The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Holy Week and Easter 2024
MAUNDY THURSDAY: TO LOVE ONE ANOTHER
On Maundy Thursday we get a new mandatum, a new commandment: to love one another as Christ has loved us. This commandment is so foundational to Christianity and yet it is the hardest one to practice. It commands us to do what feels impossible: to love another as Christ himself has loved us. Christ, who is Love made flesh, “the Love that came down at Christmas” as Christina Rosetti’s powerful poem proclaims, it is this love to which we are called in loving one another.
This is not a love we can abstract our ways out of. I’ve seen people jump through ethical hoops to avoid having to really love someone. “Hate the sin, love the sinner” has very little love for the sinner, and “I love you so much I’m telling you to convert so you don’t get sent to hell by a loving God” is hardly the invitation to love that they think it is.
But Jesus loves deeply. He loves Peter who denies him, he loves even the one who betrayed him. Jesus washed Judas’ feet and fed him. Jesus’s sharpest words were always reserved for hypocrites, yet he loved them, too. Jesus goes up to the cross and opens his heart to the whole world and offers his whole life and death for all.
No abstract love here – Christians must love as Christ loves.
I wonder sometimes whether we should read this passage during the passing of the peace. The peace of God is also an expression of the love of God that draws us together in Eucharist. The Eucharist is not only for our personal growth in Christ – it is drawing us together to love one another as Christ has loved us. Your vestry has been reading this commandment of Christ, month by month, to remind ourselves that we are commanded to love one another as Christ has loved us.
Love is not a new thing in Christianity – it is the very heartbeat of our faith. The Bible tells us this is what we are called to do, Jesus himself said it. But let’s turn to another part of the Scripture to tell us what love means. As the First Letter of John says so well, and which we will hear again in a few weeks:
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. (1 John 4:7-21)
Love one another, as Christ himself has loved us. The world shall know that we are Christ’s disciples, if we have love for one another.
GOOD FRIDAY: THE CRUCIFIXION
The cross is at the heart of Christianity. What the Roman Empire used to terrify and dehumanize and oppress, Christ took upon himself to break its power. Jesus ascends the cross, suffers, and dies, through his suffering and death he breaks the power of death and sin. Jesus takes our mortal flesh upon himself, he suffers, and he dies. His arms stretch out upon the wood of the cross to embrace creation.
On this day, words so frequently fail. The cross is a greater mystery than we can tell. But poets and mystics can do a better job than a preacher on this day. Hear first the words of the ancient Christian poet, Venantius Fortunatus translated from the Latin:[1]
Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle;
of the mighty conflict sing;
tell the triumph of the victim,
to his cross thy tribute bring.
Jesus Christ, the world’s Redeemer
from that cross now reigns as King.
Thirty years among us dwelling,
his appointed time fulfilled,
born for this, he meets his passion,
this the Savior freely willed:
on the cross the Lamb is lifted,
where his precious blood is spilled.
He endures the nails, the spitting,
vinegar, and spear, and reed;
from that holy body broken
blood and water forth proceed:
earth, and stars, and sky, and ocean,
by that flood from stain are freed.
Faithful cross! above all other,
one and only noble tree!
None in foliage, none in blossom,
none in fruit thy peer may be:
sweetest wood and sweetest iron!
sweetest weight is hung on thee.
Bend thy boughs, O tree of glory!
Thy relaxing sinews bend;
for awhile the ancient rigor
that thy birth bestowed, suspend;
and the King of heavenly beauty
gently on thine arms extend.
And now hear the words of the medieval Christian mystical theologian, Julian of Norwich, translated from the Middle English:[2]
Our faith teaches us (and these revelations confirm) that Christ is both God and human. Regarding the Godhead, he is our supreme bliss, and has been since the beginning of time and shall be until the end. This boundless joy, by its very nature, cannot be increased or decreased. This was beautifully revealed when he said, “It is I who am most exalted.”
Regarding Christ’s humanity, our faith teaches us (and these revelations confirm) that, with the power of the Godhead and for the sake of love, he endured unspeakable suffering – his passion and his dying – to bring us into his bliss. These are the offerings of Christ’s humanity, and he rejoices in them. He assured us of this when he said, “It is a source of endless joy, bliss, and delight to me that I suffered my passion for you.” This is the sublime beauty of Christ’s actions. This is what he meant when he said, “You are my bliss; my reward, my honor, and my crown.”
And Christ is our crown, also. He is our head! In his glorified form, he transcends all suffering. In his humanity, into which all human beings are woven, he is not yet fully glorified and is not beyond suffering. He still feels that burning thirst he felt on the cross. As I see it, Christ’s thirst – his desire and his longing – has been with him always, and always will be, until the last soul is liberated and is lifted into his bliss.
As truly as God embodies the quality of compassion and mercy, so does he embody the quality of thirst and longing. The power of this longing in Christ awakens the longing in us. Indeed, we cannot come to paradise without this holy yearning. The quality of thirst and longing, just as much as the quality of mercy, is rooted in the boundless goodness of God. These are two different things. As long as we are in need, Christ will continue to experience the very essence of spiritual thirst, and the energy of his longing draws us to himself. And so he has mercy on us, and he yearns for us, but his wisdom and his love do not allow him to put an end to this longing until the perfect time.
GOOD FRIDAY: THE BURIAL
Culturally we have lost the ability to grieve well. The rituals around dying and death have faded, and death itself is pushed away, compartmentalized, sanitized.
In years past, if one was blessed enough to die at home, your family or friends would gather around your body. They would lovingly wash you, clothe you, tend to you. The weirdness of a dead body was not so foreign. Death was there, it was visible. Others might gather to pray around you, your priest may be there to have said the final prayers, and now preparations would be made to gather at the church to celebrate your Requiem mass, to commend you to your “requiem aeternam,” the Latin phrase for “Eternal Rest.” The rituals of grief helped us along as a community, and they connected us to Christ.
Joseph of Arimathea receives the body of Christ and places him in his own tomb. The Gospels differ on who anoints and prepares Jesus’ body after his death: some Gospel accounts point to Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, the others say the holy women who had been part of the company of disciples since Galilee do the anointing work. In his death, they lovingly cared for him, held him, dressed him.
Our culture doesn’t know what to do with death. We call the funeral home to take our loved one away, to dress them, to use chemicals and devices to make them look their best. Our loved one disappears, and we are left in grief, waiting to receive them back. They die, they disappear.
Just as the soul is sacred, so too is the body. God created the soul, God created the body. We are incarnational. The beauty and strangeness of the body is a wonder to behold. The body’s ability to keep going even after injury and illness, the body’s ability to heal, the countless proteins and enzymes, the endless strands of DNA that are compressed into our cells: what a wonder! The body is a wonder not just because it “houses” a soul – the body is a sacred wonder in its own right. It’s the wonder we can see, and touch, and hear.
They take the body, wash him, anoint him, and dress him. It is sacred work. Attentive. It takes its time. Just as at the altar we take our time, unfolding the linens, setting the table, no rushing, with that kind of care these disciples prepared the body of Christ. Jesus cannot do anything to thank them for their gift and their kindness. The disciples whose feet Jesus washed at the Last Supper are nowhere to be found to wash his body in his death. The disciples that Jesus fed with his body and blood at the Last Supper have vanished, and it is these other disciples that wash his body and clean his blood.
To mourn is to love. To mourn is a brave work. To mourn is to sit with the memory, if not the body, of one we love. It pains us to sit with a broken heart. But it is not a despairing love that gives up. It continues on. These disciples tended to the body of Christ with great love – and they keep living. They grieved, they mourned – and they loved, and they lived.
We sit in the tomb with our loved ones. And, one day, loved ones will sit with us in our tomb. We abide with the truth that death is inevitable, and we proclaim our faithful hope that death is not the last word. And yet, we must mourn because we love.
EASTER VIGIL: THE CREATION
On the first day … on the second day … on the third day … God creates. God makes. God stretches out the heavens.
Ancient humans looked at the stars and told stories. They marveled at the starry night sky in a way that we can only find far, far away from home in the wilderness. They saw this great grandeur – though they could not fathom just how vast, vast, vast the universe truly is … not that we can really comprehend it, either. Countless stars on the darkness of the sky. It’s beautiful.
And from that great vision, we turn our attention to the small. The universe that is revealed as we use a microscope to look closer at the smallest things. How tiny bacteria are! Or even smaller – how proteins fold and bend. Or even smaller – how atoms are composed of protons, neutrons, and a surrounding cloud of electrons… or even smaller!
What wonders God has made! And God loves it all into being, and God loves it still.
EASTER VIGIL: THE PROPHET ISAIAH
Everyone who thirsts, come drink! Everyone who hungers, come eat! God calls one, and God calls us all. Will we accept the invitation? Will we join in the feast?
God has sent out the invitation over the centuries, throughout the ages: to celebrate with him, to join in the work of the Kingdom of Heaven, to seek the Lord’s ways instead of our own. In this we find freedom and joy, in this we find peace and fulfillment.
Those who are hungry will come to the banquet. Those who are thirsty will drink deep of the Lord’s delights. Do we hunger for that which is nourishing? Do we thirst for the goodness of the Lord? Do we hunger and thirst for our own sake, and do we hunger and thirst for others’ sake, to bring them to the banquet, too?
The invitation has been sent. Will we join the feast?
EASTER VIGIL: THE PROPHET ZEPHANIAH
The LORD rejoices over you, we hear. Are we bold enough to believe that God delights in us? This is no begrudging kindness, no obligatory mercy in God – this is delight, this is joy that God has for us.
God has such joy in us! God knows us so deeply and completely and perfectly, and God delights in us. God rejoices. It would be foolish to tell God that, no, no, God cannot rejoice over us because we’re not good enough, it’s not right. Do we dare to tell God how he is allowed to feel? On this queen of feasts, this sacred night of Easter, let us be ready to rejoice. To rejoice in God’s triumph, to rejoice in God’s love for us, to rejoice in God’s rejoicing. Joy, joy, joy without end.
EASTER DAY: ST MARY MAGDALENE AND THE EMPTY TOMB
Alleluia! Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen indeed!
One of my most favorite lines from the Rule of St Benedict, that founder of monasticism in the West, is “To Prefer Nothing to the Love of Christ.”[3] St Benedict says that this is one of the foundational tools of the Christian life, that we put nothing before the love of Christ. The love of Christ is at the heart, the very center of what it means to be a Christian, to be a follower of Jesus.
Now, if you’re a grammar nerd, you might be wondering, “well, what exactly does ‘love of Christ’ mean?” Does it mean our love of Christ – that we should prefer nothing to loving Jesus? That when it comes down to it, Jesus is the #1 love in our heart?
Or what if it’s the other way: does it mean preferring nothing to Jesus’s love for us? Does it mean that we set aside everything else and cherish Jesus’ love for us more than anything, that fame and fortune and everything we could wish for would not be as wonderful as cherishing Jesus’ love for us?
Hm, what do you think?
Show of hands: raise your hand if you think it means, “We should prefer nothing to loving Jesus.”
And now raise your hand if you think it means, “We should prefer nothing to Jesus’ love for us.”
And now raise your hand if you can already see where I’m going with this: that it’s both.
Yes, it’s both. Love for Jesus, and the love Jesus has for us. With that love, what else could we want?
And St Mary Magdalene is our icon of that love, both ways.
St Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb to care for the body of Jesus. The stone is rolled away. She panics. Something has happened – someone has stolen the body of Jesus! She loves him deeply. She runs back to get the disciples who show up, investigate … and then leave. Mary Magdalene stays put, though. She’s not leaving.
She pokes her head in and sees angels. She doesn’t suddenly rejoice and think, “Angels! Oh that’s wonderful!” Nothing less than Jesus will do for Mary. She tells the angels that the body of Jesus has been taken away. She’s not interested in some message, she’s not interested in some angelic proclamation. She demands Jesus, and nothing less than Jesus will do.
And then Jesus appears. Her single-minded focus on Jesus does not recognize him at first. She thinks he’s the gardener! But when he says her name, she knows exactly who it is. She knows it is Jesus whom her heart loves above all, and she knows the one who loves her. She hears his voice, she rejoices, she rushes to cling to him out of love. He tells her not to cling to his body but to go share the good news – the other disciples need to know that Christ is risen. Out of love for Jesus, she rushes back to share the Good News.
Mary Magdalene is our icon of what it means to prefer nothing to the love of Christ.
We’re called to love Jesus, and we’re called to celebrate his love for us, to place that love at the center of our lives.
Christ loves us so deeply that he endured suffering and pain on the cross and rose triumphant from death. That is the love that conquers death, the love that washes away sin, the love that lifts up the downtrodden, the love that breaks every chain.
And in living out this love of Christ we learn to see the power of his eternal life here and now. Too often we think of eternal life as something far off, unrelated to what we do today. But that’s not the case! We don’t live our life now and wait for eternal life in the future; we live in the power of that eternal, risen life now. We taste the powerful vividness of Christ’s risen life, his triumph over death, his everlasting and overflowing love for us, and we live differently. We start to live that eternal life now.
We’re set free from the fear of death – because death is not the last word.
We’re washed away from sin – nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, and each moment we can turn again to him.
We who are downtrodden by the world, by cares, by fear and oppression, we are lifted up – nothing can take away our dignity or our belovedness, and we can work for justice and mercy for all, for Christ calls for every chain to be broken!
The Resurrection is sweet comfort, and it is also boldness. We’re moved, we’re nudged, we’re strengthened to share the Good News in thought, word, and deed. We love Christ, and Christ loves us – and in that love that is stronger than death we bring comfort to a world that is weary, we bring boldness to a world that is despairing.
Christ is raised from death that we may be comforted – he who shared our pains and suffering will share with us his triumph over death. Christ is raised from death that we may be emboldened – the work of God in this world will always bear fruit, and in Christ’s eternal life we have powerful hope.
Mary Magdalene’s love of Christ, her devotion, her boldness are paired with the Good News. We see her love and dedication, we see her sadness and grief, we see her courage and strength.
And her love spread the Gospel of the Risen Lord. She is Apostle to the Apostles – she knows the Resurrection, and, most importantly, she has seen Jesus whom she loves, and she has heard the voice of Jesus who loves her.
She prefers nothing to the love of Christ, and we are grateful for that love. We gather two thousand years later after that wondrous morning, and we are linked in a chain of love. People through the centuries before us loved Christ and made him known, and they trusted in the love that Christ has for them and all creation. For two thousand years, Mary Magdalene’s boldness and consolation have echoed and resounded, proclaiming the eternal life of Christ that we all are blessed to share. With her, we share in the eternal life of Christ.
Her life was transformed – may our lives be transformed so magnificently, too. May we prefer nothing to the love of Christ – may we prefer nothing to loving Christ, and may we prefer nothing to Christ’s love.
Alleluia, Christ is Risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
[1] “Pange Lingua” as translated by JM Neale.
[2] Chapter 31, Mirabai Starr translation.
[3] From Chapter 4, “Of the Tools of Good Works.”