Sermons

Tridium Sermons

Preached by Mother Lizette Larson-Miller on Maundy Thursday (Thursday, March 20, 2008)

Exodus 12:1-14a; I Cor 11:23-32; John 13:1-15

This is the night! This night, and tomorrow night and the next night – welcome into these three holy days, these three holy nights, our high holy days. Starting hours ago, or in the hours to come, or right now, Christians all over the world are gathering in to this time – as if the time itself were literally a space that calls us all home again, or perhaps home for the first time – into this mystery of life and death, salvation and reconciliation, water and oil, bread and wine, fire and darkness, confession and betrayal.

This is the night in which it all begins – but, there is a city out there, outside these doors, a city pulsing with entertainment and allurements of all types – so, what are you doing here? Why are you here? You know these stories that we’ve just heard – you’ve heard them before; you know what we’re going to do – you’ve done these actions before; you probably even know a lot of the songs we’re singing – you’ve sung them before. Why are you here?

Since at least the beginning of the 4th century Christians have gathered on this night – it has been an evening of in-gathering for 1700 years, even if for very different reasons throughout history. But tonight, in 2008, what are we doing? The liturgies of holy week are among the most ancient in which we still live, and they are dramatic and they are sensual – we will eat and drink at the hands of others, we will listen to stories of humble service that apparently make us so cringe at their intimacy that we do not even do what the gospel tells us to do tonight! We will strip and wash the altar as if it were a human body being prepared for burial, we will keep watch as if before a tomb. We will kiss the wood of the cross, we will wash people in water and smear them with oil, we will gather in darkness, burn our hands on candlewax, listen to many more stories; we will sing ancient music, we will walk together, we will watch others walk on our behalf, we will be very tired – we have just begun, what is it that we are doing? What does it mean?

Are we retracing some perceived chronology – first Jesus did this (that’s tonight), then he did this (that’s tomorrow), then this happened (that has to wait until Saturday night)?
Are we imitating Jesus, are we remembering what Jesus did long ago and far away, are we acting out what Jesus did? Do we make sense of these days by following this chronological order beginning with tonight’s multiple stories, or, do we understand these days in a backwards chronology – making sense of all these days through the lens of the resurrection, in which the middle of the night on Saturday and early Sunday morning makes sense of Saturday, of Friday and of tonight?

In other words, is the Triduum – these three days – like a television series, a sequence of vignettes in which we reach the appropriate emotional response in each episode – responding to the diminishing physical state of Jesus as it is recounted to us in word and chronology?

I think that is the understanding that many people have of these days – I spent 40 minutes on the phone yesterday with a newspaper reporter from Southern California trying to explain – simply – how we calculate the date of Easter and in the process, trying to complicate his understanding of these days. Today is the Last Supper, tomorrow Jesus will be crucified, we’re not sure what happens on Saturday, and on Sunday he will rise from the dead – what more is there to understand? Well, if that all happened in the past, once and for all, what does it have to do with us? Why are we here and not out there – what is it exactly that we are entering into?

I would like to suggest these three days of one continuous liturgy are not like watching an engaging television series, but rather, as Kenneth Stevenson says, an invitation to an imaginative journey “into a great and wonderful mystery.” We are not re-presenting or acting out what Jesus did tonight, but certainly there is drama in these liturgies of holy week – it is an important vehicle for the affective, for engaging our emotions and our senses. We are not imitating Jesus in the liturgy tonight, at least not ritually, but we are rehearsing a pattern of imitating Jesus in all dimensions of our life. “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” The commandment (mandatum, Maundy Thursday) is to wash one another’s feet – and to do to one another all that the washing of feet means – humble service, the first shall be last, putting the last first, turning expectations of power and authority on their head, undoing the status quo, enacting an intimate human connection that invites us “into a great and wonderful mystery.”

And perhaps there is the best key into how those actions long ago and far away have anything to do with us here. It is not because we keep to a strict chronology, nor because we imitate in excruciatingly exact detail, it is because we gather as the body of Christ, bringing our faith – no matter how strong or how weak it is – and offer that for the common good and to God, who is the agent in bringing this all together. It is through the Holy Spirit that time and place are transcended, that ancient actions become new, that ancient texts speak fresh words, and we are made anew. Jesus said to Peter “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” Did Peter understand when he denied Jesus? Did he understand when the women told him of the resurrection? Did he understand finally at his own death?

If the goal of these liturgies was educational, we could explain it all to you and control what happens so that the outcome would be correct. If the goal of these liturgies was therapeutic, we could make you feel certain things, we could control the emotional flow so that you would go away appropriately sorrowful tonight, but we would be in danger of destroying these days. Because these are symbolic realities, these are sacramental realities, we do not have to understand everything that happens tonight, tomorrow and Saturday night – we are invited to use our imagination as a response to God’s work – and to relate to these stories and actions. Symbols communicate, they suggest, they resound with us. They do not explain like signs, they invite, and they are real.

We hear stories tonight of what Jesus did at table with his friends and followers-we hear of the dress rehearsal for the Eucharist. But because the story takes place before the death and resurrection of Jesus, it is only by looking through the end of the story of these three days that tonight makes any sense. In a few moments we will, in reality, eat the story, we will take into ourselves and invite the reality of God made flesh to fill us. But we participate in this reality through the reality of the resurrection – we are Easter people – we have passed through the waters of death and resurrection. We stand in sure and certain hope of the resurrection, our resurrection, because of the resurrection that has already begun.

So what are we doing here? We are remembering who we are as we retell our stories and make this Eucharist. We enter into the story, not by taking a trip into a mythic past or by bringing that past into this small room. We become the story through sacramental reality, transcending all time and place by means of time and place and things and actions and faith.
In the Byzantine liturgy for this day, there is a short hymn text used several times throughout the liturgy, which captures the heart of the beginning of these three holy days:

“At your mystical supper, Son of God,
receive me today as a partaker,
for I will not betray the sacrament to your enemies,
nor give you a kiss like Judas,
but like the thief I confess you:
remember me Lord in your kingdom.”

(translated Robert Taft, The Great Entrance)

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