The Rev. Joseph Farnes
MAUNDY THURSDAY
Here we are, at the gate of the Triduum, the Three Holy Days. Tonight we begin our descent into the heartache and pain of the Passion with a depth we only taste briefly on Palm Sunday. Our liturgy walks us through transitions and changes; it becomes stranger, unsettling. Maundy Thursday begins like any other Eucharist – and then the washing of the feet starts to upend the regular rhythm. We are unsettled by the bizarre action: people remove their shoes and present their bare feet to be washed by another human being.
It’s doubly-bizarre to us modern Americans because we don’t regularly wash our feet at the front door, let alone have servants or slaves to wash them for us. We ritually act out something from a culture far removed from us.
In fact, I think that because it is so far removed from us that we do not fully get the humility, the humbling effect of washing feet. It’s strange enough that we don’t connect the act of washing another’s feet as something undignified or humbling. I have, in half-jest, suggested that perhaps our culture would make more of a connection to the work of a CNA in a hospital, caring for those who cannot do much of that self-care for themselves. Healthcare companies pay them so little and expect so much of them.
While we do not fully get the humbling aspect of being the one washing feet, we do understand that humbling – and possible humiliation – when we have our feet washed. We expose a part of ourselves that we normally keep hidden – in our feet are traces of years of our shoes cramping our toes, years of walking and worrying, all worn into our bones and flesh. We would rather hide that part of us. We would rather hide much of ourselves.
No wonder we are a lonely people.
We struggle to bring ourselves fully and completely – afraid of being judged, afraid of being wounded, afraid of being rejected.
Over ten years ago as a young priest, my boss sat in on a Christian education class I was doing on ethics. The feedback she gave me did not focus on my topic, my words, my engagement with the group, or even any pastoral sensitivities that I needed to be aware of. What she wanted to tell me about was my face. She said I needed to smile more. That my listening face, my neutral face, was “intimidating” with its little downturn at the edges like a frown. I hadn’t realized something was wrong with my face, but I took that lesson to heart.
She told me that it was important to know that as a priest, my body is not my own. I will be hugged when I do not want to be hugged. My face will always need to look happy and eager and peaceful, and my inner life cannot crack through the surface. When I was going through a particular rough patch, she was the one to point out that my voice sounded sad in my sermon, and that I needed to fix that immediately. My job was to be what the people needed me to be, and my job, in return, was to tell them that God loved them. Not that I needed to love them – no, she said, the job was only to tell them that God loved them.
She was not the only clergyperson to tell me that I needed to hide more of myself. During a clergy retreat, a priest in this diocese wildly misinterpreted something I shared about my childhood pain and threw it in my face. I’ve been told by a priest during an internship that I needed to be quiet about being gay. I’ve heard folks in collars talk about me with language like “vibes are off” instead of talking with me, if they were so concerned. Even in the Church, with people who should know better, we do not do this well.
And yet, among you I have learned to take off my shoes and let myself be seen. I am hilarious and funny … and also, to use a term our forebears would have used, occasionally of a “melancholic” temperament. I get tired, and I’m capable of overthinking anything. I’m smart and once in a while even insightful, and I’m also three seconds away from getting lost in the weeds of a theological question.
And this community of All Saints has flipped the logic of my old boss on its head. Her stance was “It’s not our job to love them; it’s our job to tell them God loves them.” All Saints flipped it around and showed me that what I felt in my heart was right all along: “It is, in fact, up to all of us to love one another, and then people will know God loves them.”
It’s hard to do, this love thing. It’s something we do in word and deed far before our emotions catch up. To love the newcomer and welcome them to coffee and to share the journey, to love the person whose way of being is different from yours, to love the person whose personality doesn’t gel with yours, to love the person in pain without rushing to try to fix them or their heartache.
It’s also hard to be loved, too. To sit like Peter and have someone wash your feet to show you love – and I imagine that the act of love stung even worse when Peter denied Christ a short while later. When we show up with our pain and let someone sit with us wordlessly, when we let someone show us kindness, when we make the risk of showing up to a community unsure of what welcome we might find.
Love is the central Christian discipline – it is what makes us disciples of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, God the Son, the Lamb of God.
“Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end. … and he said to them, I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
So we begin our entrance into the sacred mystery of the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. How fitting, and how perfect it is that the entrance begins with love. Amen.
GOOD FRIDAY
What good thing happened on Good Friday? We struggle to name it at times. We aren’t sure. We who sit in the depths of Christian tradition know that something holy happened on the cross, but we lack the language to express it well. We don’t have a neat and tidy theological package to put it in. We know that the Bible uses many different metaphors for what happened on the cross. All of these metaphors and images within the Bible work together – and sometimes sit in uneasy contrast to one another. Just as the cross was not a neat and tidy death, so too is the mystery of the cross not neat and tidy and simple.
Here are some images and metaphors that the New Testament uses to share the power of Jesus’ death on the cross:
Christ ransomed us from the power of death – he put down his life as payment to buy us back from being enslaved to death and sin.
Christ is the Great High Priest who offered himself as a priestly sacrifice – to make us holy and wash us clean.
Christ substituted his life for ours – not to appease and placate a wrathful father, but to suffer the consequences of sin for us and to share with us his inheritance as God the Son.
Christ is the Passover Lamb – his blood marks the doorposts and leads us into the exodus from being enslaved to death and sin, the Passover from death into life.
Christ the Sinless One is judged by the injustice of the world – and on the cross his death renders a judgment of all injustice.
Christ is the wounded head of the body of the faithful – he shares our pain and suffering completely and perfectly in absolute solidarity of love, and he will share the fullness of his resurrection in return.
All of these images are found in the New Testament. On Good Friday, we let the mystery enfold us. It is not a comfortable mystery – it does not enkindle in us nice, warm, pious thoughts. It fills us with uneasy awe and wonder, gratitude and heartbrokenness. It is a solemn day.
This day is solemn because it is a beautiful and holy mystery that Jesus Christ died for us. His death was not meaningless; the Gospels tell us repeatedly that he knew his death was coming and he still actively chose it. He didn’t have the resurrection as a “back-up” plan in case something went wrong – his death was a key part of living out the Gospel itself. He chose his death just as much as he chose his resurrection.
His death was not powerless; something happened on the cross. In the complete humility of accepting our human body, in accepting human mortality and death, Jesus was doing something powerful. His powerlessness in dying manifested the power of God. Human power was manifest in mobs and soldiers and priests and governors and kings, the full oppressive power of human government law and order – and ultimately all that human power fails in comparison to the power of God in the weakness of the cross.
Christ’s death, then, is a sign of God’s powerful life.
Christ’s death does not sugarcoat the reality of the situation we’re in; the powers of death surround us on every side. We see how close death can be when wars and violence erupt overnight and cruelty gets cheered as policy. We see how close death can be when officers who claim to be “law and order” break the law themselves by executing citizens. We see how close death can be when healthcare becomes impossible to get, even if you have done the right thing by getting health insurance. We see how close death can be when financial consequences flood downwards to impact workers and the poor yet all the financial rewards float upward to the surface for the few to reap. And we see how close death can be when we meditate on the uncertainty and shortness of life in our own grief.
The cross keeps us from sugarcoating all this to make it more palatable. The cross is at the heart of Christianity, and it is a cross that bears the suffering body of our Lord Jesus Christ. We can’t pretend that the cross was just an “oopsie-daisy” on the way to the empty tomb; we can’t “Good Vibes Only” our way past the suffering of life and death. That’s spiritual bypassing, that’s avoidance, that’s all flimsy. If we try to skip over the suffering and death on the cross to keep ourselves happy and cheerful, we’ll find that we don’t have a strong enough hope to support us when we see the power of death all around us.
We live in a world where people are being killed by war and hunger, we live in a world where those who have little are being targeted and deprived so that the rich and powerful can have more and more. Christ on the cross, his life fading with his final breaths from a suffering, bloodied body, Christ embraces all those who suffer, all those who are dying, all those who cry out with none to help.
No wonder, then, that Christian nationalism now takes the body of Christ off the cross – they can’t have a savior who wasn’t a winner, after all, and Jesus is too merciful to be a hero – and that same Christian nationalism is willing and eager to crucify others out of the cruelty in their hearts. That form of Christianity wants nothing to do with a crucified savior who pours out his love on the cross – that form of Christianity demands that they insert some form of power and dominance into the cross. It was heresy when Constantine put the cross on weapons of war, and it is heresy now to use that same cross to validate cruelty to those who suffer.
Good Friday rips away triumphalism and cruelty from the Christian heart forever. Our God is a God who is willing to bleed for us, to bleed alongside us, to be rejected and to be abandoned. On Good Friday, we have a hope given to us by a loving Messiah who stretches out his arms of love on the wood of the cross to embrace all of creation.
Good Friday gives us the powerful mystery that is the ground of our Christian hope: Jesus Christ took upon himself the fullness of our humanity, with everything that entails, and he was willing to endure the pain of death, just like us. He was so willing to take on our humanity, that he was willing to be ridiculed, rejected and shamed.
In his death, Jesus Christ gives us hope that no matter what ever happens in this life, no matter if we are loved or hated, celebrated or despised, rejoicing or in pain, we have hope that Jesus Christ bore all of it in himself. He was loved, and he was hated; he was celebrated and he was despised; the crowds that rejoiced gave way to the crowds who demanded he be crucified.
On this solemn day, something powerful happens: this Jesus Christ, God incarnate, love fully divine and love fully human, was killed, and from his blood and death we are set free from the power of sin and death.
Christ the Passover Lamb, Christ the High Priest, Christ the Sinless One, ransoms us from the powers of death and pays the debt of Adam’s sin.
We tremble: What kind of love is this?
We mourn: Our beloved Messiah and teacher is dead.
We sit in awe: God accepted cruel death at human hands and offers mercy and healing in return.
This is the mystery of the cross. This is Good Friday. Amen.
EASTER DAY
Alleluia, Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!
It all started with Mary Magdalene. She had gone to the tomb, and she noticed the stone had been rolled away. Something had happened – and she decided she needed to tell someone. She ran back to the other disciples. She wasn’t doing this alone. Jesus’ body wasn’t in the tomb. She tells Peter and the Beloved Disciple what she had seen. They all race back. Peter and the Beloved Disciple get there, take a look, and leave to go back home.
Maybe Peter and the Beloved Disciple had seen enough – maybe they had some inklings that something Jesus had said previously about being raised on the third day was true, maybe they were too shocked by the events of the crucifixion to give much thought. But they didn’t stick around.
Mary Magdalene, on the other hand, sticks around. She’s crying. She looks into the tomb and sees angels.
For many of us, that would be the highlight of the story. Seeing angels would be the big story we’d be rushing back to share. We’d rush back to tell people of the peace we felt, maybe, or try to find words to describe what we witnessed. Maybe we’d be expecting to hear a message to go back home and share, some heavenly wisdom or prophecy.
Oddly enough, the angels are not the highlight of the story.
The angels present do not command the attention of Mary Magdalene. They actually turn our attention in the story right back on to her: “Why are you crying?” they ask. If we were dazzled or surprised by the angels appearing in the story, the angels are bringing our attention back to Mary Magdalene. If we got distracted, the angels are focusing us on what matters most.
Mary Magdalene is weeping, looking for the body of her beloved Jesus. She is heartbroken. She does not rest until she meets Jesus, and she is rewarded for her persistence with being the first to see the Risen Lord Jesus. Mary Magdalene will not rest until she can show her love to Jesus.
To paraphrase a line from St Evelyn Underhill, “Jesus is the interesting thing about Christianity.” Jesus the baby born in Bethlehem; Jesus the prophet, healer and teacher; Jesus crucified outside Jerusalem; Jesus the Risen Lord. Jesus is the center of Christianity, and Jesus gives life to us Christians.
But we need to remember Jesus the person, the resurrected body, the one who was crucified and risen – not an idea about Jesus.
In our spiritual lives, it can be so easy to be like Peter and the Beloved Disciple – we can encounter something spiritual, and then go home. The spiritual life maybe becomes a fact: yes, I believe such-and-such, but it doesn’t make a difference in my daily life. We see that when a lot of people who like to talk about Jesus sure don’t act like Jesus taught. Jesus feeds the hungry and heals the sick and calls us to love God and our neighbor – those seem like non-negotiable and uncontroversial behaviors required of Christians, but here we are.
But Jesus is not a fact or an idea. Jesus is a person. We can’t just go home like Peter. Jesus is not an idea that we can say, “Yes, I believe in Jesus” and then go right back to what we were doing. Just as Jesus said throughout his life, he says to us now: “Follow me.” Follow a person, not an idea of a person.
In our spiritual lives, it can also be easy to be overcome by seeing the angels. We get swept up in awe and emotion. For a moment we can feel our hearts expand as huge as creation and we are overcome with joy. But, human beings and human brains do not last long in that state. We shrink back on down to regular human size, and all that awe and wonder dissipate as our eyes adjust back to the here-and-now. And then we ask ourselves why we don’t feel the way we once did, why the excitement faded. We might think something went wrong.
But Jesus is not an emotion, a rush of feelings of awe. Jesus is a person. Anyone who has spent any length of time around any other human being will know that love is not a warm feeling all the time. Sometimes love is quieter – a small thing lovingly done. Sometimes it’s hard work – loving someone even when they’ve frayed the last nerve on a bad day. Loving a person is an action word.
And so the angels help us re-focus away from awe and wonder. The angels will not let our eyes fixate on them; the angels always point away from themselves, to point to God and to point at what God is doing in our very midst.
Mary Magdalene is our exemplar today of how to be a Christian.
One – always look to Jesus. Mary Magdalene was on the lookout for Jesus and would stop at nothing less. So we should take a page from her book and look for Jesus all the time, too. Encounter Jesus in the readings of the Gospels. See the work of Jesus in the world around us. See Jesus in our strangers, friends… even our enemies! Taste and see the goodness of Jesus in the sacrament of communion. In the Gospels, in the wonders of creation, in our neighbors, in communion, Jesus is always present, if we would just keep our eyes looking for him.
Two – Don’t give up. Mary Magdalene did not give up – not with the empty tomb, not when Peter and the Beloved Disciple went home, and she didn’t stop when angels showed up. She wanted Jesus. She is our model for persistence. Sometimes it feels like our faith is just an idea of faith without much life in it. Sometimes it feels like our faith is an emotion, and some days it’s easy and other days it’s a challenge. But we don’t give up. It’s not just that we need Jesus – it’s that the world needs the hope and love that Jesus offers us.
And here’s point number three – this is good news that we simply have to share. Mary Magdalene went to get Peter and the Beloved Disciple, and she went back with the news of the encounter with the Risen Lord. Our spiritual life is not a private treasure but something we are called to share. The world is heartbroken and confused. People mistake money for the most important thing, and people clamor for power and dominance. Those are things Jesus told us multiple times in the Gospel to be aware of – We can’t serve God and money, and the greatest must be a servant to others (if you don’t believe me, then feel free to read the Gospels for yourself!) The world needs to hear about Jesus, and the world needs to see that those who love Jesus really, really believe in Jesus.
Not “Believe in Jesus” as in can say all the right things about Jesus, nor do I mean “Believe in Jesus” like having all the warm feelings or ecstatic joy about Jesus all the time. I mean “Believe in Jesus” – as in, believe that Jesus really meant what he said, and that Jesus really was who he was, and that Jesus invites us to follow him and love him with all our hearts and minds, and that Jesus also asks us to love our neighbor just as much as he loves them.
Because Mary Magdalene wasn’t interested in nice, correct ideas about Jesus. Mary Magdalene wasn’t going to stop searching for Jesus even when Peter and the Beloved Disciple went home. Mary Magdalene wasn’t overawed by angels. She wanted Jesus the person, Jesus who taught her the Gospel, the Good News. She wanted Jesus the Messiah. She wanted to find Jesus who loved her so she could show him love in return. Jesus was worth everything to Mary Magdalene.
And we who want to follow Mary Magdalene in her quest for Jesus, we should also remember what he asked of her: that she not cling to him in one way, but to go back to the other disciples again and share the good news of the resurrection. While we must seek Jesus wholeheartedly, being a Christian isn’t a solo adventure, something we do on our own. We have to share it with one another and share it with the world. And when we go to share it, we will see the presence of Christ in many places we hadn’t expected before.
So on this blessed Easter:
One – Always look to Jesus.
Two – Don’t give up.
Three – The good news of Jesus is something we get to share. Alleluia, Christ is risen!