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April 13, 2006
John Auer, Pastor
Maundy Thursday, Service of
Tenebrae (Shadows), John 18:1—19:42
“Living the
Questions, Dying the Answers”
A word to the children, please – I am glad so
many of you are here, doing what Jesus asks us to do tonight. This is Jesus’
way of teaching people of all ages. They say when you just read something in a
book, you may not remember it very long. If someone else reads it to you and
you hear, you may remember a little longer. If someone else acts it out for you
and you see it, you may remember still longer. But if you act it out for
yourself, if you do the things you want to learn, then you may remember a long,
long time. That’s what Jesus is hoping for tonight – with us disciples and
followers who seem to have such a hard time remembering! I always think Jesus
kind of makes this up as he goes along. He knows he doesn’t have anything else
to leave with his friends but himself! So he gives himself to them in every way
he knows how, and he shows them and gets them to do for themselves, as they wash
each others’ feet, all that he wants them to know. What do you think of Jesus
as a teacher? For the rest of us learners --
Old white guys are rarely prophets today. When
one like William Sloan Coffin dies yesterday at age 81, we pause to give
gratitude and respect. Coffin was arrested on Freedom Rides and for offering
sanctuary to draft resisters while serving as chaplain at Yale. He pastored
Riverside Church in New York City for ten years. He then became chair of the
SANE/Freeze coalition for disarmament. One biographer calls his book about
Coffin “A Holy Impatience.” Coffin’s own books include, “A Passion for the
Possible,” and “The Heart Is a Little to the Left.”
Following a stroke two years ago, Coffin
appeared with Bill Moyers on PBS. While still an activist, he puts himself in
perspective – “I’m less intentional than ‘attentional.’ I am more and more
attentive to family and friends and nature’s beauty. Although still outraged by
callous behavior, particularly in high places, I feel more often serene,
grateful for God’s gift of life.” “The only way to have a good death is to lead
a good life. Lead a good one, full of curiosity, generosity, and compassion,
and there’s no need at the close of day to rage against the dying of the light.
We can go gentle into that good night.” It’s hard to say that Jesus, so full of
life, so short of time, goes very gently into this good night. But we know what
Bill Coffin means. We’d all like to come to such terms with death.
We know what affection and appreciation Jesus
shows toward the Roman soldier who asks Jesus to heal his daughter. As one who
lives under authority, says the soldier, I know all you have to do is say the
word, and the healing will be done. Jesus says he’s never witnessed such faith
in anyone else! So we are called to be under authority, under orders, under
commands this evening – to love one another, to prepare the Passover, to commune
with Jesus, to wash one another’s feet. Yet as soon as we keep such commands,
really keep them, we know we will run into authorities organized just to keep
those commands from carrying out.
To accept the authority of Jesus’ God in our
lives is to question every lesser one.
One of our favorite TV shows at home, “Who’s
Line Is It Anyway?”, has a regular segment for the improvisational players to
answer questions with questions -- till someone is stumped. It is a technique
they might borrow from Jesus. Tonight’s readings of Jesus’ Passion according to
John are filled to a point with questions – questions of authority meant as much
for us as for those in the story with Jesus. Jesus asks in the garden, “Whom do
you seek?” (twice) and “Shall I not drink the cup which the Father has given
me?” Before the high priest he asks, “Why do you ask me?” and “Why do you
strike me?” Before Pilate the Roman governor, “Do you say this of your own
accord, or did others say it to you about me?”
Peter is asked, “Are you not also one of this
man’s disciples?” and “Are you not one of his disciples?” and “Did I not see you
in the garden with him?” Jesus is asked by an officer, “Is that how you answer
the high priest?” And by Pilate, “Are you the King of the Jews?” and “Am I a
Jew?” and “So you are a king?” and “What is truth?” and “Where are you from?”
and “You will not speak to me?” “Do you not know that I have power to release
you and power to crucify you?” Finally, Pilate asks the religious authorities
and their crowd, “What accusation do you bring against this man?” and “Will you
have me release for you the King of the Jews?” and at last, “Shall I crucify
your King?” They answer, “We have no king but Caesar.” And that settles it.
When we treat the highest powers of state like gods, we ask no more questions.
We proceed to the foregone conclusion.
That’s why the church has been called “the
community of open questions.” As soon as we think we have all the answers, and
no need for any more questions, we start closing ourselves off from others, and
clinching our inevitable disillusion-ment. I realize there are issues on which
we have to come down somewhere sometime. We may never be as sure as we want to
be. But there is a cost to closing the questions. And we who think or hope we
are different need to realize how “fundamentalists” of all traditions feel their
certitude and security crashing down around them each day – with the help of
so-called “leaders” who exploit them but do not care for them. If this week and
this night are for acknowledging any one thing at all, it is that we are all in
this together! Nobody’s faith is clean.
A couple of shameless plugs. One, I love about
“Jesus Christ Superstar” the many singable questions asked by its lyrics. My
favorites include the flippant “What’s the buzz? / Tell me what’s happening? /
What’s the buzz?”, the plaintive “ Should I bring him down / Should I scream and
shout, / Should I speak of love, / Let my feelings out?/ . . . What’s it all
about?” and the insistent “Could we start again please? / Could we start
again?” We’ll be showing the video after the 7 PM worship tomorrow night.
Also, the Sunday morning adult class wants to offer a 12-week DVD and web-based
study this summer called “Living the Questions: A fresh alternative for
Christian invitation, initiation, and spiritual formation.”
We are about the asking of every possible
question seen in every possible perspective from every possible position. So
often the answers, the working solutions lie in the simplest, most concrete and
direct kinds of responses. Jesus knows that we all-too-human followers of him
may be capable of keeping about one commandment – if we are lucky! So he asks
himself what his life and his work all come down to? And he says it’s “a new
command: Love one another.” Which is the bottom line in our stained-glass
window of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. By Jesus’ feet (appropriately this night!) it
begins, “A new commandment I give you” – “That ye love one another.” In all
things, for all persons, it comes down to love. They will know we are
Christians – not by our creeds, our confessions, our temples, and our worship –
but by our love! By our actions of justice and mercy.
In the moment and in the act of washing our feet
and commanding us to do likewise, Jesus asks us, invites us, encourages and
empowers us to become for the world what we are calling “guest workers” in
today’s immigration debate. Unofficially as they already are, and officially as
they someday may be, “guest workers” are those who literally risk life to cross
borders -- stand on street corners before dawn on the ten percent chance of work
-- take whatever work they are offered, often what nobody else wants or is
willing to do – work for whatever they may be paid -- send all their earnings
back home. Doesn’t that begin to sound like what Jesus is asking from us on
this Maundy Thursday? The free work of foot-washing not even a slave can be
required, “mandated” to do?
Richard Rodriguez comments recently on NPR – “In
the noisy argument over what to do with illegal immigrants, the common
assumption is that America has done a great deal for them already. The question
now is what more should we give them? Should we give them a green card? Grant
them amnesty? Or stop all this generosity and send them packing? “No one
speaks of what illegal immigrants have done for us. It occurs to me I have not
heard two relevant words spoken. If you will allow me I will speak them. Thank
you.
“Thank you for turning on the sprinklers. Thank
you for cleaning the swimming pool and scrambling the eggs and doing the
dishes. Thank you for making the bed. Thank you for getting the children up
and ready for school. Thank you for picking them up after school. Thank you
for caring for our dying parents. “Thank you for plucking dead chickens. Thank
you for bending your bodies over our fields. Thank you for breathing chemicals
and absorbing chemicals into your bodies. Thank you for the lettuce, and the
spinach, and the artichokes, and the asparagus, and the cauliflower, the
broccoli, the beans, the tomatoes and the garlic. Thank you for the apricots,
and the peaches, and the apples, and the melons, and the plums, the almonds, and
the grapes.
“Thank you for the willow trees, and the roses
and the winter lawn. Thank you for scraping, and painting, and roofing and
cleaning out the asbestos and the mold. Thank you for your stoicism and your
eager hands. “Thank you for all the young men on rooftops in the sun. Thank
you for cleaning the toilets and the showers, and the restaurant kitchens, and
the schools, and the office buildings, and the airports and the malls. Thank
you for washing the car. Thank you for washing all the cars.
“Thank you for your parents, who died young and
had nothing to bequeath to their children but the memory of work. Thank you for
giving us your youth. Thank you for the commemorative altars. Thank you for
the food, the beer, the tragic polka. “Gracias.” Thank you, Jesus. Amen.
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