Maundy
Thursday
I
realized something as I read the text for Maundy Thursday. After the story of Jesus adapting their
Passover meal into we call Eucharist or Communion, and after the foot washing,
and then the garden, we hear nothing more about the disciples, except for Judas
and Peter. Everyone disappears.
At
one of the two churches that I serve, there is a Maundy Thursday service, but
no Good Friday service. And in thinking
about this text in that good old Ignatian style (the spiritual practice of
inserting oneself as a specific character into a biblical story, and imagining
with all senses what you experience), it kind of pushed me to identify with the
other disciples. The ones who scattered
when the soldiers showed up in the garden.
They
were even more faithless than Peter. Peter
may have denied the Son of God three times, but he showed up, at least.
Did
they even know what was happening before Peter told them? Maybe John, once, in the Gospel named after
him, had a little bit of a clue, because he accompanied Mary to the cross.
If
I was a fire and brimstone preacher, I would talk about how faithless we are
when Jesus calls us.
But
I’m not.
What
I also notice, in the text, is that there are faithful disciples. They are hardly ever mentioned, but I’d
imagine that they were every place that their society would allow them.
The
women. They stood under the cross. They might have been in the courtyard, they
may have been in the garden. But 2000
years ago, women were not always worth mentioning. WE don’t know, therefore, where they were if
they were a passive part of the crowd.
But
when it came to Jesus’ crucifixion, they were standing right under Jesus, who,
according to Adam Hamilton and others he attributes, was not hung high in the
air, but was really only three feet or so off the ground. Close enough to be touched. To be heard.
To be seen.
Jesus
was NOT alone.
I
would expect, since the disciples were just folks the way we are, that they
respond in the varied and different ways that we would when inserted into the
same scenario. Some of us would run
away. Some of us would care enough to
follow, but be afraid of being associated, for fear of being killed, too. And some of us would not even be noticed as
they followed Jesus, because, after all, they were only property themselves, commodities
to be traded for land and prestige.
Times
have changed, society has changed, its two thousand years later, and we are no
longer in the Bronze Age. Disciples can
clearly be men or women, just as both can be pastors. There is no reason to think differently about
gender, only about gifts and graces. But
our responses as disciples remain as varied as they would have been then.
On
this night, Jesus said to his disciples “you are no longer my disciples, but
you are now my friends. This Passover
meal, is not as a teacher and students, but as friends. And he changed the meal they were
celebrating.
He
also washed their feet. This was so
shocking, because there was still an aura around him, that maybe even yet he
would become the Messiah they still wanted, the military leader. And he destroyed the last vestige of that,
because a general does not wash the feet of a private.
But
Jesus did.
Our general, our leader, the person we are
called to follow, to emulate, to do impressions of as best we can, said to
them, I have come to serve you, now you must serve each other.
How
do we serve each other?
How
do we serve the wider world?
I’m
sure we can all think of way, a way we’re not doing now. Something that humbles us.
So
what is that way we know we’re being called to serve, but are resistant
to? Perhaps it might even be to serve
ourselves, to make ourselves stronger, to not spread ourselves so thin we serve
no one and damage our spirits?
No comments:
Post a Comment