The
sermons for Maundy Thurs, Good Friday, and Easter have interwoven the stories
from the hundred loonies given to members during the month of January. Each person was to take their loonie and use
it to further God’s mission in the world. To date 36 stories have been written
in the book, others are awaiting the opportunity to give them. God’s mission continues every day, unfolding
before our very eyes.
MAUNDY THURS
Tonight
I give you a new commandment, to love one another.
This is the message we are to take to
heart and carry with us through the coming paschal year. The commandment isn’t
new; it is the rules of covenant community crafted into one command, rather
than ten. Those eating with Jesus at the Passover are ritually remembering and
celebrating coming out of Egypt, receiving the Law, and becoming a people.
Forty years was spent in the desert learning to love one another, so that
arriving in a new place, a new community could flourish- with values and
structures – that embraced a different way of living; one based on love - for
God, humans, and creation.
Time and time again the rules of
covenant community were taken for granted, forgotten, becoming words and ideas,
rather than care and action. The responsibility
of participation in the heart of the law –love- was squandered. Through long centuries
– right up to this time and place- God-fearers went in and out of exile, fought
amongst each other, started holy wars and crusades, shunned other peoples, turned
away from God – turned from each other – desecrated creation. Every generation
was called to turn back and reclaim an engagement in the Law so as to be able
to live in community. To love one
another was spoken by prophets, rabbis, sisters, brothers, pastors, faith
communities. The commandment, love one
another, is not new, yet, on this night perhaps our ears will be more open to
hear and to take it to heart – to hear the command in a new way.
The rituals of this night are symbols
to illustrate the intimacy that Jesus indents in the words “love one
another.” Tonight it is touchy-feely: so
be humble and open; set aside your hang-ups, any self-sense of personal space,
and act through/despite being uncomfortable.
Tonight is about being human and caring for the other, the entire being
bringing and participating in healing and wholeness. We dare to be intimate,
vulnerable with each other.
And so we take the time to enter
intimate moments with others, listening to their story, asking their name,
offering a piece of our own story. It is stopping to take the time and wash
another’s feet.
It is the act of while waiting for a
cab, entering a conversation with an elderly man, to find that his pension check
was not going as far as it should – listening and passing a loonie to him.
It is hearing of a friend’s adventure
to Germany with her mom as her mom goes on sabbatical and giving her a token of
friendship – a blessing.
Opening our hearts, being vulnerable,
and letting Jesus command to settle into our essence - we hear words that
change us to live into the command; we hear the Good News:
This
is my body given for you.
Tonight the table has been prepared;
including a loonie turned into two cans of soup for the local food bank. The disciples gathered around Jesus to
celebrate the meal, an intimate moment where the group would lounge around a
low table, sharing bowls of food, dipping bread into common dishes, reaching
over each other, grazing hands or feet, whispering in each other’s ears,
clinking glasses; a meal of those who consider themselves family. Everyone is welcome to come to the table and all
eat. It is a meal where those who come
know each other – by name:
“Driving
home from work, a cold day, and the man I had given money to at Connaught and
Quinpool several times before was there again.
A man I have always recalled as being very short. I gave him the loonie,
however, I did not get through the green light and so I saw him again as he
passed my car. I gave him a loonie, BUT, had the good sense to ask who he is,
“George,” he said. He then asked what my name was. The pleasure on his face over this exchange
of names was priceless.”
Also with a place at the table -
is Mike, the Assess-a-bus driver, who
was given the loonie as a tip for his compassion shown to his riders (although not
allowed to receive gifts from people – he did after hearing what the church was
doing).
Seated beside George, and Mike at the
table is Josephine, a woman in Uganda who through the micro-credit charity
Kiva, will use the funds to buy supplies for her clothes-making business.
And other creatures are welcome in the
upper room too -
Lucky the cat is invited through a
donation to her fund for a needed operation.
From sharing in this intimate meal
with the invited guests we have become family through the life and death and
life of Jesus – soon to be Christ. The rituals move us through our own humanity
to consider the humanity, the Christ, in others. We experience that without living the command
to “love one another,” the Three Days are for naught.
In a tangible and material way the
loonies became the barrier breaker for encountering another – a body – an
honest to goodness human being – in flesh; and we realize it is our
responsibility of speaking the word of forgiveness to others in their daily
lives.
As individuals and as a community,
through the laying on of hands, you have been forgiven. You have heard the
words pronounced upon you.
In
obedience to the command of our Lord Jesus Christ I forgive you all your sins.
This was the first ritual of
the night. The Word spoken to your inner
most being. The Word is freedom.
Freedom from sin: guilt, shame, wrong
doing, questionable behaviour, inaction, un-godly thoughts, destructive
self-talk, poor self-esteem. It is the first ritual, for the following rituals
of foot washing, eating together, and preparing the sanctuary for the collective
remembrance of Jesus’ death (lamenting and being vulnerable together) requires
freedom - a freed humanity to live out of the compassion offered through the
Word, and the death thereof. It is through the intimate embrace of Jesus on
this night that we can embrace others, inviting and calling them by name. Being forgiven has freed us to invite George,
Mike, Josephine, and Lucy to the table to which they already were a part; once
forgiven, once intimate with Christ, our hearts are open and humbled to see
that we have missed those sitting beside
us.
As are hearts are warmed, we are
called to go to the garden to pray, to watch with Jesus, to face death – Jesus’
and our own – and rise to the responsibility of offering freedom to the entire
world, with the Words:
In
obedience to the command of our Lord Jesus Christ I forgive you all your sins.
For the healing of the world, for a
world that lives into the command to love one another, be freed by the power of
intimacy with Jesus; forgiven and thus forgiving. Amen.
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