“Sacrament of Life”
Maundy Thursday
18 April 2019 12 noon Said Healing Mass, 7:00 p.m. Sung
Maundy Thursday
18 April 2019 12 noon Said Healing Mass, 7:00 p.m. Sung
Mass with
Foot-washing and the Stripping of the Altar
Parish Church of
Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)
God, give us hearts
to feel and love,
take away our hearts
of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.
Fred
Rogers, the iconic television host of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” once said,
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say
to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To
this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words, and
I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers -- so
many caring people in this world.”
One
such helper this last week was Fr. Jean-Marc Fournier, chaplain of the Paris
Fire Department. During the monstrous
fire that reduced large parts of Notre Dame de Paris to smoldering debris, he
led firefighters into the rain of molten lead and burning roof struts to rescue
the sacred relics and art from this center of Christian worship for the last
800 years. Along with the irreplaceable
relics—crown of thorns, the fragment of the True Cross, and one of its
nails—the first thing rescued was the Blessed Sacrament, the reserved
consecrated bread and wine from the Cathedral’s Tabernacle.
Msgr.
Michel Aupetit, Archbishop of Paris, after the initial assessment of just how
much had been saved said this, “We must ask why Notre Dame was constructed. Why
this human genius? Because they could have done something functional. It's far
more than functional. And why? Because what is honored there is absolutely
splendid, that's what we believe. And if you want to ask the real question,
what jewel is this jewel box for? It's not for the Crown of Thorns, you know?
It's for a piece of bread. It's astonishing. How can one construct such a work
of art for a piece of bread? That piece of bread is the Body of Christ. And
that endures. Nobody will ever be able to destroy it.”
Thank
God no one was killed. The only people
injured were firefighters, those who went in along with Father Fournier, to
rescue holy things for God’s holy people.
And it appears that they will recover.
The commitment of the French people to rebuild, and the outpouring of
major donation pledges, is a sign of renewal and resurrection for us all. It has had wonderful ripple effects: there has even been a huge upsurge in giving
to rebuild three traditionally African-American Churches in the U.S. south
burned in recent months by White-supremacist
arsonists.
And
so we begin the Three Day Liturgy—Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter—that
traces a great arc from fear through darkness and into light. Most of what is passed on to us in the
Mystery of the Triduum is found in the stories read, the prayers said, the
chants sung, not in any homily proclaimed.
The mystery is just too great, too ineffable. We are reduced to actions and not words: washing feet, eating and drinking the bread
and wine offered by Jesus as his body and blood, stripping and washing the
altar, sitting in darkness, praying through the night, then on Friday touching
the Holy Cross, maintaining silence, and then at the start of Sunday on
Saturday evening lighting the new fire, singing “the light of Christ,”
baptizing, flowering the church and singing in joy, and then on Sunday having
once again the meal at the table of plenty that Jesus has always offered.
We
often are overwhelmed by this rich matrix of symbols. We sometimes tend to focus on one or two
details, sometimes the less important parts of the story: those relics
themselves, whose symbolism is truer and more reliable than their historical
reliability: True Cross, True Crown of Thorns, Burial Shroud of Turin, and the
ever-elusive Holy Grail.
The
Gospel stories we read of the Last Supper clearly are not focused on the peripherals. They are not even really about the meal itself
as such. One of the great glories of
having four Gospels is that they each give a differing view. And such differing viewpoints allow us to
have perspective on the stories they tell.
The synoptics say it was a Passover Meal, and emphasize what Jesus said
as he was offering the meal: this is my
body and this is my blood. John says it
was one last meal before Passover, where Jesus does not institute the
Eucharist, but rather gives a long intercessory prayer on behalf of his
followers, a new commandment that we love one another, and the example of how
we do that in loving service by washing each other’s feet.
The
bread and wine of the Last Supper became the central Christian act of
worship. A huge amount of ink and energy
have been spent trying to make proper sense of it. I wonder if the footwashing had become the
central act, what our Church services would look like? What if the dipping of the bread in the
gravy, offering sustenance to even those who betray us, or if prayers the
length of those found in John’s Last Supper (3 whole chapters full) had become
the center of our worship? Would we have
had the same level of controversy and division over these things that we have
had over the Eucharist and its elements?
The
consecrated Bread and Wine are the Body and Blood of Christ, a relic most
worthy of being saved from the flames.
And the community gathered together at Jesus’ call is his Body, his arms
and feet in the world. The service and
love we share for all is the lifeblood of the Body of Christ. These two are not in contradiction—as if the
Body of Christ were either the bread offered on the altar or the community
gathered at it. Rather, as Paul teaches
in 1 Corinthians, they are in unity: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it
not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a
sharing in the body of Christ? Because
there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one
bread” (1 Corinthians 10:16-17).
Because
we are the body of Christ, partaking his Body and Blood, we should be those
helpers that Mr. Rogers talks about.
The
love Jesus models and commands is not disembodied sentiment and feeling, it is
a series of actions, a state of the will.
It is putting the well-being of the beloved above ourselves. It is giving them the benefit of the
doubt. It is sacrificing oneself,
accepting hurt, to help them. Jesus washes the feet and loves even the one who
will betray him. Later in the night, he
will wake his sleeping friends at Gethsemane, but will not scold them for not
being able to watch and pray. Rather, he
has compassion and empathy, “the spirit is willing, but you're just too tired!”
“Love
each other as I have loved you.” This is
the true relic, the True Cross, the true Holy Grail. Mutual love and service is itself a
sacrament every bit as holy as the body and blood Jesus offers us. Fr. Fournier’s act of selfless devotion to
the Blessed Sacrament and the Holy Relics, his being one of the helpers, is a
sacrament of life, what Jesus commands us to.
I
invite all of us to come to partake the sweet bread and wine of God, and to
pray tonight. I invite us all to come to
the rest of this Church service—by returning tomorrow for the noon Good Friday
part of this liturgy, and then again on Saturday evening and Sunday Morning for the
celebration of salvation history and the resurrection, so we can see in this
whole story the depth of Christ’s love.
And most of all, I invite us, with Jesus, to love each other as he loved
us.
In the name of God, Amen.
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