Today marks the start of the most important time in the Christian calendar. Over the next few days, we will once again live through the sequence of Holy Thursday/Good Friday/Holy Saturday which leads us into the miracle of Easter Sunday. And while we eagerly await the resurrection and the victory of life over the powers of death, we’ve got a lot to get through before we get there!
On Holy Thursday, Jesus has gathered for a Passover meal with his companions [Notes: Passover currently started last evening for Jews all around the world, and I always appreciate when the calendars align like this. And if you’d want to learn more about the Passover meal and the movements/stories/prayers of the Seder, here’s one possible resource]. He is remembering the liberation story of Exodus that we read from today in Exodus 12. It is the foundational story of the Hebrew people where they found their freedom.
It’s no accident that Jesus chose this story and this special time to enact his own liberation story. He knew that he did not have long in this world and so he decided to infuse a familiar ritual with new meaning for his followers.
Something that I have come to appreciate about Holy Thursday is that it is not something that we understand with our heads. It is something that we understand in our bodies.
The great spiritual writer Cole Arthur Riley reminds us that Jesus’ final acts in this world begin with a meal – where he invited his friends and followers to eat and drink as a way of remembering. It is an intimate and concrete way for him to be close to his friends – “that we would meet him in the act of nourishment.” This would have been significant and powerful even if he had stopped there.
But he goes further.
After the meal, Jesus got down on his hands and knees and started to wash the feet of his disciples. It was unheard of in his time for a teacher to wash the feet of students. My guess is that this shocked the disciples and was seared into their hearts and minds. Think of someone you love and respect and hold in high regard. Imagine that you just had dinner with them and then they get down on their knees and wash your dirty feet. That would leave an impression.
With this simple and humble act, he taught us more than a thousand sermons: we must use our lives, our very bodies to be of service to others.
Of course this was how Jesus lived. Throughout his life, he “washed the feet” of the poor and marginalized by being there for them, healing them, breaking bread with them, welcoming them and loving them. On this night he does it for his friends. He says, “This is what love looks like. This is what community looks like. Follow what I do.”
What also makes Holy Thursday profound for me is that he entrusts everything that he has been about to his community of followers (and WE are part of that community). He already knows that this group of folks will not fully understand him. He already knows that they will likely abandon him. He already knows that one of them will betray him.
But he trusts them anyway.
Not long ago I read Robin Wall-Kimmerer’s book The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. It is a beautiful book about the generosity of the natural world and how we can learn from this pattern. In the book she tells a story about an Indigenous man who is being studied by a Western-trained researcher. The Indigenous hunter
“had brought home a sizable kill, far too much to be eaten by his family. [The] researcher asked how he would store the excess. Smoking and drying technologies were well known and so storing was possible. The hunter was puzzled by the question—store the meat? Why would he do that?
Instead, he sent out an invitation to a feast, and soon the neighboring families were gathered around his fire, until every last morsel was consumed. This seemed like maladaptive behavior to the anthropologist, who asked again: given the uncertainty of meat in the forest, why didn’t the hunter store the meat for himself, which is what the economic system of [the researcher’s] home culture would predict. “Store my meat? I store my meat in the belly of my friends,” replied the hunter.”
Jesus decides to store what is most precious to him in the bellies of his friends and in the bellies of you and me. This is where he decides to store his love. This is where he decides to store his spirit of service. This is where he decides to store his life.
Heard in this light, Jesus’ teachings (with a slight language change) might carry new meaning for us. For example, take Matthew 6, where he talks about our “treasure.” With a Holy Thursday/embodied understanding, it might read: Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures [in the bellies of your community], where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure [community] is, there also will your heart be.
Today, Jesus invites us to serve what “neither moth or decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal.” He invites us to serve that which lasts. And as the great Kentucky farmer and poet, Wendell Berry, says, “If we do not serve what coheres and endures, we serve what disintegrates and destroys.”
This is a very real danger and choice in this day and age.
Holy Thursday doesn’t offer us a lot of complicated or difficult theology. It offers us a practice and reminds us that our faith is not something we think or believe. It’s something we do with our bodies. It’s about how we have become free in this world and how we are called to be agents of liberation for others. It’s about how we touch lives and are touched by others. It’s about how we show up.
Of course Holy Thursday ends with Jesus in the garden – his body and spirit in anguish and fear – and we are invited to follow him as he goes on this difficult journey over the next few days. But for right now, we just take him in, let him move in us and then let him move us – on our knees into this world as we seek to serve that which “coheres and endures.” Maybe for today we can ask ourselves questions like:
Where is my body being invited to love?
Where can my hands serve?
Where can my presence help others be free?
Where can I kneel in solidarity with others?
One Comment
George Dardess
Wonderful homily, Mike.
I dread hearing those who talk about Christianity as if it were a series of dogmas . I feel much the same when I hear Christianity reduced to “feelings,” however uplifting. Rather, we’re talking about embodiment, for if it’s not that, it’s nothing. (Reminds me of what Flannery O’Connor said about calling the Eucharist a “symbol.” “If that’s all it is,” she snapped back, “to Hell with it.”) A lot of our problem, I think, from failing to acknowledge our own bodies, in their present moment. Right now, as I type this comment, who am I? What am I now, with my various aches and pains and anxieties, all sluicing around in my blood stream and into my heart? How do these little bodily emergences affect my relations with others? (And that’s just a start.)