Feast to Serve

Grace Episcopal Church, Maundy Thursday, 2018

In the spring of 1995, I encountered a Nigerian writer through the newsletter of the Paul Robeson Cultural Center at Penn State University where I was teaching at the time. Her name is Buchi (“Butchie”) Emecheta.

She made a statement that I copied out of that newsletter, and have used many times since. She said this:

In Nigeria, you are simply not allowed to commit suicide in peace because everyone is responsible for the other person… An individual’s life belongs to the community and not just to him or her.

In contrast, individualism permeates U.S. American culture. We are all about individual rights and individual responsibilities, personal style and personal freedom, property and territory. 

We are suspicious of people who have too strong a sense of community. We really don’t think it takes a village to raise a child. We are quite certain that any nuclear family worth its salt really ought to be able to do it on its own.

We love stories of people who pull themselves up by the bootstraps, and succeed against the odds. We love the idea so much we have turned the noun, “bootstrap,” into the verb, “bootstrapping.” Google it and you will find a veritable invasion of bootstrapping verbs into various fields, ranging from computer programming to physics to corporate finance.

But we are called by God to community. Very soon, Fr. Michael will consecrate bread and wine, and we will share, once again, our communal feast of Christ’s body and blood.

On this holy Maundy Thursday night, we celebrate that event depicted so beautifully in the carving over Grace’s altar: Jesus calls Eucharistic community into being by blessing and sharing bread and wine with his disciples in his last meal with them on this Earth.

But what do we think it means?

Preparing for this homily, I googled the phrase “Eucharistic community.” How many websites would you guess contain the phrase, “Eucharistic community”?

Google is very good at counting things, including how long a search took. So I can report to you tonight that it took exactly .41 seconds for Google to locate 37,700 results for the phrase “Eucharistic community.”

But I ask again, what do we think it means?

I glanced through the first few pages of results, and some of them were mission statements of Christian churches. They said things like this example from a church in Wisconsin:

“We are a diverse and inclusive Spirit-based Eucharist community committed to the message of unconditional love given us by Jesus and to our call to imitate and reflect that love in our lives..,” and so on.

Sounds good, right? But if so many of us believe this, and come together so often to participate in this radical act of community… And that is what I think the Eucharist is: a radical act of community.

And if so, and if there are so many believers, how is it that our world continues to suffer so terribly from lack of community? Right here in northeast Louisiana we are divided by race and ethnicity; by profession and status; by railroad tracks, highways and a river; by politics, by age group, by fear and distrust; indeed, by righteousness itself.

I invite us to consider this evening that perhaps it is because we focus on half of the story. In preparing this sermon, I also googled “foot-washing community.” And what do you suppose I found?

It took Google exactly .26 seconds to find….. (drumroll please) 53 results. 

Jesus initiated two things on this holy evening: Holy Eucharist and love-drenched service to humankind. And please note, he does not make one more important than the other.

To the contrary, according to St. John… during supper… Jesus…got up from the table…and began to wash the disciples’ feet.

Fr. Michael, help me. We serve Holy Eucharist here at Grace how many times a week? Twice most Sundays and twice on Wednesdays—at least when school is in session… that’s four times most weeks.

But we wash each other’s feet once a year.

How did Holy Eucharist become a sacrament and not foot washing? I would be hard pressed to pin that difference to anything in the Gospel message.

Of course, actually washing each other’s feet on Maundy Thursday is symbolic of all of our service to each other and the world. Jesus himself said, I do this as an example of what you are to do.

But given our perhaps disproportionate emphasis on enacting Holy Eucharist vs. enacting foot washing, do we fully understand and embrace the depth of the interconnection between feasting at the Holy Table and love-drenched service to each other and the world?

Holy Eucharist Rite II Prayer C begins to get at the point. It’s at the top of page 372 in the prayer book, if you want to see for yourself. (BTW, a good reason for everyone to come to a Grace School chapel on a Wednesday at 8 a.m. every so often is that we use Prayer C.)

Reading in the middle of the first paragraph on p. 372: Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.

We feast at the Table for strength and renewal to do the work as Christ’s body in the world.

But not even that fully expresses what happens in tonight’s Gospel story, so let’s go back there for a moment. It seems we can always count on Peter to model the hubris of humankind in a way that enables Jesus to teach us a profound lesson.

He says to Jesus, in what is really a kind of pride cloaked in humility: Lord.., you will never wash my feet.

And Jesus says to Peter: Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.

Please… and I know this has become a catch phrase on social media, but please… let that sink in for a moment.

Outside of love-drenched service, we have no share with Jesus.

I began this evening by quoting Buchi Emecheta on the radically communal nature of Nigerian culture. I want to go back to her now to say something about what we as a Eucharistic, foot-washing community face in our struggle to make community real in the world.

It is this: Emecheta understands the nature of the enemy. Nigerian society, like U.S. society, is divided into “haves” and “have-nots.” She herself is from the class of have-nots, and her books are about the yawning and seemingly insurmountable chasm between the haves and the have-nots. In her stories, poverty is the most divisive factor in society.

In short, Emecheta understands that poverty, in its many interconnections with race, culture, politics, even religion, is a wall, tall and thick, down the middle of the human community.

I suspect that much of the time some of us, and some of the time all of us, have a lot in common with the rich young man in that other Gospel story. We really want to negotiate with God about what the new commandment—love God and your neighbor as yourself—really means.

“Who’s my neighbor?” we ask. What do you mean, “love”? But I suspect the Nigerians have it about right: Everyone is responsible for everyone else. Our lives belong to God’s community.

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, AMEN.