Maundy Thursday - Jesus gives the new commandment
As we near the end of this week, our experience begins to shift. Gone are the crowds that greeted Jesus with a king’s welcome into Jerusalem on Sunday. Last night, one of the apostles, Jesus’ most trusted followers, mysteriously snuck away to conspire with the authorities on how to have him arrested, and soon the police will come and take him away, leaving more questions than answers. Yet even knowing what lies ahead for both himself and his friends, Jesus has this last supper with them, one more chance to teach them something about this kingdom of his, a kingdom he has said is both already here and is still to come. That teaching, that mandate that gives this night its name, Maundy Thursday is this: love one another, as I have loved you.
It's as simple as that. Or is it? Because love isn’t really simple. Love is not a noun, it’s a verb. It’s action. It’s never passive. Love, real love, places demands on us. Real love is about showing, not just telling. Fortunately, Jesus is a shower, and tonight he shows his friends, and all of us, what this kind of love looks like when it’s put into action, and he does so in two ways.
The first we hear about in the letter to the church in Corinth in which Saint Paul recounts the story passed on to him of Jesus, and that last night, taking bread and wine, and, giving these simple gifts new meaning: “This is my Body, my Blood,” he says. A few years later, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke would include this story in their accounts of Jesus’ life, too, but Paul adds that as often as others eat this bread and drink this cup they proclaim Jesus’ death until his coming again. Maybe we take these words for granted somewhat because we hear them each week, but the earliest followers of Jesus understood something very important, that when he told them to do “This” he didn’t mean a ritual action in the context of church worship – because such a thing didn’t exist yet. They were sure that the “This” meant breaking bread and sharing the cup, whenever and wherever they gathered in those house meals that had been part of the Greek symposiums. All of these meals, no matter how mundane they seemed, were sacred because bread and wine were made holy whenever the people of God gathered, took these gifts, blessed them, broke them, and gave them to each other and told stories of their faith. Eventually these gatherings evolved into the celebration of the Eucharist – Greek for ‘Thanksgiving’. This is the first example of love Jesus gives. Yes, to share the thanksgiving meal that is the Eucharist – his very Body and Blood in the context of our worship as it has evolved now – but also to share a meal made holy with others, particularly the kind of people he shared meals with – the poor, the marginalized, the undeserving, and those with whom we are at odds – and to know in those contexts, no matter where and when they happen, that he is there.
The other lovely example he gives is one only found in the Gospel of John. There is no Last Supper here – at least not the way Paul and the other Gospels tell it. Instead, during the meal, Jesus washes the feet of his disciples. If you understand travel in 1st century Palestine you’ll understand how big of a deal this was. The feet were a mess, callous and muddy, and often bleeding. A servant stood at the house entrance ready with a pitcher and basin to wash the feet of guests and travelers, but since Jesus’ little band had no servant, the master of all takes the servant’s part. They are reluctant to accept such a gift from the one they call rabbi and Lord. But Jesus compels them to do so. They must empty themselves of their pride, their ego, everything they have stored up for themselves to give them a false sense of security and control. This emptying in Greek is kenosis, it’s what Jesus does tonight, what he will do on the cross; it’s what Paul encouraged the Church in his time to do, what we are called to do. Jesus tells them that they may not understand now, but in time they will.
Do you want to know what really strikes me about these two incredible acts of love? It’s that Judas participates in them. All of the Gospels agree that Judas was there that night. He got washed. Jesus shared the bread and cup with him. Let’s consider that for a moment. He feeds even Judas. He washes even Judas. He knew what was happening. How could he not?! All the signs were there that this guy was pretty shady – stealing from the ministry’s purse and what not. Jesus does it anyway. If the message hasn’t been made clear up to this point, tonight Jesus gives it to us in no uncertain terms: not only is this thing he offers for everyone, but everyone who receives it – the disciples, the community of the Fourth Gospel, us here tonight – must give it away. Without exception. Without judgment. Without smiling faces that mask contempt and ridicule, even to the Judases with whom we are all well acquainted. It ain’t easy. But that’s the mandate. That’s the Maundy.
If you’re anything like me, maybe you find it easier to do the washing of feet than to receive it. The first time I ever experienced a foot washing the priest who did it told me that there was grace in receiving as well as in giving. But that message didn’t hit home truly for me until mid-December of 2021, just after my liver transplant. I had been moved from ICU and due to some medications I’d been given, I had what I’ll just call a pretty big accident in the middle of the night. I yelled and yelled and help finally arrived in the form of a nurse/angel named Linda. She helped me move, and cleaned me up. Through my tears and my shame I apologized over and over, and she just gently said, “Honey, if it happens 10 times I’ll be here 10 times.” That night, she was Jesus. And she made me at last understand the thing that that priest who had washed my feet 15 years earlier had tried to teach me: that we cannot give away what we ourselves have not already received.
One of the selections that we will sing during our Washing of Feet in a few moments is the ‘Servant Song,’ whose lyrics are especially poignant on Maundy Thursday. “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.” I am privileged and blessed to be surrounded on a regular basis by such servants of Jesus. The Advocate is filled with people eager to help, eager to be Jesus’ hands, feet, and heart to others. I have no doubt that this a church where far more people participate in the washing of another’s feet than do not. However, this evening, in the spirit of that night in the upper room, in the spirit that our Orthodox siblings are also observing this night, it is your clergy – myself and Fr. Nathan – who will wash you, so that you may know what it means to receive this love from us, and then give it away.
A friend of mine shard on social media today a picture of his church’s Maundy Thursday set-up with the caption that they were preparing for the reenactment of Jesus’ washing of feet and institution of the Holy Eucharist. With apologies to my friend, what we do tonight is no reenactment, no simple remembrance. We are there, in that upper room, partaking Christ’s Body and Blood, experiencing the washing of feet, and fully receiving his love. What wondrous love is this, O my soul?! And they will know we are Christians, not by the church we attend, not by how blessed we are with riches or good health, but by what…by our love, by our love! They will know we are Christians by this kind of love. Not mere sentiment, but action – Jesus’ own action, for if he is the head and we are his Body, then our actions are Christ’s own. This holy Table may be the source, but every table you set and share with anyone anywhere is an extension of it. The love you pour out for friend and stranger out there finds its truest meaning here as you receive it for yourselves. We may not always know what Jesus is doing to us or through us, but in time we will all understand.
Good Friday - Jesus dies on the cross
Did Jesus have to die? For the first 1000 years of Christianity’s existence, this wasn’t exactly a question everyone was asking. It wasn’t that the story of the crucifixion was ignored, far from it. The pilgrim Egeria wrote in the late 4th century about the Holy Week scenes she observed in Jerusalem, and among other practices, she saw folks walking the Via Dolorosa, the path Jesus took when he carried his cross up to the Place of a Skull. The pilgrims, she pointed out, would stop at each station and observe periods of silence as they reflected on those events some 450 years prior. So, no, the crucifixion wasn’t ignored. Instead, the faithful were invited to walk the same walk as Jesus, to be transformed by their participation. The event itself, though, was remembered as a senseless act of violence carried out by the government in collusion with a small group of religious fundamentalists. It was gut-busting, heart-breaking, and not at all redemptive.
Yet we hear all the time that God gave Jesus to die for our sins. Didn’t those folks know that? It’s not that they didn’t know it, it’s that such a theory wasn’t part of Christian thought and theology until around the year 1050. It was about that time that a man named Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury formal, introduced a doctrine that shaped how Christians in the western world would view the crucifixion all the way up to today. His theory, called penal substitutionary atonement, stated that the sin committed in Eden was so great, so awful, that all humanity was damned from that day forth, which was backed up by the examples of violence and cruelty still present in the world. Nothing, Anselm said, was ever going to satisfy God’s wrath against all of us sinners except a blood atonement, a sacrifice like that of the Passover lamb. That’s where Jesus comes in. Anselm’s theory, then, stated that God substituted Jesus on the cross for all of the rest of us who actually deserved death. This sacrifice paid the debt humanity owed to God, and thus made it possible for us to know God’s love now that God’s wrath had been assuaged. Jesus doesn’t so much willingly give himself up to death to mock and shame this instrument of human cruelty, as he is an instrument used by God to pay this blood libel. It’s around this time, the turn of the first millennium, that images of Jesus’ suffering, crucifixes showing a dying Jesus on the cross, start popping up, and slowly but surely they become the norm, much more often seen than images of Jesus healing or feeding folks. The emphasis shifted toward the wretchedness of humanity, rather than the goodness of God, and the crucifixion as substitutionary atonement still hammers that point home.
The problem with thinking of the crucifixion in this way, as something that had to happen, is that it not only paints God as a vengeful, angry deity – something Christians in the Orthodox East never adopted - but it implies that the end justifies the means. Our salvation was wrought by the cross, therefore the killing of Jesus by the state must ultimately be considered a good thing. Such thinking naturally led people to consider that, perhaps, there were other instances where the ends justified the means, other times when killing could be a good thing, where violence could be redemptive. For the first 1000 years of Christianity, however, the idea that violence could be redemptive was antithetical to the faith, as soldiers could not even be baptized and monarchs had to do penance if they participated in any kind of war. But shortly after Anselm proposed his theory of penal substitutionary atonement, all of that changed when Pope Urban II called the First Crusade to retake the Holy Land from the Muslims. To kill a Muslim infidel was not murder, the Pope decreed, but it was the ticket to the Kingdom of Heaven and could even absolve you of your sin. The end—the restoration of Jerusalem into the hands of Christians—justified the means—the killing of innocent people.
From there, well, you know the rest of the story. The myth of redemptive violence is all around us. From our favorite superhero films that show the “good” guys killing the “bad” guys, to the state killing men and women in the same manner as Jesus, we cannot escape these images of so-called redemptive violence. And in the most painful and evil circumstances, individuals are left stuck in cycles of abuse because they are told that their suffering is a good thing and will lead to something positive in the end. It is not really suffering, no, it is salvation, they are told. Jesus suffered, after all, so why shouldn’t they. Indigenous peoples of this continent systematically slaughtered, while those who survived were assimilated into white culture with the motto, “Kill the Indian, save the man!” Enslaved Africans taken into captivity and mercilessly beaten so that their so-called savagery may be cleansed by the violence of their Christian masters, who quoted the Bible while they beat them. Women suffering at the hands of men who tell them they deserve their beatings and will learn from their mistakes, that they must “submit to their abusers” as the good book says. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Non-Binary teenagers denied basic health care, the opportunity to learn and grow and hone important, life-saving skills, or even use the proper restroom, because their very existence goes against God’s supposed plan. And still to this day leaders, both civic and religious, misquote the Bible to promote discrimination and abuse, while the crowd once again chooses Barabbas over Jesus. All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again. So we call this day good, we are told, without the violence God predestined Jesus to endure, humanity would never know salvation.
But we must remember that God did not crucify Jesus. Humanity did that, and to be more specific, human institutions of power – collaboration between religion and the state - did it. This is where human power leads, to violence that is reframed as redemptive; to abusers claiming a sense of righteousness over the abused, who go about their lives believing that this is what they deserve, while those in power wash their hands of any blame, just like Pilate. No! This is not God’s power. God’s power invites humanity into something more, into a relationship that deconstructs the myth of redemptive violence. God’s power calls us OUT of those patterns of being, not into them. And Jesus’ death is the last straw.
The crucifixion does, in fact, save us, but it isn’t because we turned Jesus into the ultimate scapegoat who shoulders the blame and punishment for the truly evil things humanity has done. Plenty of Christian preachers focus solely on the crucifixion, pouring guilt onto faithful people who have known nothing but shame and fear of an angry, wrathful God, whose only Son had to be killed because he had to stand in for the violent death they rightly deserved. Violence is NEVER the answer, it is NEVER redemptive, and it is NEVER the way of Jesus. The crucifixion does save us from hell, but as one theologian put it, “This (the crucifixion itself) is the hell from which we are saved!”; the heretical belief that this is what we deserve, that the end could justify the means. Jesus did die for us, it’s true, but not in the sense that his death took the place of a death that we all deserved, but rather his death is in solidarity with our own, a death freely offered by Jesus, not imposed by a vengeful God, so that the world could see how senseless it was and never do it again.
Today is not about trying to put a hopeful spin on a tragic situation. No, I do not believe that Jesus had to die because God was so wrathful. But Jesus DID die, and he died in the most gruesome fashion imaginable at that time. Today is a day to let that sink in. Today is a day to pray that we will learn from it, somehow and some way, that we will forsake notions that violence such as this can be a positive thing. and that we will be rid of our own scapegoat mechanisms. Today is a day to lay everything at the foot of the cross and pray for God’s grace to move us out of such patterns of being and into the way of love. Only then can we call this day Good.
The Great Vigil of Easter - Jesus passes over from death to life
“Do you want to go to a Vigil?” the Curate asked me. “Sure,” I said, “what’s that?” It was 2008, and I was working as the youth minister at St. Thaddeus in Aiken, South Carolina. I was 24 years old, a Postulant for Holy Orders, and a lifelong Episcopalian, but I had never seen an Easter Vigil before. My tiny mountain church growing up never spoke of it, and in that first year of working at St. Thad’s, even they, a church with more than eight times as many people, didn’t do it. So I said yes to our Curate, this freshly minted priest who became one of my best friends because he had knowledge that I cleaved to for dear life, even if no one else did. I joined him at his old college church, Good Shepherd in Columbia, and I experienced my first Easter Vigil that Saturday night in 2008. The impression it made was so strong that when we went to St. Thad’s the next morning I told the priest, “We gotta get us one of those!” The next year we did, and that church has had one every year since.
What was it that moved me so? Was it the lighting of the fire outside that continued to burn and signal to passers-by that God was kindling something in the darkness? Was it the readings – so many readings – that told every piece of the story, bit by bit, from creation, to liberation, to new life? Was it the roaring of the small but mighty congregation as they sang the Gloria en excelsis as the lights came on, bells were wrung, and it was suddenly Easter (no dancing, though)? Or was it getting splashed in the face with holy water – asperges, I learned they called it – for the first time in an indoor liturgy with the words “Remember your baptism”? As you can likely guess, it was all of it. Because it’s all here, everything we are as Christians is wrapped up in this most holy night, the culmination of this three-day liturgy we call the Paschal Triduum. A couple years after that first Easter Vigil a seminary professor would tell us that if we Christians were only permitted one night to worship all year long, it would have to be this one, even more so than Christmas Eve Midnight Mass. My friend the Curate would’ve agreed with that. And so do I.
We began tonight in darkness, just as the world did, just as we all did before we burst out of our mother’s womb. We did not hear all of the suggested readings for this evening – some are happy about that, others not so much – but we did hear again the purpose for which God created all things, which was love, as Julian of Norwich reminds us. All of it, plants of every kind, winged birds and sea creatures, and humanity itself, all made manifest through the breath, the wind, the spirit of God for the purpose of being in right relationship and balance. Over time this relationship was shattered when humanity, unlike the rest of living matter that stayed in the Garden, decided that we were just fine on our own, and through this missing of the mark, through sin, we fell further and further out of relationship with one another, with creation, and with God. Yet we heard also tonight how God did not give up on God’s people, how our God who created all things and intervenes in human history, brought this people out of the bondage of empire and into freedom. But empires are not easily vanquished, and so as Egypt fell away another, Babylon, took its place, and sin and darkness seemed to take hold of God’s people once more. But then we heard the story of a prophet named Ezekiel, who listened to God’s voice and witnessed God doing an impossible thing, bringing a valley of dry bones back to life – bone to its bone, sinew to sinew, muscle to muscle; this, God said through the prophet, is what I will do to the whole nation of your people, and truly to the whole of creation itself.
And in the fullness of time, God’s love for the creation was so great that God had to become part of it and experience it from the other side. In the person of Jesus of Nazareth, God would taste the fullness of the human condition, even the bitterness of death, a violent and senseless death. There was no meaning to any of it on Friday afternoon. But there’s fixin’ to be. The promise God made long ago is about to be fulfilled. We’ve walked with Jesus through betrayal and death and we sit in the darkness with him now in the tomb. We can feel it coming, can’t we, inching closer and closer? We are there at the very threshold of a new creation.
But not…just…yet. Jesus still has work to do. On this night, at this very moment, he is loosening the bonds of hell itself. Going to the place where the dead have resided, cut off from the light and love of God, Jesus grabs them by the wrist, pulls them up from their graves, and locks the doors from the inside. And as he goes to hell and comes back out again, as the dawn of Easter breaks in a few moments, and we ring our bells and noisemakers and dance the Troparion that proclaims that Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, we receive once more the waters that makes us part of his very Body, the waters of our new birth every bit as sacred as the waters of the womb from which we burst forth, waters that wash us not merely from the outer grime and dirt of our daily lives, but from the inner anguish and despair that whispers so sweetly that it’s easier to stay in our personal hells than to let Jesus pulls us up out of them. We are renewed this night by those waters, just as the whole of creation is renewed by what St. Augustine called the Paschal Mystery, Jesus’ Passover from death to life. It’s the opposite of what we are told is true, but this, sisters and brothers, is the truest story that has ever been told, and it’s all right here.
“Do you want to go to a Vigil?” Oh yeah! Every year. I want to hear the story, our story, again and again. I want to know that our God that created all things is still setting the captives free and bringing life to what was dried up and left for dead. I want to experience the waters splash on my face, the lights break forth, and the Bread and Cup passed around and remember that because of what Jesus does this night, tomorrow will be different. Easter Sunday, the first day of the week, the ever-new day of Resurrected Life, 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 hope that tells us in spite of our disappointments, failures, and broken hearts, the light of Christ – that very light that burns both in our Paschal Candle and in our hearts - cannot ever be extinguished. That is our hope, the Easter hope, and this is the night when it is fulfilled.