Maundy Thursday
2013
Bill Fortier
Jesus, feed your hungry and hurting sheep, dear shepherd of
souls. Amen
So let's start with two stories about hand-me-downs, one
from my mother and one from my beloved wife, Barbara.
First story: I'm just about to start the police academy and
doing what every unmarried Catholic boy does: I'm living with my mother and
father. My mother is so proud of me. This is, for her, the blue collar Irish
version of Yale, a patrolman!
My mother is also really proud of herself here: She has
made my bedroom look all grown up, painted it. It still had the grotesque
crucifix of Jesus with multiple red wounds, all over it, dead center over the
headboard, like a scarecrow. The crucifix is placed there to ensure that the
only two things I'd ever, ever think about in bed were sleep and an awful
death. Thanks mom.
She finally shows the closet, the pinnacle of pride. The
closet is completely empty, awaiting all my police gear and paraphernalia,
which exists only in both of our imaginations at this point. I look down and
notice that a row of cardboard boxes are missing, boxes which hold my whole
collection of comic books. I had the first three issues of the Green Hornet,
Spider-Man-number-three, several Batman comics from the nineteen forties, all
in mint condition. The closet is completely empty all the way down to the bare,
terrifying floor.
With a painted smile, I ask my lovely mother, Catherine
Mary Francis, where she put the boxes. She tells me, in a very matter of fact
and innocent tone, that she threw the dusty old things in the trash. Picture
here the cartoons where the hero keeps the painted smile after being hit with a
frying pan. My teeth fall out, like chiclets, one-by-one, with a ticklish piano
medley in the background. Hand-me-down hell.
Now here's a better story: my wife Babs took meticulous
care of my oldest son Joshua's clothes, at each growth stage. Beautifully
folded, wrapped, boxed and stored. My beloved Luke, sitting right here tonight,
has been the direct beneficiary of these clothes, right down to today. He and
they look terrific, hand-me-down love.
So let's look at the second reading tonight, from the
eleventh chapter of Paul's First letter to the folks in Corinth. Paul hands
down the tradition that has been handed down to him. This ceremony comes from
Jesus and passes, student to student, through Paul and the students in Greece,
right down to us, tonight in Lexington.
This tradition or custom, which reaches all the way back to
Jesus, has morphed and changed, over and over again, like the old game
telephone: no two ceremonies look alike and I think this is a very, very cool
thing.
Let's touch back into biology peeps, variety is very
adaptive. The more ways we have to do something means we'll a much better
chance to do stuff in different settings. The more, the better. Our goal is to
fit anytime, anywhere. And contradiction, once again, is a very good marker.
Contradiction tells us that our tool chest is filled with instruments for every
purpose. We want an all-purpose tool chest, an all terrain vehicle. This is
another good reason to be an Episcopalian. We're an all-terrain-Jesus-school.
Let's stay loud and proud.
And we also have many, many views of what Jesus meant, when
he started this table ceremony ages and ages past, and what Jesus means
tonight, meeting me and you. This is another good adaptive sign: our theologies
of the Eucharist come in every size, shape, feel and color. This gives us a
very good chance that someone will be on our theological team in an Episcopal
church.
Even if you change teams over seasons and years, and even
of you change your mind every fifteen minutes, you'll have some Episcopal
teammate. The Episcopal tent is big and very sturdy, another cause for
celebration tonight. So one of the first things I'm celebrating tonight is the
Episcopal stewardship of the Eucharist, Jesus' most intimate gift to his
followers.
And yes, Jesus' students have been having food fights about
the ceremony and it's meaning since forever. Even though Bill Maher, who I find
wickedly funny, rolls his eyes here, I don't think this makes us petty, stupid,
ridiculous Neanderthals who can barely squeeze our melon heads inside the
church doors, while dragging our knuckles along the tiles. Our fights mean we
have brains: we dig into our ideas and our customs because that's what human
brains do.
So one lesson for us tonight, on the anniversary of the
Eucharist, is that it's really good to have a big variety of customs. The
second lesson: it's really good to have lots of different ideas.
So tonight we have a twofer: (1) we have a Eucharist, just like very Sunday. (2) we celebrate the bazillionth
anniversary of passing along our best ceremonial custom.
So now let's zoom in on Paul in eleventh chapter of First
Corinthians once again. Paul tells the story which was told to him: he hands
down the tradition which began with Jesus. Remember, Jesus' whole school is
falling apart, Judas has stabbed him in the back and he'll get roped up, locked
up, beaten up and hanged, in that grand ole Roman fashion. It's a murderous
race to the bottom and it's all over, quite unceremoniously before you can say
Pax Romana three times fast.
Now just as this car crash is picking up speed, and
everyone's cracking under the pressure, Jesus gives his rickety companions a
gift: his body, his blood, his last bit of life and his fast approaching death.
That's the gift. Wow.
So let's digress for just a second: sometimes I give my
springer spaniels, the two buoyant savages who trash my house each day, their
periodic medicine; I squish cheese around the pills. I have to pay for these
live-in vandals! The vet taught me how to open their jaws and put the pills way
in the back of their throats, hold their muzzles tight and then massage their
necks until the swallowing reflex does its instinctual thing. I tried gator
wrestling a few times but switched to cheese cubes. It's way easier on
everyone's nerves. Even when the dogs suspect there's something up with the
cheese, they can't resist.
Well Jesus wrapped his medicine up in flour and wine. He
gave his students and friends the only stuff he had left: himself. Then Paul
adds a very short commentary to the story: we we eat this bread and drink this
cup, we announce the death of our Lord, until he comes.
O great. Now we have another set of muddy words to sift
through for twenty centuries. So let's announce: here comes dead Jesus! Dead
Jesus is in the house! Get your dead Jesus here! Step right up! He-e-e-e-e-re's
dead Jesus! With a few sample announcements on the table, let's think into the
death of Jesus and the gift of Jesus, dead as Caesar.
Did I ever tell you about the first time I saw an
undecorated dead body? Well, gather round the campfire Redeemer peeps and let
me tell you: I enlisted in the Navy and I was told that I would be a corpsman.
It had a sturdy and macho ring to it: a man for the core you know. I found out
quickly and rudely that a corpsman was a medic and I had to perform all kinds
of nasty things I really, really didn't like one bit. I also learned that the
Marines don't have their own medics and so certain corpsman are plucked from
their sailor suits and dropped into that den of macho-on-steroids. That was a
real treat too. But, wait there's more! Corpsmen also embalm for the navy and
the marines. Wee!
Let me first tell you that, while I did some very nasty
jobs as corpsman, I was mercifully spared this assignment but I was indeed
singled out and trained, just in case they ran out of other things to snap my
mental spine.
So one day, me and the other naval-corps-stooges march down
the hall because we marched everywhere, even indoors, until we come to this
room where a short and plump chief petty officer was waiting for us. He ushered
us into this room and right in front of me was this young, very dead, buck
naked sailor-or-marine-dude on the stainless steel embalming table. I mean he
was lying there an inch or two away from my waist.
Everything got very quiet in my head and I saw
all-tunnel-like. I was transfixed, horrified and stony silent. You might say I
was dead quiet. I didn't hear one thing the instructor said. Not a thing.
I just stared at this ghastly dead kid at my waist while
the embalming table occasionally moved. I think this is our first clue to
Jesus' gift of himself and Paul's very strange assembly of words: death, right
under our noses, shuts us up and stops our mental baloney makers, dead in their
tracks. Jesus is the truth who comes to us in this seizing form: dead, all
wrapped in a flour and wine.
Remember Yosemite Sam? He's standing below Granny's window
catching all of the massive stuff that Bugs, disguised as Granny, throws down
at him and on him. A rabbit in drag: it never gets old. So Sam's getting all
wobbly, woozy and tattered, slosh-talking like Foster Brooks, under the weight
of Bug's household bombs. Well, Jesus drops an eighteen wheeler right on top of
you and me, squishing our religious fairy tales and airy stories. Jesus is
strapped around the wrecking ball of reality and he crashes right through our
spiritual concrete walls and steel barriers.
OK Jesus, you've broken my glasses, snapped all my pencils
and you've ripped my homework into little pieces: what's the point, throwing a
hand grenade on the way out? Why Jesus?
You've given me a lot of different answers, dear Lord, over
our years together, but tonight I think you're telling me that my barriers and
protections from you and your ideas are so thick that only your dead body will
silence my frantic noise, the booming racket in my head and heart, designed to drown
you out. You fall dead right in front of me and I'm frozen silent: you finally
have my attention.
So I'm a slow learner: I usually wait until my strategy has
failed, over-and-over-again, and all my tools have been pried from my clutching
fists. Even closer to the truth, I wait until my fingers have been blown off,
I'm covered in charcoal and facial egg: both whites and yokes. Only then, with
but a few cracked teeth hanging on like bloody silk threads, can I wheeze out
the question: do you have a better idea, Jesus?
The answer, I tell you with mighty reluctance and deep
reservation, is always yes. Jesus has a better idea. Since I follow the
two-by-four method of spirituality, where I only try Jesus' ideas when I'm
singed, crispy as a briquette, and empty handed, I admit - under duress - that
Jesus has a better idea than me. Jesus has a better idea and he lobs a
spiritual grenade at me and you each Sunday when were at the communion rail.
Bombs away, Lord Jesus: woozy, wobbly, tattered and covered
in charcoal I submit: teach me Jesus, having burnt through every other option.
Teach me your ways, O Lord.
Communion has a lot of angles to it but tonight, this
evening, my heart tells me that Jesus is giving me his inescapable truth,
sandwiched in his death. Jesus is giving me a pattern to know what is real and
true, from his sacred heart and hands. Let's spell out this pattern, penned in
Jesus' awful ink, made from his own flesh and blood.
First, turn the sound off on your mental TV and watch the
screen. Watch, watch, watch and watch the screen some more, especially when
your flinching, squirming and want to turn the set off. Just like me, watching
this dead sailor dude, watch the TV of your life. Turn off the sound of your
explanations: you're reasons why you still do it and did it. Turn off all the
reasons why you're right. Turn off all the spin.
Second, let the images and actions weigh on you, until
they're as heavy as wet blankets, as heavy as a dead guy, as heavy as dead
weight. Feel the truth before your eyes.
Let yourself be pressed under the weight, until the
realities of your life are as solid and silencing as a dead dude, right under
your nose. Wait until the the poundage of truth is so heavy that everything
you've wished for, hoped for, everything you've dreamed of and everything
you've taken pride in is crushed. Wait until it's all shattered.
Maybe this will help: picture me dragging myself along the
floor, using the wall as my guide because my eyes, ears and legs don't do what
I want them to do anymore, even though I'm railing, and tantruming and
insisting that they will. They still don't though. See, right there when I'm
squished like a bug under the shoe of reality, then I can hear Jesus tell me to
follow him: don't follow you, Bill, follow me.
So, once again from the bottom of Jesus' grave, here's the
map: (1) let the facts in your face
weigh you down until your squished and your heart spits open, finally open to
Jesus and his word. (2) Let your
minds and hearts be silenced by the booming and arresting truth, as forceful as
death. Wait until the heavy truth of you and your life is so inescapable that
you're crying uncle, uncle Jesus.
Dear Jesus, on this anniversary where you send us your
truth, and on this commemoration where we start to listen to you; this night
when we start to follow your instructions, because you're really our boss:
guide us home to you. I'm still gagging on your truth, Jesus, but I'm starting
to swallow, even though it still looks and smells like nasty feet to me, but you
clearly know, dear Lord, and I surely don't. At your feet, hanging from the
cross, I surrender. Amen.
Happy Anniversary, my beloved Redeemer dudes and dudettes.
I dearly love you, my classmates in Jesus school.
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