April 8, 2020  (today’s lectionary)
To have a well-trained tongue (Isaiah 50) you must have well-trained ears. “Morning after morning he opens my ear that I may hear.”
I must sleep to hear, and I must hear to speak. Now at the end of the day my ears are tired, even in my silence I hear badly.
I hope tomorrow will be a longer writing day…
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April 9, 2020   (today’s lectionary) … and this is Holy Thursday, the first of the Three Days, of the Triduum …
The Lord’s Supper … what a beautiful name for the Passover feast tonight. Jesus shared this meal with his friends and disciples. This, tonight, was his Last Supper, another name so beautiful. Another name for this night unlike any other.
Lord, we are grateful to share a meal with you, our Agape Feast, this moment of Communion, Eucharist, sacrament, ordinance, joy unspeakable. Sister Wendy (in The Art of Lent) wrote, “Jesus gave his Church the Eucharist, a mystical means of communion with his risen body. If Christians received this Holy Communion just once in their lives, with what awed reverence they would prepare for that unimaginable moment.”
“Eucharistia” means thanksgiving, and appears fifteen times in the New Testament. Especially as Paul wrote in 1 Cor 11:23-24, “When he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks (eucharistia) he broke it and said, “This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
Our lonely celebration for the two thousandth plus time of the Three Days, the Triduum, begins today, on the first day after the 40 days (plus Sundays) of Lent 2020. We are scattered, like the Israelites. We yearn to approach and climb, and rest, on the mountain of Zion with our brothers and sisters. Nonetheless, we are not scattered from our Source. God our Father, God our Mother, God our Savior and Brother, God of the Holy Spirit given to us … we are not scattered from God.
And so we follow the path of our ancestors, no matter how many degrees of separation …
We shall eat together tonight the roasted flesh of the unblemished, year-old lamb, male, slaughtered in twilight and its blood splashed, poured, and brushed on the front door posts and lintel. Shall we not?
And with this lamb we will eat unleavened bread, never molding in our travels, along with bitter herbs, the bitterness of death and death restrained. We are packed and ready to go, shoestrings tied and GPS turned on. Our walking sticks are leaning up beside the door.
We walk toward Zion, the mountain of our God, through desert and parted sea. We walk in perpetual pilgrimage, always honoring our past, our present and our future. Our God is an awesome God. Our God is with us. (Exodus 12)
Of course we will all die. Some of us will die tonight. But precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. Their bonds have been loosed while ours are still tightly tied. We take up the cup from which they too drank, your cup of salvation. We eat and drink into the darkness of tomorrow, and the coming dawn. (Psalm 116)
Jesus, your supper added so much to our Passover tradition. “On the night he was HANDED OVER, Jesus took bread and eucharistia, broke it and said, “This is my body.” And he held up the cup of wine. “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” Each time, each day, each month, each year … that we eat and drink like this, we proclaim “the death of the Lord until he comes.” (1 Corinthians 11)
Have you had your feet washed in church, at home, by someone else? Have I? I don’t remember. I hope we find time to wash each other’s feet today. It’s a privilege we often avoid, maybe always avoid. Like praying together out loud, seems like we don’t do much of that either except at meals. Not sure why, except embarrassment. Inappropriate embarrassment.
Jesus, fully aware he had come from God and was returning to God, took off his cloak, poured water and began to wash his friends’ feet, and dry them with the towel around his waist.
But not Peter, not at least at first. Peter like the others too was aware of this reversal of things. Shouldn’t they be washing Jesus’ feet? Jesus remembered, even if Peter did not, his own words about the last being first.
“I wash your feet, and now you must wash each other’s feet.” Do what I say, and even more, do what I have done. (John 13)
When you wash us with hyssop, Lord, we will be clean. When you are born into our midst and are rejected by us and killed on the cross by us, when we are cruel and selfish and forgetful of our Source, what – still clean? Cleaner still? How can that be?
Writing to a friend, I remembered a story, a play performed at Krannert many years ago, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot.
Jesus visits Purgatory, where Judas has been since he hanged himself. Judas is full of unrepentant hatred for Jesus, for reasons that vary as the play progresses. At the end, as he rejects every attempt Jesus makes at reconciliation, the stage empties. Judas goes to a corner of the room and turns his back on Jesus. Jesus walks and stands beside him without speaking.
Jesus carries a bowl full of water. Jesus removes his shirt and dips it in the bowl. He wrings out some of the water, the living water. Then he turns toward Judas.
In that moment the lights go black. The play is over. The story is not.
What a wonderful play.
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