Do This

 Maundy Thursday, Grace Episcopal Church, 2023

It’s a familiar story. Yet we need to hear it again. And again.

 

So we come together every Maundy Thursday to re-enact, with Jesus in our midst, two expressions of who we are as followers of him and as children of the living God.

 

One of those things is Holy Eucharist: 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. And he says, “do this in remembrance of me.”

 

Those of us who take seriously our commitment in our baptismal covenant to “continue in the fellowship and the breaking of the bread and the prayers,” tend to be here at least once a week for the ongoing celebration of Holy Eucharist in this place.

 

The other expression of who we are as followers of Jesus that we re-enact this night is our identity as servants, initiated by Jesus’s washing of his disciples’ feet. And this time he says, ‘I’m doing this as an example of what you are to do.”

 

We call this night “Maundy Thursday” because “maundy,” coming from the Latin “man DAH tum,” means “command.” Jesus didn’t just express hope or desire that we do these things, he commands us to do these things.

 

So we participate and are renewed weekly by Holy Eucharist. But do we have an equally powerful weekly reminder of our servant identity? It is there, in our post-communion prayers, and I’ll come back to those. But do we see our Eucharistic life and our servanthood as being one and the same?

 

I’m not so sure, and much as I love the Book of Common Prayer that guides us through our daily and weekly liturgies, I wonder if it’s not a shortcoming that we can so easily miss that point. Certainly I think our role as servants is the harder to remember and make real with regular practice in our lives.

 

I dare say, coming to the holy table reassures us of our belonging and reminds us of God’s grace and mercy toward us. It is, by and large, our comfort zone.

 

In contrast, practicing our servanthood often takes us out of our comfort zone. And isn’t it interesting—and probably quite relevant—that the action Jesus used to drive home his point about servanthood also takes us out of our comfort zone!

 

I grew up in the Mennonite Church—a sharp contrast with the Episcopal Church in some ways. And I will never forget so long as I live the acute discomfort of the teenagers of the church on foot-washing Sunday. Because, you see, in the Mennonite Church, everyone had to do it. Everyone!

 

And so the teenage girls and the teenage boys would congregate in separate groups in opposite corners of the church, as far apart as they could get, and, rather hurriedly, heads down, wash feet.

 

What is up with that? Well, clearly, kneeling down and washing each other’s feet involves more vulnerability than even adults are comfortable with, much less teenagers. But that is exactly as I think Jesus intended it.

 

Now, please. I did not tell that story to pressure anyone into participating in the ritual of foot washing tonight! I love the Episcopal Church’s “some should, all may, none must” approach to such things.

 

But I do want to call each and every one of us, whether we participate by coming to the basins or by sitting in our pew watching, that we not allow this to be just another annual ritual in the church year.

 

I do call each of us to recognize this re-enactment to be a recommitment to our role and identity as servants, along with our brother Jesus the Christ, and along with all of the vulnerability that servanthood involves.  

 

See, the life of servanthood is not about making us feel good. Last week at our monthly pub theology gathering, we got into a discussion about charitable acts—specifically about such things as giving money to someone who is asking for help.

 

Now that is by no means the only way to enact servanthood—maybe not even the best way—but it is one way. Helping people who ask us for help is one way to “seek and serve Christ” in every human face, as our baptismal covenant puts it.

 

But the question that came up was, what if it doesn’t make us feel good to do it? Shouldn’t doing a charitable act, doing some kind of service to another, make us feel good?

 

My first thought in response to the question was, yeah, that makes sense, it should.

 

But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I question my response. Why should it make us feel good? When did Jesus ever say that following the servanthood he modeled for us would make us feel good?

 

Actually, what Jesus did say pretty clearly is that following him was not going to feel good. You know, all that stuff about maybe having to leave behind family, about letting the dead bury the dead, about giving away all your stuff, about the narrow way vs. the broad way…

 

So maybe if doing some charitable or servant-like thing makes us feel good, we really ought to think twice about it. We ought to question our motives. Because following Jesus into the life of servanthood is not about making us feel good. It is far more likely to be about leaving our comfort zone, with God as our help—and that, of course, is what makes it possible.

 

Here’s what servanthood of the Jesus kind is about: Love. That is all.

 

Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. What Jesus did was about love. What Jesus institutes is loving service. And he says, I do this as an example of what you are to do. And when Peter objects, he says, Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.

 

Loving service to each other and all of humankind is intrinsic to our relationship with Jesus the Christ. Without it, we have no share with him.

 

It is the outward manifestation of an inward grace—that inward grace being the love of God through our relationship with Jesus the Christ. Without it, we have no share with him.

 

Our service in the name of Jesus the Christ is an extension of the community we share at the holy table. It is sacramental.

 

And now, Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do, we will soon pray after receiving the holy food. Or, in the magnificent words of Rite I, strengthen us to do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in.

 

Service is not merely something we do in our spare time or with spare resources. Loving service is how we walk in the world.

 

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

 

Please Save Now

 Palm Sunday, Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, La.

It has never been clear to me why a homily is required on Palm Sunday. What can a preacher—or anyone else, for that matter—say after reading the Passion Gospel? Would that we all sit quietly and let the pain.. and the anguish.. and the despair.. of having been forsaken by God wash over us.

 

So I don’t have much to say, but a little that matters, it seems to me.

 

I always thought the word “Hosanna!” shouted by the people who waved palms and marched into Jerusalem was a joyous, triumphant “yay, God,” “long live King Jesus” kind of statement. 

 

A few years ago, doing some research for teaching religion in the Grace Middle School, I discovered to my surprise that that’s not at all what it means. Far from being a shout of triumph, it is a plea. “Hosanna” comes from the Hebrew hoshia-nah, which means “please save now.”

 

In other words, the people who escorted Jesus into Jerusalem with a celebratory parade were not shouting praise, adoration or victory. They were begging to be saved already!

 

Perhaps then, it is no wonder that just a few days hence, after Jesus had stood silently before the chief priests and elders and refused to defend himself before Pontius Pilate, those same people called for his execution.

 

He had let them down. Here was a man who refused to save himself, refused to even defend himself. How could he possibly save anyone else? Jesus was a disappointment. He betrayed their hope and longing for a Messiah who would actually solve problems! Fix things! Get the Romans off their back! And so they quickly turned against him.

 

And are we not like that today? Do we not lay down our palm branches and pick up our weapons rather quickly when our often unrealistic expectations are not met by… whomever or whatever: a political party; a friend; a spouse; our church; a priest, bishop or deacon.

 

We want what we want and we want it on our terms. Even when we all really want the same thing, we disagree on the way to get there and have trouble even having civil discussions to seek some common ground.

 

We are very quick to drop our palm branches and pick up our weapons, fling harsh words and sarcastic memes at one another.

 

Jesus before the elders and before Pilate must have looked like a loser. The people wanted to hitch their wagon to a winner. And don’t we?

 

And don’t we want God yet today to “please save us now”! Don’t we, too, have unrealistic expectations of God’s role in human life? Why does God allow.. bad things to happen to good people? we ask. Why does God allow poverty? Why does God allow evil in the world? Why, God…? we ask, as if God were in the business of handing out political favors for those who vote for Him.

 

The people who waved palms that first palm Sunday were unprepared for the answer to their suffering to be Love, simply Love—humble, obedient, self-sacrificing Love that overcomes evil not by fighting back, but by embracing.

 

I’m not sure we’re any better prepared or accepting today of Love as the answer, Love as that which will save us, than were the people 2000 years ago. We sure don’t act like it! We’d rather dig in our heels and go for the win, regardless of the collateral damage the fight might do.

 

As we walk through this holy week, let us examine our own expectations of

God, each other, and perhaps most of all, ourselves. Can we accept humble, patient, unconditional Love as the thing that will save us? And if we say “yes” to that, how must it change us?

 

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