Maundy Thursday- What Do You See?

The question is not what you look at, but what you see. -Henry David Thoreau



Thoreau wrote this line in his journal on an August night in 1851. He was criticizing those who looked at things but didn’t see what was really there. It was just a passing observation that he didn’t take to any other conclusions that I could find.

But when I saw it a couple months ago when preparing this series, it was one of the more powerful new insights. Many of Thoreau’s quotes have been around and used often. This one seemed perfect for the Thursday of Holy Week.

• What do you see on this holiest of nights, surpassing even the wonder of Christmas Eve?
• What is there to see that enlightens the soul and let’s us be participants in grace?

There is a table, set for Passover. Bitter herbs and a shank-bone; a roasted hard-boiled egg and a spiced mixture of nuts, honey, fruit, and wine. In the center three pieces of matzah covered on a plate and a cup of wine. It is like almost any other Passover meal then or in the 2000 years since. It is a ritual with depth and history and wonder. The participants recline and enjoy leisure, something their enslaved ancestors were not able to do. They laugh and enjoy the interactions.

But this table is set in a hidden place, an upper room in one of the city’s neighborhoods. At this point there are only thirteen people there, obviously a close knit group. They laugh and joke and ask deep questions. They no doubt have finished the ritual readings and glasses of wine. We can watch the obvious leader take one of the pieces of matzah and breaks it. One piece he dips into the spiced mixture and hands it to one of the others. Then he takes another piece and breaks it as well, says some words and looks at his friends. They seem to be confused. They apparently don’t understand. After they have eaten he takes a cup of wine and again seems to be saying more than the standard blessing. Again the group, now minus the one who shared the earlier matzah, looks at each other in disbelief.

If we did not know what we were looking at, we would not see what this all means. If we were not the heirs of two millennia of reenactments and remembrances of that one Passover meal, we would miss the wonder and hope of that event.

What will I see tonight? A ritual that I participate in because it’s what I do on this Thursday? Another uncertain theological event that we can argue about until, well, until the Kingdom of God is completely revealed?

• Will I see the bread and do as I always do? Will I see the cup and wonder why?

• Will I hear the words spoken at that other meal and experience in a renewed way what it means to have a body broken and blood shed for the proclamation of God’s grace?

• Will I finally know that in some mysterious way I am proclaiming the grace of God in Jesus’ broken body and the forgiveness of sin in blood shed?

Bread and cup- or more?

Ritual- or life renewed?

Words- or grace, the free gift of God?

It all depends on what I am open to see?

Lenten Journey- Maundy Thursday- Obedience

One act of obedience is worth a hundred sermons.
 -Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Do this!
Wash each others’ feet.

Do this!
Break the bread and share it.

Do this!
Drink from the same cup as Jesus.

Do this!
Remember Jesus.

Just do it!
It makes quite a witness.

Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence or
take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation and
grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

Maundy Thursday

A Day of Pause and Reflection

For Christians it is the day in-between. We have had the the Footwashing, the Last Supper, Gethsemane, Calvary. As I have said a number of times on this blog we have the advantage of knowing how the story ends. We know who won't be in the tomb when the women arrive tomorrow morning. We should not forget our privileged position of awareness- nor try to read it back into the original story. I saw a church sermon title for tomorrow that did that.

Afraid- But Filled With Joy

is what it read and I have assumed that it is trying to put those two feelings into the original disciples on Easter morning- a certain way of getting it wrong. Just as we don't need to be afraid today because of yesterday's Crucifixion, they had no sense of joy, even when the women reported the tomb empty.

Joy came later.

When we try to give definitive answers to what the events of that Holy Week (I still like Passion Week, by the way!) we will always fail. I don't care who you are or how educated you are, we cannot get into the First Century mindset to understand what it meant then, let alone what it means today.

I came to that realization sitting in church on Thursday evening in the silence prior to the start of the Maundy Thursday Footwashing and Eucharist. I wanted to be there and it was a calm, refreshing and renewing place to be. I thought about all the 40 years as a pastor on this evening or the years when I was first a Christian and went to the Good Friday services. I pondered the changes in the service, as the pastor said, since in most of those years there was no such thing as a footwashing service. We did those things as a "Camp-thing" but few would have thought of that for a Maundy Thursday experience.

I remembered our Moravian Lovefeasts or Tenebrae services of darkness. I reflected on the words of the liturgy:

• Do this
• My body
• My blood
• In remembrance
• Until He comes

But if you had asked me what this all means to me today, I couldn't have answered you. Nor would I have tried. I know far, far less today than I have ever known; I have far fewer final answers than I have ever had or been given. I don't need to know the answers anymore. I don't need to believe some iron-clad, no-way-around-it theology or theological ideology. I know these words express a deep, personal and universal reality. I know there is truth, no, there is Truth here that I will never grasp with my head or logic.

Nothing about this is logical. Nothing about this makes any intellectual sense in spite of what many want to find. What makes the words of Jesus and the actions of God so powerful to me today is that they don't have the same narrow meaning they may have had 2000 years ago. They are words that lead us to something far more than I can ever grasp.

Because the spiritual reality that I can fully understand will not be the spiritual reality of God. God is greater than that. God speaks in each time and each place. The events in an Upper Room, a Garden or on the garbage hill of Jerusalem in 30 AD are actions of God. No doubts there. They are part of a Truth that I will never humanly understand.

So all I can do is thank God for what God has done and is doing for me and for all. All I can express is what I have seen and heard and received.

• Grace
• Peace
• Forgiveness
• Salvation
• God's love.

So I let that surround me, wash over my feet in the footwashing, be a blessing as I washed another person's feet and then enter through me in the Eucharist.

Thanks be to God!

Maundy Thursday

The Last Supper

Lent Picture A Day (44): Breath

Maundy Thursday 2014

Three pictures to consider for today:

As I have done for you,
now do for each other.

Serve.

The Bread of Heaven

The Cup of Salvation

Do this in remembrance of Me.

And when they had sung a hymn,

 

they went into the garden.