Maundy Madness

As I write this, Marquette is in the second half of a close game with Kentucky in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Though I have not had much time to follow basketball in the last seven years since leaving Iowa State, I do have an affinity for this game as it pits my current school against my former school. (Asbury Seminary did not have a basketball team so as far as sports go, I adopted the University of Kentucky as my collegiate team during those years.) But alas I am not watching the game as I am reading furiously to try to get ahead for the final push of the semester, "the Paper Madness" as I like to call it.

What is more unfortunate is that I will likely not pause too long to remember the significance of this day. For it is not just the beginning of March Madness, as most Americans (and sadly most Christians) will only take note of today, but it is Maundy Thursday, the day in which our Lord celebrated the last supper with his disciples, the day in which he donned the towel of a servant to wash the feet of his disciples. The Pope, in his Maundy Thursday address from Rome, likened the event to the early Christological hymn preserved in Philippians 2:

"He had equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death - and the worst kind of death at that: a crucifixion." -Philippians 2:6-8

If the Pope is right, and I think that he is (despite the fact that he was not speaking ex cathedra) then the footwashing episode is a microcosm of the entirety of Jesus' life. Even to the point that some of those whom he serves want to reject the cleansing. To paraphrase the early Patristic dictum with this understanding: "He became a servant, that we might be the one who is served."

This insight of the Pope's mirrors that of some of the early reflections on the Eucharistic mystery. Writers such as Cyprian of Carthage connected the actions Jesus took at the last supper in giving the bread and wine with the actions he took on Golgotha in giving his body and blood. It is all one mysterious act, through which we are reconciled to God. Our feet are now clean to walk where God walks. We could not clean them ourselves, as Peter's refusal was ultimately suggesting (despite the pious front), but we needed the Holy God to do it. This, when you think about it, truly deserves the appellation madness. And yet it is this madness - or foolishness as the Apostle Paul writes - that is our salvation.

Lenten Reminder

"For men see Him just so far as they die to this world, and so far as they live to it they see Him not."

-St. Augustine

The Wisdom of Amy Winehouse

The following sermon was written and preached by J.D. Walt, the dean of the chapel at Asbury Theological Seminary and a good friend of mine. J.D. married Julie and me and spoke some of the most meaningful words to us that we frequently recall. He has the perfect style of taking the classic old message and putting it into words and images that connect with today's generation. In my opinion, the church needs more of this kind of preaching. The sermon is a bit lengthy but well worth the read. May it help us all to keep a holy Lent.


Read it here.

Holy Saturday

Today is Holy Saturday; our Lord is in the tomb. The church calls this day the Blessed Sabbath. The title implicitly connects Holy Saturday to the seventh day of creation, the day on which God the Creator rested. Christ is in the grave, in a sense, resting from His work.

But this connection points to an even greater truth that Easter Sunday is the first day of New Creation. When Jesus raises from the dead, the beginning of the restoration of the world has begun. The Gospel of John portrays this through thick symbolism. When the women who come to the tomb on Sunday morning discover that Jesus is not there, they move quickly to a garden. And when the risen Jesus first appears, they mistake him for a gardener. The irony, of course, is that God has been about the business of planting gardens since the beginning.

But of all the days we commemorate in Holy Week, this is the least acknowledged. Often, we celebrate Good Friday and then move quickly to Easter. I think the reason for this is that our modern culture has little appreciation of the significance and meaning of suffering. We are a culture which places importance on comfort and success. A bit of this mindset has crept into the church. Thus, we want to move as quickly as possible to Easter morning, for this, after all, is the success! This is the day that death is conquered. But Holy Saturday reminds us that there was no conquering of death without first being conformed to death. For Christ to raise on Sunday morning, he first had to die. Holy Saturday confirms that Christ indeed conformed to our human nature and he conformed to it even to death.

Let us remember today that the way to resurrection and redemption had to pass first through the grave.

Good Friday

Today is Good Friday, the day when they crucified our Lord. The designation "good" is peculiar to the English language. In the Roman Missal it is designated Feria VI in Parasceve which means literally "Feast of the Preparation." In the Greek liturgy, it is called "the Holy and Great Friday." In the Romance languages, it is called "Holy Friday." And in German, it is called "Sorrowful Friday."

The collective whole of these names displays the ambivalence with which we approach this day. On the one hand, it is a horrible day, a day of mourning, for humanity committed its greatest atrocity by brutally killing God's only Son, a man who came in peace, a man whose heart was so full of love that he wept when he saw the state of the world, as personified in Jerusalem, a man who left the heights of heaven to commune with the dregs of earth. We were the object of his love, we were the reason for his tears, we were the dregs. And we killed him.

But on the other hand, this is a wonderful day, a holy and great day of rejoicing, for the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world is sacrificed, thus atoning once and for all for our sinful humanity. Jesus, who on Christmas is conformed to our humanity, today conforms to all of us, even to our sin and even to our death. And in being conformed to our death, he sanctifies even it, so that our deaths are no longer meaningless and no longer judgment, but rather passage into his presence - that is if we participate in his death through baptism.

Perhaps the English title of this day most appropriately captures its sentiment: "Good." It shows a quiet respect for this day, it shows us that even in the great celebration of sin abolished, there is mourning that it was our sin which placed him there.

I leave you with a few quotes that capture the significance of this day better than I could ever hope to:

"Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried; yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed." -Isaiah

"For no one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for a good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." -Paul

"When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died, my richest gain I count but loss, and pour contempt on all my pride. See, from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down. Did e'er such love and sorrow meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown?" -Isaac Watts

"The task of the heart is self-preservation, holding together what is its own. The pierced heart of Jesus has . . . truly overturned this definition. This heart is not concerned with self-preservation but with self-surrender. It saves the world by opening itself. The collapse of the opened Heart is the content of the Easter mystery. The Hearts saves, indeed, but it saves by giving itself away." -Pope Benedict XVI

"It is finished." -Jesus the Christ

Maundy Thursday

Today is the Feast of Maundy Thursday, also called Holy Thursday, which commemorates the night in which Jesus instituted the Eucharist with his disciples. It was in the midst of their celebration of the salvific moment in Israel's history where the blood of the lamb above their doorways allowed the Angel of Death to pass over them, the final plague which ultimately led to their Exodus. In the midst of the celebration, Jesus stood up and performed that mysterious and holy action:

"This is my body, given for you."

"This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you."

Blood is salvific in the course of Israel's history. It is shed each time God makes a covenant with his people. It is the means by which the lamb passed over. And in less than 24 hours after that last supper, Jesus' blood would be shed, establishing a new covenant with his people. A covenant which is written on their hearts. A covenant which abolishes sin and death once and for all. And the church has been eating his body and drinking his blood ever since; it is the oldest and most cherished sacrament of the church.

The account of the institution of the Eucharist occurs in three of the four Gospels. But the interesting thing is that the term by which we remember this night comes not from any of these Gospels, but from John: "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." The Latin phrase for new command is "mandatum novum" the origin of Maundy.

In place of the Eucharist in John (which there is discussed in ch 6), Jesus dons a towel and washes the feet of his disciples. This is the embodiment of his new command, to love one another. Jesus loved us so much to the point that he died for us. The reality is that in everyday life, we will not get the chance to love our friends this much. But here Jesus shows the way to love one another - by serving one another. By caring more for others than ourselves.

On this Maundy Thursday, let us remember the Eucharist which commemorates the new covenant by which we are brought into communion with God, and let us remember the new command that Christ gave us, to love others as He loved us. May he give us the strength and the courage to do so.

Ashes to Ashes . . .

For myself and the hundred or so other worshippers around me, today's noon hour was one dedicated to contrition and repentance as we were led through the corporate prayers of the Ash Wednesday liturgy. After the communal prayers, each of us walked to the front and a cross of ash was marked on our forehead as the following words were spoken over us:

"Remember that from the ashes you came and to the ashes you will return."

The symbolism in this ancient Christian tradition is thick. The cross on the forehead comes from the Hebrew tradition of binding the law on the forehead prescribed in Deuteronomy. To them, this tradition symbolized the law consuming and controlling their minds. To us, the cross consumes and controls our minds - we think, we see, and we live cruciform. The ashes symbolize the dust of the earth from which we were made, and we realize through them that without the breath of God we would not have physical life and without the Spirit of God, we would not have eternal life (the word for Spirit in both Hebrew and Greek can also mean breath and wind).

Ash Wednesday is not a joyous celebration as many of our other feast days are. It is a day for remembering the abyss from where the Lord has taken you, of remembering and confessing your many sins, that they may be covered, and of the beginning of fasting to commemorate and to be conformed to the sacrifice of our Lord.

After service, I went back into the world conscious that the cross of ash on my forehead was visible to all. I made certain that I smiled a little bigger at people, I held the door open for more people, I was more patient with a slow library worker. All this because I knew that I would be identified with that cross on my forehead. I wonder why I am not always conscious of this identity? I wonder what the world would be like if all of us who identify ourselves with the cross lived as though there were always one of ashes on our foreheads.