"Creating A Memorial" Maundy Thursday 2011

Exodus 12:1-14
John 13:1-17 & 31-36
Humanity thrives on story, we make memories of stories, we create memorials. In a vacuum, we will create stories to explain. Recently, I was visiting a friend's church and on the walls were gorgeous old photos and art work, but no one seemed to know the origin, or the stories behind these images. I am told there are those today, who so want to have history, to create memory, that they go to Antique stores to buy other family's photos to hang ion their walls, to create a heritage a memorial.

Twenty years ago, I had the great opportunity of being part of a tour of the Soviet Union. Part of the heritage of Communism was that Stalin was asked what to do about the Churches, and his response was "Do not worry, those old grandmothers' will die out as will the memory of the Church. But what he did not expect, was that the grandmother's would bring infants in their arms, to describe to them using the artwork and icons on the walls the memorial story of faith. I recall a tour of the Summer Palace at what was then Leningrad, and a tour guide who was identified as being a member of the Communist Party showing a painting by Rembrandt of “The Prodigal Son”. From Art History classes in High School and College, with reference to the Bible, we had learned that the figure with long robes cradling the other in his lap was Rembrandt's image of God, and the emaciated faceless figure in rags who looked like a survivor of the refugee camp at Dachau was The Prodigal, who represented Humanity. But this member of The Party, had a vastly different interpretation, devoid of faith that there is a God. For her, the resplendent figure was "The State", and the kneeling figure was a self-portrait of Rembrandt renouncing all worldly goods and worldly desires, bowing down to serve the Father/State/Mother Russia. Honoring Memorials, we have to be extremely careful to appropriate art, music, ideas, values from a different time and culture, that in addition to whatever we may want the image to represent, that we honor what the creator of their time and place had meant.

In John's description of the Last Supper, Simon Peter who has previously been identified as the Foundation for the Church, one who would become the archetype for the Pope and therefore for all Christianity, is described as misunderstanding Jesus' motives in washing their feet. Again at the Table, Peter misunderstands and vows to never deny Jesus, yet does three times before the morning. There is caution here from the Evangelist, that the Church/ Christianity, will regularly get the meaning of this memorial wrong!

Often in recent history, churches/ we, have tried to reclaim the lost sacred act of washing the disciples' feet. But the point is not the act of foot washing. Peter assumes that the water has some special purpose or power, which it does not, it is water. Again it is assumed what Jesus is doing is an act of sacrifice, but according to John's Gospel it is not. The cataclysmic event that changed history, according to John, was God so loving the world as to send the only begotten son into the world, and that the incarnation is what has changed the world. The point is not the foods we eat, or how they are prepared, or the words we say, or what new interpretations we +2000 years later can find to bring to them.

The point of the Passover is that Almighty God, the Creator and Judge, cared so much God entered into creation to save the oppressed slaves and make of them a people, a nation, Israel. The point of the Last Supper, which is interrupted by the foot washing, is the intimate affection of Jesus serving as loving host, which then allows us to to participate in this meal as Jesus offering himself to us, all the while knowing that despite our protests we are self-absorbed humans. We need to describe this as “Jesus Offering Himself” and not as Jesus giving up his life, because he never ever gives up, if anything by this memorial he embraces life, our life and the importance of his life al the more.

We are a people attracted to the dramatic, to the symbolic. Throughout Lent we have had Elder Nichols blow the Shofar, because this is an ancient musical instrument of faith dating back at least to Joshua and the rams' horns being blown by the Levites as they marched around Jericho. The Shofar is sounded at Yom Kippur's Day of Atonement, as it is a mournful sound calling people to repent. There were special instructions as to who was allowed to blow the Shofar, it was not to be blown by children, or pregnant women, not by those with mental problems, not by the weak or the angry, but only by those who are resolute in faith. Some blow as one long blast, while others use a series of short breaths. The point was not so much how it was blown, but that the people would be able to hear it as a serious call to repent.

In the Passover, while there is description of every element as a symbol: on which night the Seder is to be eaten, the posture of how we sit, unleavened bread, the lamb-bone and charoseth, bitter herbs and saltwater, the open door and empty chair, and the questions asked by a child. I think the most powerful part of Passover is the Call to Create A Memorial, which describes take a sacrificial lamb for your family, and at the Haggidda recite:
“Lord, it would have been enough for You to create the world. It would have been enough for You to give us life. It would have been enough that You formed every element with seeds of its future. It would have been enough that when we sought our own way, when we abandoned You, You never gave up on us. It would have been enough that You appointed the Stars and sun and moon and seasons for our growth and development. It would have been enough that You brought us through illness and suffering. It would have been enough that You gave us hope and vision. But YOU LORD, God of the Universe, Maker of heaven and earth, You entered in to save us. You acted in Love and Grace. Thank you.”

In the Seder of Passover, we remember that “life is fragile and we are children marked with blood.” Time and again, circumstances could have gone a different way, but while the world has known great suffering, while there have been plagues and pandemics, fires and floods and wars, Almighty God, who also experienced all of this, chose to love each of us. There must be a purpose for us to take up in response, because God loves us and created us for this time and place.

Throughout all of human history, there have been WORSHIP WARS. Here, I am not referencing Holy Wars fought for the liberation of oppressed people, or between Gods and between cultures, even between good and evil. WORSHIP WARS are not even the Crusades between Christians, Muslims and Jews, or the wars that continue today over lands sacred to both indigenous people.

WORSHIP WARS are the little jibes that take place over the time of worship, or if someone is sitting in our place, which hymns we sing and with what instruments, whether the children leave early or later, whether Baptisms and Offerings take place in response to the Word Read and Preached or as an act of Confession. All of which come back to our human desire for control, to be found to be righteous and therefore to judge. This morning someone described their son who worships and teaches Bible Study at a Congregational Church then rushes to the Catholic church each week, so as to receive Communion. I would not have considered it except that a few moments later someone greeted me describing “I guess you have not had as many worship services this week as we have at the Catholic and Episcopal Churches,” as if the number of times per day or per week we worship were an issue rather than our faith and relationship to God.

Worship is a unique act in human culture. In some times and places Worship is Didactic and Moralistic, in others extremely Rational and Doctrinal, at times Worship has been considered entertainment, at other times evocative, at times political, and at others a celebration of art and poetry. The point emphasized by both our readings this night, is that WORSHIP needs to be done RIGHT. Not as ritual, not as routine, not misunderstood as magic or sacrifice. In Worship we recognize God offering us love, unconditionally hosting us in God's house, feeding us without reservation; and in worship we are allowed to respond as we choose to God.

What is striking in John's description of the Last Supper is his emphasis on Loving: One Another. Where Matthew, Mark and Luke have the Sermon on the Mount and The Beatitudes, articulating what it is to love, the need to love neighbor as ourselves, parables explaining what it is to love our enemies and to love neighbor; John's Gospel is demonstrated in this one discourse at dinner (by Jesus' overt intimacy, stripping before the disciples, washing their feet as a loving host, drying their feet with the towel wrapped around his loins), that we love those with whom we are at table. In so many ways it is easier for us to discuss and accept the need to love our enemies, or to love our neighbors, than it is to love those who are our family, to forgive ourselves, to love those at table with us.