In the Gospel today we hear about Jesus’ Passion, which includes the Last Supper, his evening with his disciples in the garden, Judas’ betrayal of Jesus, and his arrest, trial, and crucifixion. It is a narrative that is full of suffering and pain and sorrow. As we look at the cross, we may notice that there is no body on it; but today, we might imagine a different cross, on which the tortured body of God hangs, either dead or laboring to breath and slowly suffocating. And we call that day, Good Friday.
As I’ve said, it is a narrative that is full of suffering, and it’s not just Jesus’ suffering. We have the suffering of the disciples, who lose their teacher in the garden; we have the suffering of Judas, as he realizes the depth of his betrayal and, in the Gospel of Matthew, commits suicide; we have the suffering of Peter, when he realizes he’s renounced Christ three times; we have, probably most poignantly, the suffering of Mary, Jesus’ mother, who does not speak in the Passion narrative, but we can hear her wailing and sobbing throughout, nonetheless. And still we call it Good Friday. That tension, that difference between our everyday notion of what is “good” and the Passion narrative illuminates the role of suffering in Jesus’ life, his companions’ lives, and our lives.

Christ’s Passion, this season of Lent, if we are to envision ourselves of followers of Christ, raises difficult questions on the nature of suffering and death that does not allow us to, with a broad stroke, waive away this narrative and fast-forward directly on to the resurrection. The resurrection is a miracle, not a magic trick. We as Christians are often pictured as smiling happy people holding hands, always bubbling up with joy and having a silver-lining attitude, sometimes with a profoundly naïve or simple-minded outlook on life. We should be very wary of that kind of superficial caricature, which is often a form of mockery. We should notice the profound and significant role suffering and death play within the Gospel narrative, the whole Bible itself, and how we deal with it in our lives.

One way, is an explanation I heard during a discussion between a few academics that is very simple, quite popular. “When I see suffering” one academic said, “I remind myself that everything is meaningless”. What this academic means was not that only suffering was meaningless, but rather that our whole existence is meaningless, that principles such as goodness or justice, our thoughts, our needs and wants, are merely subjective illusions. Indeed, even truth itself becomes meaningless, making Pilates question “What is truth?” particularly apt. Now, let us, for a moment be generous to this argument, understanding that if “everything is meaningless”, then the very statement “everything is meaningless”  is meaningless, and is therefore self-defeating; and allow some room for it in our thoughts. It is not a new argument; Bertrand Russel, understanding the laws of thermodynamics predicting the inevitable heat death of the universe, wrote “all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the débris of a universe in ruins”. Lady MacBeth perhaps said it most poetically “Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more. It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury /Signifying nothing.” Now, imagine it in practice, in daily living, as a mode of existence. How can we live like this? All the big questions of life could be answered with an indifferent shrug and a ”So what?” Does it alleviate suffering? Does it soothe a grieving person to tell them, that their suffering or the suffering of a loved one is meaningless? No, it does not; perhaps because the one thing worse than suffering is meaningless suffering.
Another way to deal with suffering, quite common in our affluent society, is to salve suffering with pleasures; to cover it over and ignore it. Buying that new thing, eating an expensive meal, or going on a nice vacation may seem like a quick fix to ease one’s suffering, but the new thing becomes old quickly, the food loses its taste, and travel reminds you of what is awaiting you at home. In another way, we make fun of suffering; attempting to turn tragedy into comedy. Tristram Shandy, an 18th century novel, written by an Anglican priest no less, is a fictitious autobiographical account of a rather sad invalid named Tristram Shandy, whose life is altogether, a Shaggy Dog joke, that is a joke that has no point. While the book is quite humorous, and I am sure you might laugh often if you read it, the last page of the book, and to be inferred, the ending of the character’s life is a black page, a void, a nothingness. Quite a punchline.

Lest we think that such reasoning is confined to secular discussion or literature, in the Book of Ecclesiastes, the wise Teacher states “Everything is meaningless” (NIV). The Teacher lists all conventional goods: laughter, wisdom, money, power, and judges them all as meaningless. And yet, and yet, there is something there, there is a meaning, at least, we can pick up from the Teacher that helps us answer the original question of how we deal with suffering and death, “Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better”.

It may be that suffering and sorrow and death, all those “nasty” things that are weaved into our lives, are actually something necessary and meaningful. It seems very odd to say this, something seems wrong about it, something like saying “Good Friday” to commemorate the torture and death of Jesus. But this is actually what Viktor Frankl states in his book Man’s Search for Meaning. He states that “If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.” Dr. Frankl was a Jewish man, doctor of psychology, who was imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps during WWII. During which time, 3 years, he endured immense suffering (torture, disease, starvation) and when released from these camps, found all his family dead. While he was in the concentration camp, stripped of his freedom though, he theorized that man creates meaning in his/her life by 1) Work and creation 2) Through love and relationship or experience and lastly, 3) the inner-decision to choose one’s response based on personal and objective principles in the face of suffering. And here, perhaps we have a bit of, the beginning of an answer to our question. We find that that last freedom, the only freedom that cannot be taken away from a person, is the ability to choose, in any give set of circumstances, one’s attitude and response.

And what choices do we see in the Passion of Jesus, when he freedom is limited to only choose his attitude and response? We see a person, very much like us, who completely understands the meaning of his life, and what he wants his life to mean in the future. It is both a uniquely personal and subjective and, yet, expression of objective principles of love, mercy, and faith. We see Jesus, tortured and crucified, offering mercy to a criminal, and arranging the care of his mother. And we see Jesus giving up his Spirit to God and offering himself as a ransom for those who betrayed him, those that fled him, those that killed him.

Perhaps it is that God’s love, Jesus’s love, the absolute best of love, the highest love, can only be expressed through suffering. Perhaps our collective suffering binds us, connects us more closely than all the joys and triumphs we experience. Perhaps suffering is carrying the burden of another; think of Frodo from the Lord of the Rings, carrying that ring to the mountain. Perhaps suffering is a pathway to redemption; think of Ebenezer Scrooge moved by compassion for Tiny Tim and the assuredness of his own death and changes himself for the better. Perhaps suffering strips us of our false selves to reveal what we all are, human souls, yearning to be loved and to love. Perhaps suffering is an opening to enlightenment or transformation. And yes, suffering and death are the portal to our resurrection.
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Perhaps, when we find the meaning, our meaning of our lives, that co-creation between God and ourselves which is so uniquely ours, within the greater meaning of loving and knowing ourselves, loving and knowing others and loving and knowing God; and yes, finding the meaning of our suffering, it ceases to be just suffering, perhaps it becomes a loving sacrifice. And perhaps that is why we call it Good Friday.

There are three holy nights in the Christian faith: Christmas Eve, Easter Vigil, and tonight, Maundy Thursday.
 
Christmas Eve is rich with awe and wonder as we recall the unfathomable love of God for we humans, as God becomes enfleshed in Jesus. As we sing in “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” “veiled in flesh the Godhead see; hail th'incarnate Deity.”
 
The Easter Vigil sees us sitting in twinkling candlelight as we re-call God’s mighty acts of salvation in human history, all leading to that ultimate act of salvation as the stone sealing the tomb explodes open, the Risen Lord bursting forth in new life. Again, we witness the unfathomable love of God as Jesus passes over from death into life, trampling death down once and for all. Hymnody again captures the essence of this truth, “Love’s redeeming work is done, fought the fight, the battle won. Death in vain forbids him rise; Christ has opened paradise.[1]
 
Both evenings proclaim the abundant, unlimited richness of God’s love for us. To paraphrase St. Athanasius, the Incarnation - the Word becoming flesh - occurred so we might become “partakers of the divine nature.”  The Resurrection occurred so that we might be freed from the bonds of death and live without fear. “Christ Jesus lay in death’s strong bands for our offenses given; but now at God’s right hand he stands and brings us life from heaven.[2]”
And then there’s tonight, Maundy Thursday, when all that unfathomable love expressed in both the Incarnation and the Resurrection is captured in three intimate acts of love. 
But Maundy Thursday is significantly different from Christmas Eve and the Vigil, because the Incarnation and Resurrection are acts of love given to humanity by the Deity of God. Tonight, we are given three things that witness to God’s unfathomable love for us by the human Jesus.
 
The first of those three gifts Jesus gives us is the Mandatum Novum, the new commandant, after which this day is named. Jesus said to his disciples, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” On the night before he dies, Jesus sums up his whole ministry in this new commandment. Do unto others as I have done to you.  Love wildly and radically. Love the least of these. The unlovable. The marginalized. The despised. Those who hate you. Even all those who defy or deny the love I have brought to the world.  Do not respond to hatred with hatred. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Mt. 5:44) Give to all the unfathomable love of God that I have given you.
 
The second gift is given through the foot-washing. This was a humiliating act in the culture of first century Palestine; an act that only a servant would have performed.  At the Last Supper this role is assumed by Jesus, in a supreme act of humility, as he washes his disciple’s feet. In Paul’s letter to the Philippians he writes, that [Jesus] “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death- even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2: 6-8)
In washing the disciple’s feet Jesus did what none of them would ever have thought of doing.  Even as fishermen, farmers, and tax collectors, people pretty much at the bottom of the totem pole in that society, such an act would have been considered humiliating .  Yet Jesus tells them, “Surely if I do this, you ought to be prepared to do it. I am giving you an example of how to behave towards each other.”  Our status in life, our sense of entitlement, our wealth, our university degrees, our ordination status, all of that are worth nothing in God’s Reign.   If God incarnate can kneel before us in humble service in a display of God’s unfathomable love for us, then surely, we can humble ourselves and do so as well for each other.
And for the record: the foot-washing becomes symbolic of how we should be humble in all our encounters with each other.  It’s not just this one act, on this one night of the year.  While the foot-washing is not an official sacrament, it is truly a sacramental act; an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.  That grace is intended to transform us in all of life, each and every day, making us witnesses of God’s unfathomable love in all we do and say.
In a commentary I read the writer called the foot-washing act by Jesus, The Royalty of Service. I love that imagery!  When we engage in acts of humility toward others we are engaged in the royal service of God’s Kingdom. 
 
The third gift Jesus gives us this night is the Eucharist; the gift of the bread and wine, his body and blood.  Each time we celebrate this sacred meal we do so, as he commanded us, in remembrance of him.  Each time we partake of the Eucharist we are reminded of the sacrifice of Jesus’ life on the Cross, as well as his Resurrection from the grave, both gifts of God’s unfathomable love for us.  But this holy meal is more than an act evoking a memory, it is the food that gives us true life.  As Jesus told the disciples, ““I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (Jn. 6:35)
The Eucharist transforms us. To paraphrase the first letter of John, when we eat the bread and drink the cup, Jesus abides in us and we in him.  Being so intimately interconnected with Jesus, the Eucharist is the food for our journeys which sustains us as we strive to follow Him.
 
This is a holy night, indeed. God’s unfathomable love for us is richly given in three sacred gifts.  May Christ’s Body and Blood nourish us so we may live lives of humble service, loving one another as we have been profoundly loved.
Amen.
 
[1] Hymnal ’82 # 188 “Love’s redeeming work is done.”

[2] Hymnal ’82 # 185. “Christ Jesus lay in death’s strong bands.”

Maundy Thursday Sermon Year C
“God’s Unfathomable Love”
April 14, 2022
The Rev. Peter Faass, Rector
Christ Church, Shaker Heights
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
 
 
There are three holy nights in the Christian faith: Christmas Eve, Easter Vigil, and tonight, Maundy Thursday.
 
Christmas Eve is rich with awe and wonder as we recall the unfathomable love of God for we humans, as God becomes enfleshed in Jesus. As we sing in “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” “veiled in flesh the Godhead see; hail th'incarnate Deity.”
 
The Easter Vigil sees us sitting in twinkling candlelight as we re-call God’s mighty acts of salvation in human history, all leading to that ultimate act of salvation as the stone sealing the tomb explodes open, the Risen Lord bursting forth in new life. Again, we witness the unfathomable love of God as Jesus passes over from death into life, trampling death down once and for all. Hymnody again captures the essence of this truth, “Love’s redeeming work is done, fought the fight, the battle won. Death in vain forbids him rise; Christ has opened paradise.
 
Both evenings proclaim the abundant, unlimited richness of God’s love for us. To paraphrase St. Athanasius, the Incarnation - the Word becoming flesh - occurred so we might become “partakers of the divine nature.”  The Resurrection occurred so that we might be freed from the bonds of death and live without fear. “Christ Jesus lay in death’s strong bands for our offenses given; but now at God’s right hand he stands and brings us life from heaven.”
And then there’s tonight, Maundy Thursday, when all that unfathomable love expressed in both the Incarnation and the Resurrection is captured in three intimate acts of love. 
But Maundy Thursday is significantly different from Christmas Eve and the Vigil, because the Incarnation and Resurrection are acts of love given to humanity by the Deity of God. Tonight, we are given three things that witness to God’s unfathomable love for us by the human Jesus.
 
The first of those three gifts Jesus gives us is the Mandatum Novum, the new commandant, after which this day is named. Jesus said to his disciples, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” On the night before he dies, Jesus sums up his whole ministry in this new commandment. Do unto others as I have done to you.  Love wildly and radically. Love the least of these. The unlovable. The marginalized. The despised. Those who hate you. Even all those who defy or deny the love I have brought to the world.  Do not respond to hatred with hatred. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Mt. 5:44) Give to all the unfathomable love of God that I have given you.
 
The second gift is given through the foot-washing. This was a humiliating act in the culture of first century Palestine; an act that only a servant would have performed.  At the Last Supper this role is assumed by Jesus, in a supreme act of humility, as he washes his disciple’s feet. In Paul’s letter to the Philippians he writes, that [Jesus] “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death- even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2: 6-8)
In washing the disciple’s feet Jesus did what none of them would ever have thought of doing.  Even as fishermen, farmers, and tax collectors, people pretty much at the bottom of the totem pole in that society, such an act would have been considered humiliating .  Yet Jesus tells them, “Surely if I do this, you ought to be prepared to do it. I am giving you an example of how to behave towards each other.”  Our status in life, our sense of entitlement, our wealth, our university degrees, our ordination status, all of that are worth nothing in God’s Reign.   If God incarnate can kneel before us in humble service in a display of God’s unfathomable love for us, then surely, we can humble ourselves and do so as well for each other.
And for the record: the foot-washing becomes symbolic of how we should be humble in all our encounters with each other.  It’s not just this one act, on this one night of the year.  While the foot-washing is not an official sacrament, it is truly a sacramental act; an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.  That grace is intended to transform us in all of life, each and every day, making us witnesses of God’s unfathomable love in all we do and say.
In a commentary I read the writer called the foot-washing act by Jesus, The Royalty of Service. I love that imagery!  When we engage in acts of humility toward others we are engaged in the royal service of God’s Kingdom. 
 
The third gift Jesus gives us this night is the Eucharist; the gift of the bread and wine, his body and blood.  Each time we celebrate this sacred meal we do so, as he commanded us, in remembrance of him.  Each time we partake of the Eucharist we are reminded of the sacrifice of Jesus’ life on the Cross, as well as his Resurrection from the grave, both gifts of God’s unfathomable love for us.  But this holy meal is more than an act evoking a memory, it is the food that gives us true life.  As Jesus told the disciples, ““I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (Jn. 6:35)
The Eucharist transforms us. To paraphrase the first letter of John, when we eat the bread and drink the cup, Jesus abides in us and we in him.  Being so intimately interconnected with Jesus, the Eucharist is the food for our journeys which sustains us as we strive to follow Him.
 
This is a holy night, indeed. God’s unfathomable love for us is richly given in three sacred gifts.  May Christ’s Body and Blood nourish us so we may live lives of humble service, loving one another as we have been profoundly loved.
Amen.

The Rev. Peter Faass, Rector
Christ Church, Shaker Heights
John 12:1-8
 
Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought [the nard] so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."
It’s interesting the amount of attention this particular verse about the poor always gets from people, evoking mostly adverse responses.  I say this because the other verses really should draw our attention considering how provocative – even racy – this Gospel story is.   Mary anointing Jesus’ feet with this outrageously expensive nard and then wiping them with her hair is scandalous!  So, it’s interesting to see people zeroing in on the phrase about the poor and not the racy stuff.   One would think that it is Mary’s actions, which are fraught with suggestive imagery, especially in the context of the culture of first century Palestine, would draw attention, even outrage. After-all she is a woman touching a man’s feet in a culture that would have interpreted such an action to be those of a woman of ill repute.  And Mary’s hair is down, uncovered in front of a group of men, none of whom is a relative or her husband, another serious cultural taboo.   Add to that her taking this exotic perfume worth nearly a year’s salary for a common day laborer, and then using  it all up to anoint Jesus, an action seen as one of significant wastefulness, well, at least by Judas!  As I said, this is a shocking, suggestive Gospel passage.
But this racy material gets relegated to a secondary status. It is Jesus’ comment about always having the poor with us - offered as a reprimand to Judas when he criticized what he saw as Mary’s wastefulness - that catches people’s attention and even offends them. 
What drives this is its seeming contrariness of who we believe Jesus to be.  We think, “Jesus should be on the same page as Judas. He certainly would not tolerate such wastefulness when there is so much poverty and suffering that needs to be addressed.  Jesus would never sublimate the poor to a secondary status for his own benefit.  Jesus wouldn’t utter such a callous comment about people he clearly has a preference for in everything he says and does in his ministry.”
But there you have it, right there in the text. It does seem like he does all of those things. And if that’s true how do we account for it?  How do we not lose the Jesus of our faith?  How do we reconcile the Jesus who says such a thing about the poor in the midst of such extravagant waste?
I understand people’s objections.  This passage is worthy of some study and explanation, not the least because it has been so misinterpreted, and even abused by some folks. 
Think about it.  On first glance it appears that Jesus is giving his blessing to using money extravagantly in a wasteful manner, to the exclusion of taking care of the poor.  This passage has frequently been used to justify a defeatist attitude toward efforts – both secular and religious – to ease the plight of the poor.  This argument believes that this scripture tells us that even Jesus sees such programs as a waste of time and money. “See! You’ll always have the poor with you, regardless of what you try to do to improve their situation.  It’s hopeless. If this is Jesus’ attitude toward the poor, then why should we be funding Medicaid, Head Start, the SNAP program, and subsidized housing? After all you’ll always have the poor with you, regardless of what you do. Better to use that money in other ways. Better to look after your own needs; be extravagant with yourself, get those things you want. Better to use the money by giving tax breaks to the richest 1% in our society; pour the nard of abundant and aromatic tax cuts on their feet. Then we’ll incentivize a trickle-down economy and we’ll all benefit.”
If you think what I just said is harsh and a bit sarcastic, it’s meant to be. And I’m fine with that because the reality is Jesus could be harsh when people took God’s words, which are intended to build up God’s Reign, and twisted those words to their own devices.   Which is precisely what is taking place when this passage is used to justify not funding, not contributing, not volunteering to help the neediest among us. For those who doubt the veracity of this claim, please reference Jesus’ parable about the goats and the sheep in Matthew 25; that’s the plumb line by which we measure Jesus’ desires for our behaviors.
So, is Jesus disparaging the poor when he tells Judas to leave Mary alone, not fret about this extravagant act, because, well, “you always have the poor with you?”  Is he telling us to forget them?  Is he saying it’s okay to just tend to our own needs?  No! He is saying just the opposite.  Mary’s actions inform us just how costly discipleship is: just how sacrificial following Jesus will be for us, if we do it faithfully.
Ask yourself this question.  Where did Mary acquire the money to purchase the nard?  Did she use money from her dowry, thereby jeopardizing her changes at a good marriage, or a marriage at all? Certainly, buying the nard would have diminished her dowry, and her behavior in anointing Jesus’ feet certainly diminished her reputation.  It actually put it in great jeopardy.  Her seemingly inappropriate behavior would have deterred an eligible man to take her as a wife, even if she had a substantial dowry.
 What her actions are intended to do is have us see and understand that in all she did, Mary was sacrificing her own security, her own future, her reputation and her dignity so that she could be a witness of what faithful disciple to Jesus looks like.  Mary’s action informs us that the cost of disciple can be expensive.
In her actions Mary risked impoverishing herself both financially and reputationally, so that she could honor the One who taught her how to care for the least of these by his teachings and his example. Can we see in her actions that she loved Jesus because he was the One who taught her that she mattered, that she had value as a person, despite how the rest of society marginalized her as a woman.
Frankly, I think Mary learned her lessons about God’s Reign well, when she was taught sitting at Jesus’ feet.  I think that is why she did what she did: in gratefulness to Jesus for recognizing her self-worth. For giving her dignity. Mary’s witness is an object lesson that caring for the least of those among us changes everything; for them and for us.  
In this moment of sacrificial discipleship as Mary anointed Jesus so extravagantly, intimately and at great cost to her, Mary teaches us a lesson of critical importance for our own faith lives.  It is a testimony of love. Jesus’ accepting and defending her sacrificial gift invites us to witness the sacrificial gift he is about to make of his own life on the Cross.  It is through his passion and death that Jesus testifies to God’s abundant love for the world. It is through Mary’s witness that we see abundant love for God’s ways, here and now. Hers is an object lesson showing us that we can sacrifice all we have to live into God’s ways as well.  It’s a witness to authentic discipleship.
I think that’s the pearl of great value hidden in the field of this story.   When we understand the outpouring of love Mary offered to Jesus in her sacrifice, and then witness the love Jesus offers the world in his sacrifice, we are empowered and encouraged to a life of sacrifice as well, so that we may care for the poor all around us, not ignore them.
The next time Jesus’ words and behavior throw a curve ball at you, remember this: Jesus is always looking to startle us, challenge our assumptions, get our attention, prod and nudge us forward, even if it means shocking us into having us doubt his reputation.
Frankly, you’ve got to watch out for this Jesus guy. He won’t stop trying to get us to build up God’s Reign. He’ll sacrifice everything – including his life - to call us to discipleship.       
Amen.