Easter 6: Love one another

"love one another" by niznoz on flickr

Jesus said, "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another." (John 15:9-17)
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If you were in worship last week, you might be scratching your head just about now, wondering if we messed up the readings in the bulletin today. Because today’s readings are pretty similar to last week’s. Lots of talk about love, and about God’s love, and about abiding in God’s love, and about living God’s love.

There are worse things to talk about than love, I suppose.

Today, it’s not just the writer of 1 John who talks about love. Jesus, in John’s gospel, also hops on the love bandwagon, and both readings elevate love from feeling to action, from emotion to imperative. 1 John says: “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments.” And Jesus in John’s gospel says: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

The idea is simple: if we love God, then we will keep his commandments. And there really is only one commandment, that we show love for one another.

These passages tell us the beautiful truth that loving others is a way of loving God. And this isn’t the only place in the Bible that we hear this. Elsewhere in the gospels, when pressed about which commandments are greatest, Jesus tells us that we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Every other commandment that God gives us has its roots in this commandment to love. If you truly love your neighbor, you will protect his life. If you truly love your neighbor, you will not slander him or steal from him or take glee in stealing his respect or honor.

Moreover, if you truly love the stranger (who also happens to be your neighbor), then you will feed her and clothe her and show her mercy. If you truly love your enemies (which Jesus tells us to do) then you won’t do them physical or emotional or economic violence. Love is the motivation behind all of the virtues and values that God dreams for us.

And we, as people of faith can be this love because we have already been shown the greatest of all loves. “No one has greater love than this,” Jesus says, “than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” And that’s exactly what he did. God so loved the world – we all know the verse – that he gave his only son Jesus to be a living, breathing, dying, rising embodiment of divine love. It was out of love that Jesus walked this earth, and it was out of love that Jesus reached out to the sick and the broken, and it was out of love that Jesus died. Do you believe that good news? Friends, Jesus loves you enough to die for you. This is what gives you the power to answer God’s call to love the world and love it deeply.

We say it every week at the end of worship here at St. Timothy – that we are called “to live the love of Christ.” And it doesn’t just mean that we love the world in some abstract way. Living the love of Christ means getting specific and getting real, which is a direct challenge to a world more focused on “liking” than “loving.”

We create identities by talking about what we like. We like different kinds of food, we like our jobs, we like our homes or our cars, we like our kids’ friends. Spend any amount of time on the internet and you will be asked to “like” something on Facebook or mark an article as your “favorite” or decide to like somebody’s work enough to “follow” it. These are all gestures of like.

And the problem with living in a world of “like” is that “liking” demands nothing of us. “Liking” is how we preserve our self-image and create for ourselves shallow identities based on our affiliations. But an obsession with “liking” and “being liked” drives us toward selfish ambition and vain conceit, and not toward real love for our neighbor.

Love is deeper and more vulnerable and more sacrificial than clicking a “like” button on our computers or spending time and energy trying to be “likeable” to others. Love, Jesus tells us, involves obedience and self-sacrifice, a willingness to put others’ lives ahead of our own. Love is a commandment that asks us to give something up, and to give ourselves away.
We have in Jesus a perfect model of love getting down dirty and love being misunderstood and love being an act of sacrifice. And following Jesus means that we make the choice to surrender ourselves in love and to aim for something higher than “like.” Because it’s not about like. It’s about love.

In a New York Times opinion piece entitled, “Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts,” Jonathan Franzen says:

The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships. Sooner or later, for example, you’re going to find yourself in a hideous, screaming fight, and you’ll hear coming out of your mouth things that you yourself don’t like at all, things that shatter your self-image as a fair, kind, cool, attractive, in-control, funny, likable person. Something realer than likability has come out in you, and suddenly you’re having an actual life.

Suddenly there’s a real choice to be made, not a fake consumer choice between a BlackBerry and an iPhone, but a question: Do I love this person? And, for the other person, does this person love me?

This is not to say that love is only about fighting. Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why love, as I understand it, is always specific. Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self’s own moral or spiritual well-being. Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.

Surrender is the part of love that they don’t talk about on Valentine’s Day cards. But surrender is at the heart of love. And it is the hard part of love. Because surrender isn’t always so much fun. Surrender asks us to put others’ interests ahead of our own, to sacrifice some of our ambition to open a door for somebody else who needs a leg up, to give up a good night’s sleep because somebody without a home to call their own needs somebody to cook them a hot breakfast. Surrender is always at the heart of love.

Now there is good surrender and bad surrender, good sacrifice and bad sacrifice. Self-giving love doesn’t mean that you stay in an abusive relationship. And self-giving love doesn’t mean that you cross inappropriate boundaries and put yourself or others in danger, physically or emotionally. And for goodness’ sake, self-giving love doesn’t mean that you do something stupid or dangerous just to impress a girl. Self-giving love is love that makes us more real, that gives us more life, and that speaks the truth. And if we are making sacrifices that don’t accomplish those ends, then we need to take a step back and ask ourselves some deeper questions.

Jesus is our perfect model of sacrificial love. But if we want another good, life-giving example of sacrificial love, and a good model for the way that love and surrender can be an absolutely beautiful thing, then we probably need to look no further than the mothers sitting next to us in the pews today.

Mothers – and all parents – know firsthand that real love also requires real sacrifice. They know that babies are cute, but that birth is messy. They know that the perfect lives they have created also will demand of them sleepless nights and bottles and changes of clothes. They know that babies smile and laugh, but that they also poop. Being a parent is being a mixed-up bundle of joy and frustration that continues forward as babies grow into toddlers and kids and youths, and love will get mixed up with scraped knees and sibling rivalries and broken curfews and girlfriends or boyfriends they don’t like.

Not one of us here would say that parenting doesn’t involve dedication and sacrifice, and requires a sort of love that goes far beyond the intoxication of new-baby smell. Some parents will admit that having kids is the hardest thing they’ve ever done. But if you asked them, “was it worth it?” of course the answer is yes.

And one day when you get to sit down with God, face-to-face, if you ask him whether it was worth it to bring creation to birth and to deal with our messes and skinned knees and our faithlessness and our sin, and if you asked whether it was worth sending his own son to die for our sake…and of course God’s answer would also be yes. Because that’s how much God loves us.

True love, love in action, the real love to which we are called: it always involves sacrifice. But in that sacrifice, love cuts through everything in our world that is shallow and unfulfilling. Love combats the lies and façades of a world focused on self-image instead of self-sacrifice. Love takes us to the heart of the matter – straight to the heart of God. And Jesus promises that when we, in faith, go out there and get dirty for the sake of love, he will make our joy complete. And so at the end of the day, when someone asks us “was it worth it?” we too are blessed to respond, “of course the answer is yes.”

Easter 2: Blessing our doubts

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe." A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." (John 20:19-29)
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If you look at the front of your bulletin this morning, you will see that today is Easter 2. This means that it is the second Sunday of the Easter season, and the first Sunday after Easter Day.

For whatever else happens on this Sunday, Easter 2 is sometimes called “low Sunday” in church-work circles, referring to the low attendance in worship – the smaller number of people in the pews – relative to the crowds on Easter Sunday. I would certainly call this Sunday “low Sunday”…but for a very different reason. I would call it “low Sunday” because today is the let-down after all the hype of Easter. Lent is a season of build-up that intensifies during Holy Week, all leading up to the thrill of Easter, when we proclaim “Christ is risen!” and where we shout “Alleluia!” for the first time in six weeks. On Easter Sunday, we celebrate resurrection. And celebrate we did last week – drinking champagne after the Easter vigil, celebrating with the butterflies and the lilies as we sang our praises to the risen Christ.

But then, on Easter Monday…

…the world went right back to the way it was. Work was still work, school was still school, the unseasonably warm weather still raised eyebrows about climate change, politicians still puffed themselves up and put their opponents down, there was still bad news on the news, and plenty of people still suffered around the world.

It’s a week later now, and we are back in this place to worship together, but a week past the resurrection, we gather knowing full well that even though Christ is risen, we aren’t so sure that our world is risen just yet.

And so today is “low Sunday,” or “let-down Sunday” or “resurrection is exciting but the world still looks the same” Sunday. And we gather for worship today a little less certain about resurrection than we were last week. On a Sunday like this, we do well to keep company with the disciples in today’s gospel.

Their story in today’s gospel starts on Easter evening. After a long day of running to and from the tomb, passing along the unbelievable news that Jesus is risen, and feeling very fearful both of the authorities and of what Jesus might say to say to them since they deserted, denied, and betrayed him in his last hours, the disciples aren’t feeling overwhelmingly joyful about the news of the resurrection. They are afraid.

So at the end of a rough day, they do the only thing that seems logical: they gather together with all their cohorts, sneak away to a house where no one would think to look for them, and they lock all the doors.

Jesus is risen, but the disciples see a world that is not yet risen. They have faith, but they also have fear and doubt.

And then Jesus comes among them – and by the way, that must have scared the living daylights out of the disciples when he showed up despite the locked doors. It occurs to me that the disciples might have considered the newly-risen Jesus to be the Biblical-times equivalent of a zombie, and they were afraid that he might have shown up in that locked room to eat their brains...and let me assure you, Jesus doesn’t eat their brains. And he doesn’t chastise their fear. And he doesn’t criticize their doubts.

He comes among them and he blesses them.

“Peace be with you,” he says. “Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and go forth to bear peace and forgiveness and good news to the world.”

Doubting disciples are blessed, commissioned, and sent.

But a week later, after seeing the risen Jesus, after being given the power of the Holy Spirit, after being blessed and sent and ushered into the world…the disciples are right back where they started, inside a closed room in a closed house. Even having touched the hands and feet of the resurrected Christ, the disciples still have fears, still have doubts, still look at the un-resurrected world, and nothing much has changed for them, except that on this evening, Thomas is with them.

So for a second time, Jesus shows up among them. And for a second time, Jesus doesn’t chastise their fear or criticize their inaction. For the second time in a week, Jesus stands with them and says, “Peace be with you.” Once again, in front of Thomas and infront of them all, Jesus stands there, hands outstretched, to say “See me, touch me, do not doubt, but believe.”

We might live in a post-resurrection world, but like the disciples, we aren’t always one hundred percent convinced that resurrection has come to us. God’s new creation has been promised and his kingdom has been ushered in, but when we look around, we know that we aren’t there yet, that we are still waiting to see the fullness of these things. On this “low Sunday” after Easter, we feel the disconnect between the hope of the resurrection and the “real life” that spins madly on around us. And aren’t there plenty of things in our lives that keep us fleeing back to our locked rooms inside our locked houses?

It’s a good thing, then, that we have today’s gospel and this well-meaning but still messed-up group of disciples, because they have a lot to teach us.

They teach us that it is okay to be a mix of doubt and faith. It’s okay to show up in front of Jesus with our doubts. There is room inside all of our gatherings of faith for doubts and questions and fears and uncertainties.

And they teach us part of being a community of faith means embracing our fellow doubters…and being a community that welcomes and welcomes back. Thomas wasn’t with the others the first time Jesus came around, but they took him in anyway, even with his doubts and fears. The question for us is how do we care for the Thomases in our midst? How do we embrace those who have been away, or who are new, or who have the strength to show up but not yet to believe? How can we be open with our own questions so that others can be open with theirs?

But maybe the most important thing that we can take from today’s gospel is the good news that Jesus blesses our doubt even as he blesses our faith. He blesses our weaknesses even as he blesses our strengths.

To the doubting disciples, he showed up in flesh and blood to reassure them of his resurrection and theirs. To our doubting souls, he still shows up in flesh and blood – in the bread and the wine – to reassure us of his resurrection and of our own. And more than that, he finds us where we, even if we are locked away and hidden, so that he can whisper “peace be with you” into our trembling hearts, and so that he can bless and send us, doubts and all.

And it makes me wonder, what good is our faith if we can’t bless our doubts?

I mean, our world isn’t quick to bless doubts and doubters; flip the channels on TV and you’ll find an overwhelming number of police and detective shows that tell us that the only virtue is to mount up evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, and if there’s any doubt, then we might as well throw the case and the baby and the bathwater out the window. And this reflects a pretty common idea that there is certainty or uncertainty and it’s all or nothing, and you’d better make your case well, or you have no ground to stand on. And there is a whole strain of Christian thought called “apolegetics” that focuses on collecting evidence to mount a watertight defense of Christianity against critics and skeptics.

Our world isn’t quick to bless doubts and doubters.

But doesn’t Jesus tell us otherwise, that we are loved and accepted and promised resurrection in spite of our doubts? And doesn’t he show the disciples that when he loves and blesses them, he loves and blesses all of them, even their uncertainty and fear?

The preacher Rob Bell says, “Any healthy spirituality will have to leave plenty of room for doubt and despair and honesty and tears and questions and rage and anger and every other human emotion and response to the insanity and pain of the world.” There is always room inside of faith for doubt. Doubt makes us question and makes us grow and makes us fight for the hope that is inside of us.

And so I ask again, what good is our faith if we can’t bless our doubts?

God calls us beautiful and beloved. Every part of us. The parts that long for healing, the parts that are in need of serious redemption, the parts of us that rejoice, the parts of us that fear, and even the parts of us that waver and doubt.

And so, my beautiful and beloved sisters and brothers of Christ, if we can believe that Jesus blesses our doubts, then we would do well to bless them as well. Our doubts and the doubts of those sitting next to us. They are all beloved.

I think about the times that we do blessings here in our congregation. We’re say prayers of blessing for our youth as they embark on summer mission trips, and we bless Sunday School teachers at the beginning of the school year, and we bless members as they leave our congregation and move around the country. But today, let's do something different. Let's take the next minute and a half to do a short service of blessing for our doubts, our fears, and our uncertainties.

I invite you to stand.

An Order for the Blessing of our Doubts and Fears
Friends in Christ: Today we give thanks to God and we seek God's blessing as we gather to bless and dedicate our fears and our doubts to the praise and glory of God.

We take a moment now in silence to lift up to God the doubts that linger, the fears that remain, and the uncertainties that make our hearts waver.

The Lord be with you.
And also with you.

Let us pray.
Blessed are you, O Lord our God, ruler of the universe. You made the whole earth for your glory; all creation praises you. We lift our voices to join the songs of heaven and earth, of things seen and unseen.

You stretched out the heavens like a tent; you divided the day from the night; you appointed times and seasons for work and rest, for tearing down and building up. You blessed your people through all generations and guided them in life and death.

We give you thanks, O God, as today we dedicate our fears and our doubts to your glory and praise. Bless our uncertainties. Bless the times that we make excuses not to believe. Bless the days when we can’t quite muster up strength to believe. Bless the gaps between hopeful hearts and skeptical minds.

Grant us faith to know your gracious purpose in all things, give us joy in them, and lead us to the building up of your kingdom; through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen.

And now may the blessing of almighty God, the Father, the + Son, and the Holy Spirit, bring peace to our doubts and send us forth into the world to walk by faith, even when we cannot walk by sight.
Amen.

(adapted from the "General Order of Blessing," Evangelical Lutheran Worship: Pastoral Care, p. 331)

Easter Vigil: Rise up

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him." Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?" Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!" (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord"; and she told them that he had said these things to her. (John 20:1-18)
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We begin with a poem:

This is a strange compulsion:
to go to that dark place of death,
to reverence an empty body.
We go in sense of duty,
we go in the garb of tradition,
we go with no expectation.
There is easy access to this place:
no barring stone nor guarding soldier
sentry here.
This is the place of death.
Death is all there is to find here.
We can choose to stay,
to minister to nothingness
with our broken hands and shallow souls,
or we can seek the living
in resurrected power.
We can leave in disappointment or in awe.
Saying, “Good morning,” to the gardener
or, “Good God,” to the Lord.
(Keith Walls, "A Journey through Easter: Easter Sunday")

This, it would seem, is the question before us tonight as we stand with Mary and Peter and the other disciple at the gaping mouth of the tomb: Is it time for disappointment or for awe? Is it time to bend down, dejected, muttering “Good God” under our breath, or is it time to rise with the sun, greeting that familiar gardener with a cheery “Good morning?”

Our gospel tonight is a moving gospel. From the first words of the story, there are bodies in motion. Mary is approaching the tomb, in motion toward the body of her savior. Mary runs to find the disciples, and the disciples run to the tomb. They bend down to look inside and they stand back up to emerge into the garden.

Everything about our gospel is stooping and rising, bending down and standing up. And everything about this moment for us here tonight, keeping vigil before the resurrection dawn, is about stooping and rising, bending down and standing up, descending and ascending, burial beneath and resurrection above.

At the tomb, Peter ducks his head to see inside, Mary hunches down to enter the tomb. They stand all stand stooped over in the cave while they pick up and pass around Jesus’ gravecloths in fear. It is as if they are being physically weighed down by the magnitude of their grief and fear. Bent over inside that tomb, their situation has gone from bad to worse. Jesus has already died, and now he is missing. Grief on top of grief.

Bending over or stooping down: this is a posture of fear, chaos, defeat.

It is the posture of the Spirit of God, stooping to hover over the swirling darkness of chaos, and it is the posture of Noah ducking his head down as the first raindrops start to fall from the dark and chaotic skies.

It is the posture of Abraham bending down to tie Isaac to an unholy altar, and it is Moses, bowing his head over a rushing sea that seems impassable.

It is the posture of Ezekiel, bending his eyes downward to look over a valley of dry bones, and bending his ear to the earth in vain, knowing that there is no breath to be found in these dead bones.

It is Jonah, crouching at the edge of the ship and throwing himself down into the angry waters and hunkering down in the dark belly of a fish.

Stooping, ducking, hunkering down: these are the postures of bowing our heads in prayer, of falling to our knees in despair, of ducking our heads in fear and hanging our heads in shame. These are the postures of weak bodies collapsing under the weight of illness and of spent bodies finally falling into the long sleep of death.

We ourselves huddled our bodies around the fire in the garden tonight, trying to keep warm. We bent our heads down to our bulletins, trying to read in the dark. We sank into the pews to hear the old stories of faith, and, let’s be honest, some of our heads might have even dipped once our twice under the weight of drowsy eyes, because our weeks are exhausting and the weekends are our only time, finally, to find a little rest and quiet.

Every hunched moment in the darkness tonight has been a moment of willing the darkness of Good Friday to lift, hoping again, as if for the first time, that Christ’s death is not the end of the story.

But our bodies were not designed to live all hunched over. Our bodies were designed up to stand up tall. We were created to rise up and to hold our heads high.

Mary leaves the tomb and stands up again, giving rest to her aching shoulders. She lifts her eyes to look around the garden. She stretches her back and greets the sun, blinking in the brightness. Here, on the outside, she sees a man standing nearby, and she has enough faith to ask him where Jesus’ body might be. And of course this gardener is no ordinary gardener. He is a man well-acquainted with the motion of stooping and rising, descending and ascending. This gardener is none other than her resurrected savior.

It takes faith for us to stand up, to leave the comfort of dark tombs, to leave behind the security of grief and pain, to walk forward into the light instead of hiding out in the shadows. But this is how God works.

In the midst of the swirling waters of dark and chaos, God rises up to call the world into being.

After the flood, Noah and his family emerge from the tomb, standing once again on dry and sure ground under the curve of a rainbow.

Abraham lifts his eyes to see a ram, and Isaac climbs off the altar to stand tall next to his father.

Moses and the Israelites walk tall through the walls of water on either side of them, emerging with their lives and their liberation, jumping and dancing as they rejoice in their salvation.

Ezekiel lifts his head to see bones coming together, bone to bone, sinew to sinew, new life rising up from the ground as a symbol of God’s promise to breathe new life into his chosen people.

Jonah lifts his eyes in prayer and is cast onto shore, given a second chance, standing up on the shore as a man redeemed from certain death.

Paul asks, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” Our baptism is our entrance to the tomb. We bow our heads beneath the water, stooping down that we might die to sin, die to brokenness, die to fear and condemnation, die to the old brokenness that weighs down our souls. But we rise up from those waters as people cleansed and claimed, people very much alive and full of new life, standing tall in the promise of resurrection. “For,” as Paul says, “if we have been united with [Christ] in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”

No longer are we trapped in the world’s dark caves, nor are we stuck inside tombs of our own making. Christ is arisen, and he reaches his hand into our tombs, and leads us out into the sun. He reaches his hand down to pull us up. He lifts up our heads.

Christ is risen – alleluia! No longer can death weigh us down. No longer do our shoulders stoop with our brokenness. No longer do we hang our heads in shame. No longer do we crouch down in fear or dip our heads in grief.

We are risen people, people of light and of dawn, people of newness and life. We are people of God.

We hold our heads high and we leave that garden radiant with awe. No longer do we hang our heads and pray “Good God.” We hold our heads high, and greet the dawn. We lift our eyes toward our risen Christ and raise our voices to say, “Good morning.” And we believe it. For this first very good morning makes all the rest of our mornings very very good. As surely as the sun rises, we are people of the resurrection. We are the risen. Rise up, people of God. Rise up.

Maundy Thursday: Last meals

"Frontrunner for my choice of last meal. Best BBQ, anywhere."
photo and caption by Mike Wayne

A week ago, a friend sent me a picture of a metal cafeteria tray loaded with dry-rub ribs, beef brisket, skin-on French fries, collard greens with bacon, a plastic cup full of homemade BBQ sauce, and next to the tray, a tall beer and a roll of paper towels. Along with the picture, he sent a caption: “Frontrunner for my choice of last meal. Best BBQ, anywhere.” I have to admit, his picture looked delicious. And c’mon…what better compliment can you give a favorite restaurant than making grandiose claims about making their food your last meal?

This week, as I have been thinking about the last days of Jesus’ life, and as I have been thinking about the scene unfolding here in the Upper Room, with Jesus and his disciples gathered for the Passover meal, and the footwashing and the premonition of betrayal that were served up right along with the bread and wine, my friend’s picture and caption kept popping into my head, because isn’t Maundy Thursday about last meals?

And the more I thought about my friend’s picture, the more I started thinking about the idea of last meals, and the more I started thinking about last meals, the more I started thinking about the book Dead Man Walking, written by Sister Helen Prejean, which is her reflection on her experiences serving as a spiritual advisor to prisoners on death row. There is a passage in which she recalls sitting with one inmate in his cell during his last meal:

I am surprised when Captain Rabelais and the warden appear with Robert’s last meal. It is six o’clock.

His last meal.

When Robert sees the trays of food, he smiles and rubs his hands together and says this is one meal he’s going to enjoy….He loves fried seafood.

A guard places three trays of fried shrimp, oysters, and fish, fried potatoes, and salad on three chairs in front of him. [Robert’s handcuffs remain on] but detached from the leather belt [around his waist], so he can move his hands to eat.

I take a sip – a tiny one – of [my] iced tea. Robert, occupying a universe of his own, picks up a fried shrimp with his fingers, smells it with obvious delight, and eats. And eats and eats and talks and eats, and it is hard for me to realize that this is his last meal. He seems to have found some space, some grace, some kind of lagoon in the present moment, even though close by are white, crashing rapids.

Maybe his experience in life has taught him early on that life is waves, not particles, that nothing is really solid, that everything is flow. Or maybe his fierce “macho” stance has inured him from appropriate feelings. “Electric chair don’t scare me, man,” [he said]. I quietly ask God to help me let go of life freely when it’s time for me to die. Ignatius of Loyola, Theresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Francis of Assisi – every saint has taught me the paradox that lies at the heart of the spiritual life: to love passionately but with freedom of spirit that does not cling even to life itself.

That last sentence is the absolute heart of what Jesus’ last supper is all about. So I’ll repeat it: “The paradox that lies at the heart of the spiritual life is to love passionately but with freedom of spirit that does not cling even to life itself.” I can’t think of a better way to describe the outpouring of selfless love that Jesus demonstrates by sharing his last meal with his disciples.

In another gospel account of Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, he says to them, “How I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover meal with you!” which in its own weird way is the Biblical equivalent of my friend’s “Frontrunner for my choice of last meal” photo caption.

And honestly, I find it truly amazing – baffling, even – that Jesus would be so desperate to eat his last Passover meal with his disciples. I mean, his “frontrunner for his choice of last meal” is a supper eaten with a tableful of doubters, grumblers, and misunderstanders, who will desert and deny him once the last crumbs of bread have been eaten, who will fall asleep when they are supposed to watch and pray, who will offer him a kiss of betrayal, who will hide out in fear, and who will stand at the mouth of an empty tomb, more clueless than amazed by what they find there in the garden.

And not only does Jesus eat with these well-meaning but messed-up friends of his, but he kneels down, pulls off their dusty sandals, and washes their dirty feet, because he loves them so much, and the only way to show them how much he loves them is for him to serve them in the most humiliating and disgusting way he can think of.

And guess what: when we come up to this table tonight, we come up as the same well-meaning but messed-up disciples who were present for that Passover meal. We are doubters and grumblers, and we misunderstand Jesus’ instructions, and we desert him and deny him and are afraid to speak up about our faith, and even though we love Jesus, we get it wrong all the time. Just like the twelve.

And what really gets me, what really cuts my heart to the core, knowing that even though Jesus is facing the absolute agony of anticipating his own death, he is still more concerned for us than he is for himself.

I mean let’s be honest. How many of us, standing face to face with our own deaths, would have the strength to put our love for others ahead of our terror?

But tonight’s gospel says, “having loved his own who were in the world, [Jesus] loved them to the end.” Having already loved us who remain in this world, Jesus loves us to the end, putting his love ahead of his glory, and putting his love ahead of his dignity, and putting his love ahead of his own life. Jesus loves us passionately, deeply, and freely all the way to the end of his life, and to the end of our lives, and to the end of all things, even to the end of death itself.

And so out of such a great love, he invites us here to the table tonight, where we will eat with him his last meal; it is a meal of both the loveliness and agony. Inasmuch as this is a last meal for Jesus, it is also very much a last meal for us. It is bite of bread to nourish us on our walk to the foot of the cross, and a sip of wine to sustain us in our long night of waiting before the resurrection dawn.

Christ’s next meals will happen on the far side of the empty tomb. He will eat a breakfast of fish around a campfire at the edge of the water, and he will share a meal of bread and wine with still-clueless disciples at Emmaus. These first meals of his resurrection will be the first meals of a reordered universe where life wins and death loses and all creation has been scooped up and transformed into the new creation of God’s kingdom.

Let me tell you, I can’t wait to eat at that resurrection banquet.

But we aren’t quite there yet. We aren’t on the far side of anything. We’ve made our reservations, but the waiting list is still three days long.

Tonight, the best we can do is accept the invitation to eat inside a prison cell with a death row inmate whose primary concern is that our feet get clean. And he doesn’t ask us to petition the governor for a pardon, and he doesn’t ask us to become accomplices in a jail-break, and he doesn’t ask us to hire him a new attorney.

All he does is ask us, quite simply, to love others as deeply as he loves us, even if our love is imperfect and even if our knees creak as we bend down to wash each other’s feet and even if our backs get sore from carrying each other’s burdens. “If you know these things,” Jesus says, “you will blessed if you do them.”

So eat tonight, and drink. And be brave. Take off your shoes and let somebody else touch your toes. And when you leave from here in silence, go out with the taste of this last meal on your tongue, and walk out into the world on your clean and beautiful feet, and love. Love the world as deeply as you have been loved. Love the deserving and the undeserving. Love the last and the first. Love like you have never loved before.

It is your only commandment.