MINT ICE CREAM AND MEMORY

Taste and touch trigger memory. 

A couple of personal memories, having to do with mint chocolate chip ice cream, and memory.

When I think of mint chocolate chip ice cream a couple of memories stand out. In the earlier one, Bambi told me about the time Dave was driving a bunch of people (all around age 19) down the road in his VW microbus, and they stopped to buy ice cream. But then it began to melt. And Dave said, hand me the carton. And he dipped his hand in, scooped some out, and ate. And then passed along the carton, so others could eat. Imagine the mess when he shifted gears.

There was another memorable occasion. After the burial of someone’s grandmother, her family gathered at a nearby house. There wasn’t much preparation, but what was in the refrigerator was, yes, mint chocolate chip ice cream. Enough to go around, and then some. And as they ate, cousins, sons, grandchildren, all began to hear and tell stories, of those who had gone before, grandmother, grandfather, and all. The stories remind and revive those who mourn. 

Taste and touch trigger memory, famously in the case of writer Marcel Proust who took a bit of madeleine, a small cake, into his mouth, and then sipped a cup of tea. This triggered memories of how France, and Paris, had been before the first world war, and he wrote about it in a series of novels, called in English, In Search of Lost Time, or, earlier, Remembrance of Things Past.

Remembrance. Do this in remembrance of me. Remember this day, said Moses, on the first Passover. Do this in remembrance of me, said Jesus, at his last meal with the disciples, the first Eucharist of the Lord’s Supper. 

Remember. 

That is what Maundy Thursday’s service is about. Remembrance. Memory. Or, in Greek, anamnesis. But it is more than remembering in the nostalgic sense. And it is better than William Faulkner’s dour observation, “The past is never dead. It's not even past.”―Requiem for a Nun.

It is about bringing the past into the present. As Massey Shepherd, who taught at my seminary, reminded us, the Lord’s Supper, and indeed the washing of feet, are meant to make the past effective and actual in our lives, as they are meant to make the work of Jesus our own. 

Father Fuller, late of St Frances Cabrini parish in Tucson, said that in the Eucharist our Lord gives us the most precious of gifts, himself. Note,  gives us, not just gave us. For the gift of the Lord’s Supper is ongoing. And the gift Christ gives us in it is one that continues. 

As the apostle Paul said, it is something we receive from the Lord and something we also hand on. 

We pass on more than just the memory of a man serving his followers, of a master serving his disciples. In doing that, Jesus had upended the natural order of things. As he said, the servant is not greater than the one he serves. But do you get it? Whom he was serving? Not just the one before him, but the God who made and loved and redeemed him. 

And it is more than that. Jesus said, go and do this yourself. Not just physically washing feet, though that could come up, but in the spirit of his act, serve others, not yourself.

The washing of feet, that apostolic act, can take many forms. You may do it when you visit a stranger in the hospital or in jail, you may do it when you pray for someone in need and offer your assistance and your company, you may do it when you speak up for somebody mistreated or given the short stick in the justice department. There are many ways you and I serve others.

The church, German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer is said to have said, is the only institution that exists for those who are not its members. 

“My body for you” - Jesus said. And we are his body. Our body - however broken or imperfect - for you. For you whom Jesus loves, even now, as the past becomes present, in the washing of feet, in the Eucharist, in our work in the world as the people of God.

May we, as the body of Christ in the world, as we receive the broken bread and the poured out wine, as we get the tingle of wet water on our cold feet, remember who we are, and become present at the Lord’s Supper and in the Lord’s world, as those who do love’s redeeming work.

Maundy Thursday 2023

• Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14

• 1 Corinthians 11:23-26

• John 13:1-17, 31b-35

• Psalm 116:1, 10-17

http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC_RCL/HolyWk/MaundyTh_RCL.html

Prayer of the Day

Holy God, source of all love, on the night of his betrayal, Jesus gave us a new commandment, to love one another as he loves us. Write this commandment in our hearts, and give us the will to serve others as he was the servant of all, your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Amen.

Prayer of the Day (Alternate)

Eternal God, in the sharing of a meal your Son established a new covenant for all people, and in the washing of feet he showed us the dignity of service. Grant that by the power of your Holy Spirit these signs of our life in faith may speak again to our hearts, feed our spirits, and refresh our bodies, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Amen.

(From Sundays and Seasons, Augsburg Fortress, Minneapolis, Minn.)

***

The Rev. John R. Leech, D.Min., serves as a priest associate at the Episcopal Church of Saint Matthew, Tucson, Arizona.

An edited version of this meditation appears online at https://tucson.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/bringing-the-past-into-present-day-actions/article_e69c28a6-d7be-11ed-94a3-4705199d383e.html

Maundy

Episcopalians are a peculiar branch of the Jesus movement. We follow Jesus, yes. He is the Word. 

We speak the Word, sing the Word, pray the Word, eat and drink the Word. 

Jesus is 'our meat and drink' - in him is the source of life, and to receive him is to be fed by the staff of life that is the Word.

He is the Word come into the world. And in him we find the ultimate self-revelation of God.

So what is peculiar about that? It infects our worship. We center on the table where we eat and drink. Everything that happens in the service leads up to that, from initial prayer and praise and proclamation, through confession and word of grace, to the celebration of the goodness of God in bread and wine.

The focus of our worship is obvious from the shape of our gatherings. Central - where all eyes follow - is the table and on it the cup and the plate, the bread and the wine, the elements of the Eucharist, that is, the Great Thanksgiving. On one side you may see the clergy and on the other the choir or servers. The people may look at them from time to time, when they are reading or leading prayers or singing or preaching. But all the time the eyes of all are turning to the prize - the holy Eucharist, God's presence among us - and we seek no distraction from that. Once we have each as many of us as can gone up and taken bread and wine, we go out, sent by a deacon's dismissal and a priest's blessing, to carry the Word into the world.

https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC_RCL/HolyWk/MaundyTh_RCL.html

• Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14
• 1 Corinthians 11:23-26
• John 13:1-17, 31b-35
• Psalm 116:1, 10-17

palm fronds

There were palm fronds growing by the path and I cut them loose from the tree

when I was done with them I discarded them in the waste ground behind the garden wall

there  they lay

was I in the crowd

oh yes I am in the crowd

I’m always in the crowd

we are right he is the Messiah he is wonderful counselor Almighty God everlasting father prince of peace and he is coming

as promised 

he arrives on an unridden colt and we cheer 

hosanna save us that’s what hosanna means save us save us anointed one expected one

the palm fronds lay behind the wall drying until the next spring when someone asked for dried palm fronds to reduce to Ash

in Jerusalem six years ago early in the morning I felt I should get up and go and I walked through the town from the Gloria hotel near the Jaffa gate to the church

the church that has two names

one is the church of the holy sepulcher

there was almost no one there

a priest gathered a small group of people at the bottom of a stair and I asked him 

I don’t know what I’m looking at what should I look at and he said

well you want to go up the stairs that’s Calvary

then you want to go over to that little building inside the building that is the chapel with the tomb

later that day I went into the chapel and lay my forehead on the cool marble slab in the inner room

my eyes closed

it was dark so dark I felt as if I were looking into a darkened face looking into mine

I felt nothing

I lost track of time

then I heard a gasp of breath and I opened my eyes leaned away got up and went out

the attendant said yes Fr.

and I walked out into the larger church which has another name the church of the Resurrection

but not yet not today

we are still at the tomb with our eyes closed waiting for the light to dawn

between then and now we gather at a table and he is there and he says to us as he breaks the bread and passes it around

this is my body broken for you

the true Paschal Lamb offers himself for us

at the end of the meal he takes the cup blesses it giving thanks to God and gives it to us and says

this is my blood the blood of the new covenant remember this

remember this whenever you drink it

and so we remember also the offering Abraham made of his own son

And God reckoned  that faith of Abraham unto him for righteousness

it wasn’t killing his son that saved him it was his faith

and so even today as we without bread or wine in our hands offer our faith as our gift to God 

and it is through that faith that he redeems us 

it is through his act in which we have faith that he has made us whole

“Our faith is our gift to God”, Arizona Daily Star, March 30th 2021, https://tucson.com/our-faith-is-our-gift-to-god/article_5f031639-f5e1-58c3-9291-cd4d498961d0.html.

"Our faith is our gift to God; through it, he redeems us." Arizona Daily Star, April 4th 2021, E3.

https://tucson.com/our-faith-is-our-gift-to-god/article_5f031639-f5e1-58c3-9291-cd4d498961d0.html (updated April 1st 2021)

Maundy Thursday

May the Lord who served be the one we follow; may the One we serve be honored in our service; may we, as we serve one another, and those we once called stranger, become servants of our Lord.

Traditionally, most years, it is our custom both to wash feet and to share communion on this holy Thursday. But this year that is not to be. Instead, we may well find ourselves returning back to the Word, to the relation of the events of that first Maundy Thursday night as they presage the events of that night and the next morning. That is, the celebratory aspects of the traditional get-together may be overwhelmed by the memory of what is to come: Good Friday.

In the old Book of Common Prayer that was first published in England in 1662,  and is still in use in that realm today, the emphasis is on the Passion, in the Gospel of John. The Epistle, granted, is of the Last Supper: and how we use it to proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. 

So the hope is beyond time. And yet it is now.

Somehow in all these events of Holy Week, Easter and Easter Week, we are to see beyond our own difficulties and sorrows, and the sorrows of Jesus and all his loving followers, then and now, to the hope beyond hope that the Resurrection demands. That it imposes on us, if we take it seriously.

Can we? Is that even possible?

Some seek to tell us that in past catastrophes, epidemics, plagues, and the familiar California litany of drought, rainstorm, flood, mudslide, earthquake, and drought again, "nobody helped anybody else, it was every man (sic) for himself." Well, no. I am reminded of those early Christians within the Roman Empire who became known for self less nursing of the sick, in times of famine and plague. And of those in brave London who looked after one another in the years just following the publication of the old prayer book, that is, in the Great Fire and then the Plague that hit that town. 

And I think of the self giving (there are the terms self-donative and kenosis, again) of the clergy and people who stayed in the city of Memphis during an outbreak of yellow fever in 1878. They included: 

The Martyrs of Memphis: Sisters Constance, Thecla, Ruth, and Frances of the Community of Saint Mary, the Reverend Charles Parsons, and the Reverend Louis Schuyler.

We remember them on September 9th, every year, and this year, perhaps many more days than one. 

Serving as relief workers at the Episcopal cathedral of Saint Mary in Memphis amid sweltering heat and scenes of indescribable horror, they gave relief to the sick, comfort to the dying, and homes to the many orphaned children.  

See how these Christians are, as Pliny the Younger and other Roman officials wrote in perplexion to Caesar, as they give of themselves, to each other surely, but also to others, even strangers. What shall I do with them?


Flog them if they persevere obstinate. That's one answer. And sure enough, they persisted. 

See how they love one another. 

But that's not it, not all of it, not by a long shot. 

For Jesus died not just to save the people of his own tribe, but that all might find hope and healing and salvation.

I don't think you have to sign up for anything. I don't think you even have to know or care much about him, or certainly not his followers. 

Just know that in Christ, in how he died and even more how he lived, God showed that there is hope, death is not the end: that love is strong as death, and when even faith and hope are gone, love endures.

***

Revised Common Lectionary (Episcopal Edition)

Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Psalm 116:1, 10-17

***

The Book of Common Prayer, 1662

Thursday before Easter. The Epistle. 1 COR. 11. 17.

The Gospel. S. LUKE 23. 1. 

ALMIGHTY and everlaſting God, who of thy tender love towards mankind, haſt sent thy Son our Saviour Jesus Chriſt, to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility; Mercifully grant, that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also be made partakers of his resurrection, through the same Jesus Chriſt our Lord. Amen.

***

From Lesser Feasts and Fasts, 2008 edition, pages 465-466:

SEPTEMBER 9: THE MARTYRS OF MEMPHIS: CONSTANCE, THECLA, RUTH, FRANCES, CHARLES PARSONS, AND LOUIS SCHUYLER, 1878

In August 1878, yellow fever invaded the city of Memphis, Tennessee for the third time in ten years. By the month’s end, the disease had become epidemic and a quarantine was ordered. While more than 25,000 citizens had fled in terror, nearly 20,000 more remained to face the pestilence. As cases multiplied, death toll averaged 200 people per day. When the worst was over, ninety percent of the people who remained had contracted the fever and more than 5,000 people had died. 

In that time of panic and flight, many brave men and women, both lay and ordained, remained at their posts of duty or came as volunteers
to assist in spite of the terrible risk. Notable among these heroes were four Episcopal sisters from the Community of Saint Mary, and two of their clergy colleagues, all of whom died while tending to the sick. They have ever since been known as “The Martyrs of Memphis,” as have those of other communions who ministered in Christ’s name during this time of desolation. 

The Sisters had come to Memphis in 1873, at Bishop Quintard’s request, to found a school for girls adjacent to St. Mary’s Cathedral. When the 1878 epidemic began, George C. Harris, the cathedral dean, and Sister Constance immediately organized relief work among the stricken. Helping were six of Constance’s fellow Sisters of St. Mary; Sister Clare from St. Margaret’s House, Boston, Massachusetts; the Reverend Charles C. Parsons, Rector of Grace and St. Lazarus Church, Memphis; and the Reverend Louis S. Schuyler, assistant at Holy Innocents, Hoboken, New Jersey. The cathedral group also included three physicians, two of whom were ordained Episcopal priests, the Sisters’ two matrons, and several volunteer nurses from New York. 

The cathedral buildings were located in the most infected region of Memphis. Here, amid sweltering heat and scenes of indescribable horror, these men and women of God gave relief to the sick, comfort to the dying, and homes to the many orphaned children. Only two of the workers escaped the fever. Among those who died were Constance, Thecla, Ruth, and Frances, the Reverend Charles Parsons, and the Reverend Louis Schuyler. All six are buried at Elmwood Cemetery. The monument marking the joint grave of Fathers Parsons and Schuyler bears the inscription: “Greater Love Hath No Man.” The high altar in St. Mary’s Cathedral, Memphis, is a memorial to the four Sisters.

(Pliny, Letters 10.96-97. Pliny to the Emperor Trajan. https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/pliny.html. accessed April 5, 2020.)

 

Maundy Thursday 2017

He took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, broken for you,” and ... “This wine is my blood, shed for you.”

This bread is bread for the world. It is our covenant bread, our daily bread, our food, what gives us life.

Simply, as simply as the Lord’s Prayer puts it, we depend on God for the bread we need each day.

And we depend on the Lord for the bread from heaven that sustains us unto eternal life.

This joyous meal, this solemn feast, comes on the eve of a great betrayal. For on the very night that he took the bread and broke it and gave it to them, one of the twelve men closest to Jesus sold him out.

Fearful, anxious, greedy - not sure what we know of the emotions of the betrayer. We know that he failed him. And from there the gift offering of Jesus’ life for humanity became inevitable. He had already given his life, day by day, but now he would not hold it back but yield it up when to try to save himself would have veered him from his course.

For Jesus’ whole life was given for our salvation. The collect for last Sunday, remember, was both about his Incarnation and his Crucifixion:

Almighty and everliving God, in your tender love for the human race you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

His great humility, celebrated in the hymn of Philippians 2: 5-11, is shown in his gift of himself, not holding equality with God as a prize to be hoarded, but freely taking on our nature, became one of us, that we all might be saved.

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:

Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:

But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:

And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. (Philippians 2:5-8, KJV)

Tonight we celebrate what made every night different from its moment on: we remember the humility of the servant that Jesus became to humankind, as he took on servants’ tasks, and showed his followers that the way to glory led through the path of service, and even to Calvary.

And so when we break this bread, we proclaim his death and his victory over death, until he comes anew.

Come Lord Jesus come into our hearts and dwell there as sovereign: forever.

• Exodus 12:1-4 and 11-14
• 1 Corinthians 11:23-26
• John 13:1-17, 31b-35
• Psalm 116:1, 10-17
• Philippians 2:5-8

The gift of love in the sacrament of Christ's body and blood. (Dennis Michno)

Maundy Thursday 2013

 

Imagine one disciple there at the table.

Think about her. There at the meal. Maybe more people than food. But they are there for the celebration.

Remember:

Your father Abraham followed the way of the promise.

You were strangers once in Egypt, God told you he would bring out of there, and Moses led us out of bondage into freedom.

Again: God will bring you out of Exile and bring you home.

Remember – and celebrate.

There is some one young there, the youngest, who asks: Why is this night different from any other night?

And Jesus responds – but differently from what you expect:  Because this night the promise is coming into fulfillment.

Moses led the people to freedom. But that’s not it – that’s not the end of the story. That’s not the whole promise.

Return from Exile – a path through the desert – restoration, certainly, but that’s not it – that’s not the end of the story.

This Roman rule and its collaborators – surely that’s not it!

No – God’s kingdom is coming into being, as we speak, as we act, to remember, to celebrate, to bring forward into the present what was ancient history, lost time. That’s it.

Here it is – now beginning. Do you see it?

But wait. Before the day dawns on the new reality, something must happen, in between. This chalice cup – take it: with blessing it is no longer merely a remembrance cup. It is calling into our reality what is eternal.

Something has to be gone through first, something ugly and lonely. You won’t drink this cup again with me until it’s over. This very night... It will not pass by me.

I must accept it: if God wills.

And I fear

He wills.

And I obey.

Tears, sweat of blood, pain I cannot imagine: yet accept it.

I will be gone; you left behind. Drink this cup; eat this bread. You will never be hungry. You will never thirst.

For I will—

And have—

For you.

This bread, my body. This cup, my blood.

Take and drink. Now. If you can.

taste of wine

Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Psalm 116:1, 10-17 

 

Once when I was looking for an apartment in Brooklyn a friend introduced me to her landlord. He showed me the apartment, above his own family’s apartment, and then we all gathered for tea. They handed me a chocolate – it had a symbol on it. You don’t have to eat it, they said. It had no sugar! It was special candy for a special day in the Jewish year.

What day does the taste of bread and wine bring back to us?

The feast of the Lord’s Supper – the Last Supper – that Jesus took with his friends – gathered in an upstairs room for Passover night. The bitter herbs they tasted, and the other flavors, reminded them as Jews of an earlier meal: as it was meant to. It reminded them that the people of Israel freed from bondage in Egypt were called out: into a period of seeking and formation in the desert, while they learned what it meant to be God’s people – before they could enter the land and possess it, the land of promise, they had to become the people of promise, the people of hope. They had to learn and to practice what it meant to live God’s love – to love God whole-heartedly body and soul first and foremost, and to love their neighbors as themselves. They had to become the people who love.

Jesus renews this understanding and adds to it in the gospel passage we’ve read tonight: love one another as I have loved you. That is how they will know who you are. That is how they will know you are God’s people.

How has he loved us? Totally and completely. He has given his life that we might live in God. He has held nothing back.

As Robert J. Allen asks,

           

            Whoever ran out of love

            by loving too much?

            The more love you give,

            the more love you receive, and

            the more love you have to share.

Christ gave himself away completely, out of love – love for a world he knew needed changing – and through love comes change. (Sue Yeaney)

He was not afraid of change,

he was unafraid of death,

he had hope for the future

and trust in God.

[If he feared anything ever it was that he would fail to receive, falter in his love or his giving; but he did not fail.] He accepted on his shoulders the weight of the cross that he bore for all.

Innocent victim, unqualified scapegoat, he brought to an end the idea you could tag another person with your guilt or sin or suffering. He took all that on himself and removed it from us.

On this dark night,

there is nothing left to fear

but fear itself.

There is one source left for hope,

there is only one source

                                    of life,

                                    of light,

                                    of love, —

and it is the one in whom we find salvation,

the one we remember tonight: Jesus Christ the Lord.

Remember

            Love

Remember Love

                                    Do not be afraid

                                                to Change

Change for Love’s sake

Remember what lasts is love.

                                   

O Christ, we live in a world filled with suffering and death, but you call us to follow you and serve you. May your abundant mercy open our eyes to new ways we can create hope and opportunity for hungry people. Amen. 

(Lenten Prayers for Hungry People, Bread for the World, bread.org)

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Perfect love casts out fear. (1 John 4:18)

God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. (1 John 4:15-21)

Be a Constant Source of Change

by Robert J. Allen

(Camaldolese Tidings, Vol. 18, No. 1, Spring 2012, New Camaldoli Hermitage, Big Sur, California)

     Why do people fear change? Because, as human beings, we are too attached.

     There are many different fears: the fear of death, which is inevitable; the fear of success, which is to be who we are capable of being; and the fear of public speaking, which means we are willing to share openly ... but I propose that most people think they fear change and do not want to change because they fear success. Notice I have not said they do not want change, but that they do not want to change.

     Change comes in all walks of life. We do not start out this way, but we are taught first by our parents, by example, then our friends, by associates, and then by our own selfishness to keep what we think is ours, thus avoiding change, forcing us right back to the fear of change and not realizing we are attracted to false security.

     Jesus Christ taught us just the opposite in the way He lived; by the things He said, and most of all by His love. If we would make all of our judgments based on "love one another as I have loved you," we would not only accept change, we would change and be a constant source of change.

     Change should only be feared when it is selfish, when it is self-serving, and when it leads or prevents real change. You cannot fear change unless you lack the virtue of Hope.

     In order to understand who you are, you should begin with the principle that all we have is a gift from God. This being true, then the only thing to fear is the inability to give to others by sharing, by making sacrifices, by loving. And to do this, to do it in an accountable and opportunistic way, means giving of yourself without an expected reward. This means change. Whoever ran out of love by loving too much? The more love you give the more love you receive, and the more love you have to share. The unexpected rewards are immeasurable.

     Christ came to change the world and He did this by giving Himself away totally so that each person could change. We will be judged not by how much we have, but how much we gave away; both materially and through love.

     Do not fear change, but fear the false security, that being neither hot nor cold, will forever be your judge.

* * *

Maundy Thursday 2011

Tonight we celebrate the Last Supper – the Lord’s Supper.

We celebrate the last meal Jesus took with his disciples, on the night before he was betrayed.

Imagine how strange that was – to celebrate Passover – the freedom from bondage of the people of God – knowing that he would himself soon be led as a lamb to the slaughterhouse – and like a sheep dumb before its shearer – knowing that silence was the best course to take – until at last, “Are you the King of the Jews?”

You have said so.

Before that, at the same meal when he blessed the bread and broke it, took the cup and shared it, he welcomed his friends as guests, as a servant would: he washed their feet.

It was a practical act, a gesture of hospitality – and a symbolic act, revealing his priesthood, and the role of the servant of all believers he invites us to share.

We celebrate and remember – thinking, we look after ourselves, and each other – we care – we act like family for each other, both good and bad.

In a spirit of kindness we convey, you matter, you are significant, you are welcome here – not on our own do we say this, we say it in Christ’s love shown for us.

That love is shown us, as an example, that we also should do as he has done – by serving each other and the world.

Tonight he gives us a new commandment – a mandate – hence the word ‘Maundy’ and the action holy – that we listen and heed and carry out his mandate – love one another.

Love one another just in this way: as he has loved us. And what is this way?

What but to come as servants? How we serve the world, how we serve Christ in each other and the world, is how we respond to Christ’s command.

Love one another – for sometimes love is all there is. Hope goes; faith fades; love remains.

When at the end of the meal the table is cleared, the lamp lowered and the candles snuffed, the last of the bread carried away, and the people dispersed, love remains.

Love abides in the Darkness – and soon will kindle new Light.

We leave tonight in solemnity – a procession with the host goes forth; some remain in silent contemplation, remembering – the meal and the man. Remembering his death and giving him glory.

Today I talked with people who know: every day of life is a gift. The gift of light and life and love – from the One who gave All for us – the light of the world, the love of God incarnate – in a human person, who, in these holy mysteries, of bread and wine made for us his body and blood – the One who gave us the gift of life and the promise of eternity – even in his very death. He truly died that we might truly live. Come let us adore him.

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a simple act of service

First let me acknowledge that none of what I am about to tell you is original. I owe it all to three of my brothers in Christ, Paul, Stan, and Jerry.

Jerry was the bishop who saw me through from my first tentative expression of a desire to serve as a priest, to my ordination to the diaconate, my ordination to the priesthood, and most importantly to my marriage with Sarah. He showed me how to serve, and to aspire to be the servant of many. So, thanks to Jerry.

Stan I last saw at his wedding, in the Mount Hermon chapel at a summer camp in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where he served as leader of outdoor education programs. When I first met him, he was organizing a Sierra Club chapter at our high school, and getting us together to celebrate Earth Day, April 22, 1970. He showed me the importance of Christian faith in the stewardship of the earth and showed ways to be of service there. So, thanks to Stan.

Paul – whom I will speak about for a bit longer than I did of the others – I last saw when I was a seminarian at St. Anselm’s, Lafayette, California, where he belonged. And when I realized who he was, I told him two stories – about himself. Which I will tell you now, he shrugged off – but which were great teaching moments for me. I had seen him first on New Year’s Eve 1968 when he was regional administrator of the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration (FWPCA) in the San Francisco area; he’d pulled together a conference that brought into one room people from all sides concerned with conservation of natural resources, and, a new word – ecology. There they were polluters and protesters alike – complete with jerks from the home office and guerilla theater acts. There was room for all of us under that one roof, and we got a chance to talk, and to learn. (I was a Boy Scout – so conservation was the word that got me in the room.)

I met Paul again – after high school and before seminary – when I was working for a summer in a U.S. civil service job, as file boy for the EPA office in San Francisco.

One day at the end of summer there was an unusual amount of activity among my senior clerks & typists: it was the end of the fiscal year and so the deadlines for getting out some grant letters.

They were all working feverishly against the deadline, as was the head of our division and her assistant. The middle managers all left at 5 – leaving the clerical staff and the senior managers to finish the job by midnight, when a postal clerk would meet us outside the post office to take our mail in just before the deadline.

We worked away, typing and photocopying, and addressing and labeling, into the hours of the evening – until all the copy machines on the floor gave up the ghost.

I know what to do! someone said. We can use the big machine in the copy room downstairs.

Usually it had a team of operators running it full time, but they had gone home, at 5, too. And the door was now locked.

I know what to do! someone said. We can break in through the regional administrator’s office next door.

And so they went downstairs –

-- and the door was open, and the light was on, and there, working late, was the head of the whole agency for the Western United States. The big boss. Paul.

What’s going on? He found out – and got up from behind his desk and ran the copy machine himself until the work was all done and the letters were in the mail and the deadline was met.

I told him, when I saw him those years later in Lafayette, that he had set an example of leadership for me, twice. Gathering the people together under one roof, so they could talk to each other. And getting in there and doing what needed to be done, setting an example and pitching in.

Aaaah, he waved it away. No big deal.

But still I think of Paul when I think of servant leadership.

Maybe there is some one you think of, too.




Of course. We turn from these modest examples of service to a story, a dramatic enactment, of true humility.

It had been a pretty good week, so far, for the disciples. They’d seen last Sunday the Romans shown up at their own game – as Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg told us in their book, The Last Week, the imperial progress of Pilate and his soldiers into Jerusalem was easily made ironic by the same-time scene of their Jesus entering the City on a donkey’s colt, saluted with palm branches, his path paved by overcoats.

This is real leadership, they seemed to say: to come not as judge but as savior, to be one of the people not their overlord.

And then he’d shown them up again, taking up a whip of cords and driving the moneychangers from the Temple. All that, and now, a gathering in an upper room, a meal together – a celebration of the passing over of Israel in Egypt and a hope for similar deliverance in the very near future, from Rome.

More than Rome was at stake, however. And the triumph would not be of this world: it would come only at the end of a long hard road that led to a cross – and only then beyond.

Jesus – the Messiah, as they had begun to think of him; Christ, the King of Kings – now we were at table with him; surely now we were in our element.

And then, he shows them what real leadership means: before he even takes the bread to give thanks and break it, before he takes the cup and shares it, he takes upon himself something that would surprise Moses, shepherd as he was, and even Abraham, the host of the angels. He gets up from his place at the table, and takes on the role of a servant. He does what only the lowest slave in the household would ordinarily do: he washes their feet.

They’d come a long way from Galilee, on foot mostly likely, on dusty roads, through crowds and countryside, village and town. This was no mere demonstration – it was real work. And Jesus does it. He washes their feet.

And so before he takes on that deeper humiliation we will recall tomorrow, he did what was ordinary, and uncelebrated: he served. And he still does.

And he invites us to join him, in his service.

JRL+


Maundy Thursday

Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14
Psalm 116:1, 10-17
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Almighty Father, whose dear Son, on the night before he suffered, instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood: Mercifully grant that we may receive it thankfully in remembrance of Jesus Christ our Lord, who in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life; and who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

May I speak in the Name of the Son,
in the Power of the Holy Spirit,
to the Glory of God the Father. AMEN.

Maundy Thursday: sharing in the joy of service

Maundy Thursday: sharing in the joy of service

A few words about foot washing -- eventually.

When I was in college I lived for awhile with a family in a Christian household (Joe & Deedie's house). We had meals in common. And we all had chores. One evening after dinner I said I'd do the dishes, and Deedie stopped me, and said,
it's Marc's turn to do that; don't steal his joy. "Steal his joy"? To serve is a joy. Each of us has a turn at this particular service, and it's Marc's turn to do this service, and have this joy. Each of us has a turn. Likewise, each of us has a story; to share it is our particular joy. If one of the kids came home with a special story to share, but the other one beat them to it and told the story first, that was like stealing the joy of the person whose special story it was. So each of us has a particular service to enjoy, a particular story to tell, a particular joy to share. And yet all of us also share in one service, one story, one joy - and that one joy and service and story is what we are here to celebrate today. Our story so far: last Sunday we were all waving palms and singing hosanna and proclaiming Jesus the king of the Jews.

Today he reveals just what kind of king, what kind of messiah, he is. Jesus set the example - he washed the disciples' feet. Not counting equality with God a thing to be grasped, not standing on royal privilege or authority or power, he humbled himself, kneeled, groveled - and took the part of a slave. He did this service for them - and told them to do likewise. He gave them a new mandate (the "mandy" in Maundy Thursday): Love one another. And he invited them to share in the service, and the story, and the joy. And now he invites us to share, in the service, and the story, and the joy.


Maundy Thursday
April 8, 2004
St John's, Lakeport CA