may be a blow to our pride, but
following Jesus means dying to our selves and being made alive in him and in
his love, in THIS kind of love. Maybe
this experience will change us, as it changed those disciples. Maybe we’ll go from this place and be
servants, to others, especially to those
to whom we would not so much as offer a second glance. Maybe it really is as simple as loving one
another.
Images from our Maundy Thursday liturgy.
Good Friday
Ah, holy Jesus, how hast thou offended? In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
So here we are. After a
day full of so much emotion—everything from overwhelming love poured out for us
in the washing of feet, to terrifying fear as we sat in the garden waiting for
soldiers and temple police to take Jesus away--we now face grief beyond
imagination as we witness the Lord of life hanging on a tree. All the talk about the coming of the kingdom
of God, now propped up for all the world to see. Here we are, standing in front of the throne
of the Sovereign of the Universe. Never
has there been a more glorious seat of power than the hard, worn wood of this
tree. Never has there been a crown more
spectacular than the one cast from thorns.
For this is nothing less than the throne room of God.
Good Friday is a day that we might like to skip over. Years ago, when The Passion of the Christ was
first released, and I was a student in college, I went to see it—on Ash
Wednesday of all days. After the
gruesome depiction of Jesus death I walked out of the theatre and said to my
friend, ‘I don’t understand why everyone was crying. He got better!’ And that may be. We might choose to think of Jesus, not
bloodied and broken on the cross, but in splendor and resurrected glory. To be sure, it makes for a less frightening
experience. But it is a false
experience. Were we to deny the role of
Good Friday in the story it would save us no better than if we denied the role
of the resurrection itself. You cannot
have one without the other. There can be
no resurrection if there is no death.
This is because the glory of God is best made known to us in the
dark, fearful, abysmal places that life may take us. Remember the Beatitudes? Jesus makes it clear in those statements that
we are blessed, not when good things happen to us, but when bad things do. Blessed are you when you’re poor. Blessed are you when you are hungry. Blessed are you when others curse and deride
you.. These are the blessings Jesus
spoke of: blessed are you when
everything falls apart. Today everything
has fallen apart.
Nothing has gone according to plan. Jesus was suppose to embolden
the crowd, not stir them up. The were
suppose to hail him as King, not crucify him as an insurrectionist. It's all
unraveling before our eyes. Yet, it is in those moments when we truly grasp
that God is real. For we cannot ever
fully appreciate and comprehend the wonder, the amazement, and the glory of God
if we have not been in a place where we have been broken, as the body of Jesus
hangs broken before us. A place where
nothing has gone according to plan, and everything we know has fallen apart and
we lay in defeat. How can we ever
understand God's own pain, God's own torment on the cross, if we have not know
what it is like to be lost, beaten, and defeated ourselves? I suspect that on some level each one of us
here has known that kind of pain--from the death of a loved one, the diagnosis
of a disease, the loss of a job or the premature demise of a dream---we know
that pain. Certainly our world knows
that kind of pain—when terrorism holds people in fear, when children starve
daily, when human rights are violated, even in this very state. Oh yes, this world has been beaten, broken,
maybe even defeated.
But this is not defeat. This is, in fact, the glory of God. For
it is in those times, the times when it seems like God is farthest away, that
God's glory shines. This is why there is no greater throne than the cross. It is from here, brothers and sisters, that
our king reigns. The king of glory finds
his place of honor not in seats of gold, nor does he wear crowns of
jewels. His place of honor is that place
that humanity has demonized, an instrument of death that he has made the tool
for eternal life. And to be sure we
still see him reign from that place, the place that the world demonizes, the
place where hope is but a flicker—in the gutters, in the lines of soup
kitchens, in the welfare offices, in the places that you and I would not dare
to go, he reigns there. For that is the
radical nature of the cross: from high
atop its lofty and beautiful perch, Jesus has turned the world upside
down. This. This is our king. And he invites us, as we gather around his
holy throne, to let a part of ourselves die, to let something in us be nailed
to the cross, so that we can share in his glory. We cannot do so if we are not willing to let
something in us die. Not just today. But every single day of our lives.
Pilate asked Jesus, ‘What
is truth?’ Jesus may not have said
anything, but he certainly gave Pilate a response. This is truth. A beaten, bloody, smelly, homeless street
preacher. This is Truth with a capital
T. Good news for the poor, food for the
hungry, a way of belonging for the lost.
And this Truth will be proclaimed to the whole wide world, not in a
massive church surrounded by stained glass and folks wearing their Sunday
best. No, this Truth will be proclaimed
on a hilltop called The Skull, with criminals on either side of him, while his
friends have abandoned him, this Truth will be proclaimed with the words ‘It is
finished!’ as God and humanity are reconciled once and for all.
We call this day Good.
Why would we do that?? Because God has been glorified in the brokenness
of Jesus, and because of that we are meaning in our own brokenness. It
is good because we know this day is not the en,
that, thanks to Jesus' own death,
the grave does not have the final say.
Where is thy sting, O death? It
is not here! We call this day Good
because it reminds us that it is in the darkest parts of our lives that the
Lord Jesus reigns supreme, as he reigns from the darkness of the cross. And when we come to his cross, to his throne,
and we offer him all of our sadness and pain and when we let a part of
ourselves die daily on that cross, we find him, our king, Let us approach this most glorious throne,
where the king of glory reigns supreme.
The Christus Rex veiled and crowned with thorns.
The Great Vigil of Easter
Rejoice
and be glad now, Mother Church, and let your holy courts, in radiant light,
resound with the praises of your people.
In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
This is the night. When God brought our fathers and mothers
through bondage to freedom, when all who believe in Christ are delivered, when
Christ broke the bonds of death. This,
brothers and sisters, is the night.
A mentor of mine used to say that if
we Christians were only allowed one service all year it should be this one. Not
Christmas Eve, not Pentecost, not even Easter Sunday. But this one, the Great
Vigil. Because this night is the night around which everything that we are
pivots.
In the Jewish tradition there is a
custom that, on the first night of the Passover, a young person asks an elder
of the house, 'Why is this night different from all other nights?' The reason
it is different is because it marks the end the Jews' years of slavery under
the rule of the Egyptians. This night is their first night of freedom. And tonight we ponder the same question. Because this night is what St Augustine of
Hippo called the paschal mystery, the mystery of passing over. This is the Passover of Christ, when Jesus
moves from death into life and we who had been slaves to sin are set free
through the might and power of love of God.
This is a night unlike any other, as we sit in darkness, sit in a space
where Christ's light is but a flicker, a space of already and not yet, a
liminal space.
Liminal comes From the Latin word Limin,
meaning 'threshold',and right now, in this moment, in the darkness, we sit
at the threshold. The threshold of
everything. This is the waiting period,
the moments before the sun rises, the flower blossoms, or the child is
born. This is the same threshold at
which we sit tonight. Joey, Sam, and Jay, you sit now at the threshold of a new
birth, a new life in Jesus Christ. The
person you are now, sitting in your pews, will not be the person you are when
you leave this place tonight. You, in
mere moments, will pass from darkness to light, from sin and death to
everlasting life. And your world will
never be the same again. You’ve been
preparing for this day all through Lent.
You’re ready. We’re ready,
too. But not just yet.
We sit here in the darkness, and we,
like Jesus, are enveloped in it. These
final moments of Holy Week, being stretched out—seconds feeling like hours—as
we steel ourselves for the moment that is to come. Oh but not just yet.
Our emotions have been running all
over the place, culminating in excruciating grief at the foot of the cross yesterday. Now, Jesus carries out his rabbinical duty, observing his own Sabbath rest, and now he
waits. We wait. For God to do whatever God plans to do. It is our great trust and surrender, together
with Jesus’ trust and surrender. A new
"creation ex nihilo" ,creation from nothing, is about to happen. But
there can be no creation without there first being nothing. There can be no
light without there first being darkness. This was true in the beginning at the
creation, it was true on this night at Jesus' resurrection, it is true even
still for us. There must be darkness before there can be light and
transformation.
This night Christ's Body, the Church,
gathers from around the world in preparation for this necessary transformation,
a transformation not only of Jesus, but of our selves and our world. Yes, Jesus is the one who walks from the
darkness of death into the light of resurrected life, but we gather tonight so
that we may follow. We gather with the
church here in Asheboro, in the Diocese of North Carolina, and throughout the
world, so that we may walk through that great Paschal Mystery and experience it
for ourselves. Can you feel the moment
inching ever closer? Can you feel the
prayers of Christians throughout the world wrapping around us as we prepare to
cross that threshold?
We do not gather simply to remember
Jesus' Passover or to somehow reenact it. That is not what being the church is
about. It is about living these moments with Jesus. We ourselves are making
that passage from darkness to light.
Joey, Sam, and Jay will make that passage through the waters of baptism,
the waters that parted for God's people, the waters that christened Jesus as
the Messiah. They will soon become the newest members of Christ's Body, and we
make that journey with them. And we will sprinkle ourselves with those same
waters to remind them that they will never be alone as they begin their new
lives in Christ.
We are all passing over this night with Jesus. Our
sins, our prejudices, and all those thing that've separated us from God have
been nailed to the cross, and tonight, tonight we are free. Sin and death no
longer have the final say. And tomorrow will be different: Easter Sunday, the
first day of the week, the ever-new day of Resurrected Life, which will allow
us from here on to read all our lives backward with understanding, and read
them forward with hope, the kind of hope that tells us that things finally have
a victorious meaning, no matter how grim they may seem,. It is the kind of hope that sustains us
through our darkest and most difficult hours. It is the hope that tells us in
sprite of our disappointments, failures, and broken hearts, the light of Christ
will never be extinguished, and that, as Julian of Norwich said, all manner of
things shall be well. We may have to go
through tremendous darkness first, but all manner of things shall be well. This is the biblical hope. The Easter hope.
This is the hope we Christians rest in because we have journeyed with Jesus
from the darkness of sin into the light of Easter. And this is the night when
that hope is realized.
Images from the Great Vigil liturgy
The newest members of the Body of Christ.
The Feast of the Resurrection
Let all things seen
and unseen, their notes together blend, for Christ the Lord is risen. Our joy that hath no end! In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. Amen.
Welcome! To those of
you whom I've seen everyday this past week.
To those I haven't seen in a while.
And to those I have never seen before.
Welcome! Welcome to this happy
morning!
Before I became a rector and was tasked with preaching on
the morning of the Resurrection, I said that, if I ever had such an
opportunity, I would get in the pulpit
and say, 'Alleluia! Christ is
risen!'. To which the congregation would
respond: 'The Lord is risen,
indeed. Alleluia!' And then I would sit down. Because, really? What is it that I can say, that any of us can
say, that can add to the glory of this happy morning besides the unbelievable
fact that Christ our Lord is, indeed, risen?
Well, I'm a rector now, and you've called me here to at least give it a
try.
It is the very definition of unbelievable, that Jesus is
risen. That God could take something as
shameful as the cross, an instrument of capital punishment reserved for only
the worst of offenders, and turn it into an instrument for life. That a human being, flesh and blood like you
and me, could be raised from the dead, and in so doing cripple the power that
death has over humanity. The
Resurrection is not to be believed. It
is not to be understood. It flies in the
face of every piece of conventional wisdom that we have: the laws of nature are broken, logic is
thrown out the window, nothing makes sense anymore, and yet everything makes
sense again. Because on this happy
morning, when the world is turned upside-down, humankind is reconciled to
God.
It happened in a garden.
Just like it happened in a garden way back at the beginning, where God
and humanity walked side-by-side in the evening breeze. Then, as now, God chose light and life over
darkness and chaos. Then, as now, God
chose to use humanity as the vessel which would brighten the whole wide world
with the radiance of God's grace. But
then, humanity fell, chose pride and self-satisfaction over oneness with God,
and embraced the grim reality of death.
Yet now, on this happy morning,
humanity has chosen life, and the second Adam reaches his hands down into the
grave and embraces the first, and says, 'Come with me. Death has no power over you anymore.' The freeing of Adam and Eve, which is found
on the front of your bulletin, is not just an image of the redemption of our
first parents. No, it is an image of the
redemption of the whole world, of all humanity--past, present, and yet to
come. For this human, Jesus of Nazareth,
is everything Adam was meant to be. He
is the truest of human beings, and for that reason he is the only instrument by which this broken
world could have ever been saved. And to
be sure, this morning, the whole wide world is saved.
Do not think that I mean we are saved in the sense that we
needn't worry about anything anymore.
There will always been violence, war, oppression of all kinds. But this morning assures us that the casm
created by Adam's sin--which separated humanity from God for far too long--has
been sealed. Forever. Jesus' resurrection makes it possible for all
of us to know the closeness of God, makes it possible for us to see the face of
God, makes it possible for us to come into the glory and splendor of
God--without fear of condemnation, just as we are. Christ has defeated sin by becoming sin, has
defeated death by becoming death, and has made it possible for us to be called
children of God. Broken, yes. But redeemed, as well.
We do not see the resurrected Jesus in our gospel account
this morning. Instead, the women come
upon the tomb, only to find it empty, charged by the heavenly being standing
there with the task of returning to Jesus' disciples and sharing the good news
of his resurrection with them. There is
a part of us that might feel slighted by this.
We were expecting Jesus this morning!
Oh, but that's the point.
Like the women and Peter this morning, we do not get to see
the physically resurrected Jesus.
Instead, we are given the same instruction that they are given: go. Go
and tell someone else. Go and share the good
news that he is alive. Go and tell
others that death has been defeated. In
short, we--like them--are given the task this morning of, as Wendell Berry puts
it, practicing resurrection.
When we speak of resurrection we speak of the physical
kind--the kind Jesus experienced this morning, the kind that we will all
experience one day--but we also speak of the emotional and spiritual kind. We practice resurrection each time we choose
hope over despair. When a young woman
battling addiction reaches out to her family and at last admits, 'I have a
problem, help me!' She is practicing resurrection. When a transgender man stands up to a
government that seeks to dehumanize him and those like him and says to that
government, 'I'm not going anywhere!' He is practicing resurrection. When Nigerian Christians form protective
barriers around Muslim mosques on Friday, so that their brother and sisters can
pray in safety, and when the Muslims turn around and do the same for their
Christian brothers and sisters on Sunday, they are practicing
resurrection. Oh, today is not just a
day for Jesus' physical resurrectiion.
It is day for the spiritual, emotional, and psychological resurrection
for us all. A day we are invited into as
active participants.
Practicing resurrection happens when we recognize that God
can and will take the worst set of circumstances and use them to bring life and
grace. Sometimes we barely see that grace. Sometimes we refuse to see it--as
the apostles refused to believe Mary Magdalene's initial report. But when we
choose to practice resurrection, when we choose hope and life over despair and
death, our whole lives begin to make sense again. Everything, even the ugliest
pieces, now has meaning. We are no longer held hostage by the mistakes of our past;
we see and know hat we are so much more than those mistakes. Because love has won, as it always wins. And in this new resurrected life we hold on
to that promise of the amazing transformational power of love. Christ's own resurrection of love makes it
possible for us to practice resurrection ourselves, to know that love always
wins.
We are an Easter people.
The whole of the Christian faith hinges on that fact. If Easter is not real, then Jesus is little
more than a super awesome prophet. A good
dude who showed us how to be good ourselves, but who sadly got killed for
it. Easter knows better. Easter knows that he is these things but so
much more. Easter knows that Christ is alive.
IS alive! No longer bound to
distant years in Palestine, as the hymn says.
IS. Present tense. Today is not a day we gather to remember
Jesus' resurrection, it's a day when we collectively acknowledge that he is, in
fact, alive right here and now, as much as he was on that first Easter
dawn. And if he is alive, then that
means it's up to us to tell people. It's
up to us to go, as Mary Magdalene went and told Peter. It's up to us to practice resurrection, to
shine the Christ light in the darkest places of this world, to give hope for
the future, even when folks may not seem like they deserve it. It's up to you and me, Easter people, to turn
this world upside-down with the message that God's love, which defeated death
itself, can and will defeat whatever evil still lurks in the heart of
humanity.
So practice resurrection, brothers and sisters. Go and be apostles yourselves, be the ones
who are sent out into the world to share the good news that Jesus is still
alive. Proclaim the joys of this happy
morning from age to age.
Images from Resurrection Sunday
