A sermon for Maundy Thursday (a.k.a. Holy Thursday)

 

Photo: Feet of the Campesino (Oaxaca, Mexico) by Ken Light.
**************
Here's an old thang. (Also found here.)

This sermon is from seven years ago.

I had preached a slightly different version of it in Berkeley two years before. (You can make foot fetish jokes with a Berkeley congregation but not with a Greensboro one ;-). Not sure yet about Boston, where I have not yet begun preaching. Or begun again, since I preached in this city during the 1980s and the first part of the 1990s.)

Maundy Thursday

St. Mary’s House (Episcopal/Anglican), Greensboro

April 13, 2006

Exodus 12:1-14a
1 Corinthians 11:23-26 (27-32)
Psalm 78:14-20, 23-25
John 13:1-15

In the name of the One
who longs for our friendship,
and of Christ Jesus,
who calls us friends,
and of their Spirit,
who makes holy friendship possible,
Amen.

Only in the Gospel of John
is the footwashing the focus of the Last Supper story.

In the other three gospels, Mark, Matthew, and Luke,
it is the sharing of bread and wine
as Jesus the Christ’s own life
that is at the center of the meal.

This evening we celebrate both:
with our bodies and hearts and minds,
with food and drink,
*****fruit of the earth and work of human hands
*****that become part of our own blood and bone;
with water,
*****without which nothing and no one on this planet could survive;
with touch,
*****without which we humans would wither from lack of love.

In our deeply mindful present
as we listen,
*****move,
*****touch,
*****receive,
*****offer

*****and share
we also commit
an act of memory
and an act of hope.

Feet!

Although Eucharist, the holy communion we share
with Christ and with each other
*****and with others throughout space and time
is once again the culmination of our celebration,
*****the last feast before the Good Friday fast
*****leading to Easter,
the foot-washing is at the heart of this celebration.

As the youngest child asks during the Passover Seder,
“Why is this night different from every other night?”
We may ask:
Why is this night different?
Why on this night wash and be washed?
Why feet?

I should have said
“be washed” and then “wash”
–for we who are Jesus’ friends
receive
from him
before we can give.

And Peter, that bumbling, energetic character who repeatedly doesn’t get it
*****and for whom we can thus have great affection,
objects strenuously to precisely this:
that the one who teaches and leads,
the one who is holiness itself,
Jesus, child of Holy Wisdom,
the main man,
washes Peter and his friends
and washes us,
his friends and followers.
So that then and only then
we might do likewise.

And so, as in the storied beginnings of Jesus’ life,
the last are first,
kings kneel
and the powers of the world
turn upside down.

This is our memory.
This is our vision.
This is our hope.

Tonight we celebrate the sacrament of friendship,
of power turned upside down
in Jesus’ land, small sliver of earth and shore
occupied by a foreign empire
and
on our piece of earth
today.

Tonight is the sacrament of friendship
in both the table and the touch.

Tonight the tired and the hidden are held
and bathed
and tenderly handled.

Feet.

We don’t talk about feet much
in church.
We don’t do much with feet in church.
Feet are too –well, pedestrian is the word that comes to mind,
the word whose root comes from the Latin word for foot,
a word meaning all at once “ordinary” and “everyday-ish” and “plain.”
Feet are basic.
Feet take us places
–when we are not in wheelchairs
or in our cars.
In the land of the automobile,
we don’t use them enough
for going places.
But if we are car-less
or homeless
we may use them too much.
In Boston, at least two of the major shelters for homeless persons,
one day shelter and one overnight shelter,
have foot clinics, because feet take a lot of stress
when you’re out there,
especially in winter.

Feet.
Sometimes we paint their toes.
If we’re lucky, we get them massaged.
Practitioners of shiatsu, acupressure, and other Asian healing arts tell us
that they contain points of connection to every place and organ in the body.
If you’re a moviegoer who likes French films,
you will remember a wonderful scene in the movie “Cousin, Cousine”
where the two main characters
have finally made love
and they are holed up in a hotel room together,
perfectly relaxed, and one of them holds the other’s feet
and very tenderly
clips her toenails.

Now,
mention feet in relation to church
and two realities are likely to come up:
intimacy
and awkwardness.

In Jesus’ day of dusty roads and sandals
there was no need to make a point about the importance of feet
to get around.
That’s what most people used,
and the quickest non-feet land transportation
was a donkey
–maybe a horse if you were a Roman soldier;
but that didn’t apply to most people.

In Jesus’ day,
there was also no need to make a point
about the relation of feet
to earth.
Jesus didn’t have to do this
because in the world in which he lived,
this connection to the land was taken for granted.

We, on the other hand, need a reminder.
So in addition to reminding you
that when we say God loves us
we mean all the way down to the tips of our smelly toes,
I want to invite you to think of feet in this way:
feet are what we use most often
to touch the earth.

They are our connection to the earth.

“Humility” – the name of that virtue we celebrate today
in the washing of the feet
comes from the word for “earth.”
*****– Think of the word “humus.”—
“Humble” really means “close to the earth.”

Can we become again people of earth?
Can we become the people of the land?

There is an interesting connection here.

Most of the people who followed Jesus
–though, mind you, he had city folks and artisans
in his circle as well–
were what the Bible calls the am ha’aretz,
the common people,
literally, the people of the land.

“The people of the land”
is also what indigenous peoples,
diverse as they are,
call themselves in many places around the globe.

Just two years ago I heard Mark MacDonald, the bishop of Alaska,

***[Note: Mark is now in a different bishop job but still working with Native peoples.]
talk about environmental rights and human rights.
He spoke about the Gwich’in people.
They are the indigenous people
who live up in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
in Alaska
–and many, many of them, by the way, are Episcopalians.

[I did an extemp sentence here reminding people that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is not “empty” – it has plants, it has caribou, and it has people, all interdependent.]

The Gwich’in have a word for what we term “subsistence,”
a term that for us has a somewhat negative or impoverished connotation,
as in “subsistence living” or “a subsistence economy.”
What we term “subsistence”
is in the Gwich’in language a word
that means, literally,
“God is taking good care of you.”

“God is taking good care of you.”

That is what you learn when you are people of the land.

This evening we celebrate what Jesus did the night before he died.

When you know you’re going to die,
you want to be with the people you love the most
and you concentrate every bit of wisdom in your body and soul
into a few words or gestures;
you compress them in time;
you leave them as a testament.

What Jesus did the night before he died
was to serve
through the washing of the feet
but also to bless
and thus to give thanks,
to receive
the bread,
the wine.
The Jewish blessing over food and wine, and anything else for that matter,
begins, “Blessed are you, Creator of the universe...”

Jesus acknowledged that the bread and the wine
don’t come from us:
they come from God
and from the earth
and from the labor of others.

And so do we.

In receiving the bread
we savor, we understand,
we remember
our relationship to creation, to our food, to our land.
We are here to receive and to taste
not to own or exploit.

And we are to receive each other
to cradle each other
to handle each other tenderly
at all times,
including when we are at our most awkward.

We learn this tonight
from Jesus
child of God
and child of earth.

We learn from Jesus
to be people who live
in the freedom of the living God.
For this is our God: the living God; the God of Jesus;
not a violent God; not a God who urges us to conquer;
not a God who urges us to acquire
not a God who urges us to consume.

A God who frees us to be
people who know
our relationship to God
and to earth
and to one another:

people of God
people of earth.

World Sleep Day (and its poster girl - or the one who should be)

Today is World Sleep Day. Yes, there is such a thing.

I have been neglecting blog fans of the Feline Bishop Extraordinaire, the Right Reverend Maya Pavlova. Just because she is on Facebook (on my FB page - she does NOT have her own FB page) doesn't mean her bloggy fans should be deprived of her presence! As I inch back into blogging, I present you with the latest photo, taken just minutes ago.

She really should be the poster girl for World Sleep Day. Don't forget to nap today -- or tomorrow on Shabbat.

Cat basking in winter sun

"The Low Road"

A couple of months ago I rediscovered this old poem by Marge Piercy. It is from her book The Moon Is Always Female.

What can they do
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break
your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can t walk, can’t remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can’t blame them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.

But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.

Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organisation. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fund raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.

It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.

P.S. I just found out on Piercy's website that she wrote a memoir called Sleeping with Cats, published in 2002. Click to link at the name of the book and have a look at the review excerpts.

Watching the birds...

... or the rabbit or the butterflies or the roving cat from next door.

Ignatius Day: another butterfly

Happy feast of Ignatius of Loyola. Here is another butterfly, fluttering about the flowers at noontime on a rare warm-but-not-hot grey day. It is more yellow than the photo makes it seem, as is the beige-looking butterfly below (at the bottom of that post). The BlackBerry camera distorts some colors.

Stalking the butterflies

And finally caught an open-winged photo!

Prayer Posse, this one is for you, with my thanks

My friend Paul the BB is much more faithful than I in posting prayer concerns and requests in his "heart threads" and "Oremus" posts, but I am making bold to join him with a few requests for you intercessors out there.

First there's Kirstin, who is undergoing chemotherapy in an experimental protocol for a nasty recurrence of cancer. She is surrounded by love and very good care and has a strong will to live and live well, but this is one of those cases where the potential cure is very tough on body and soul. Please keep her in your hearts. Pray also (or offer merit or chants -- whatever your tradition is, we welcome it) for her best friend Andee, who has been faithful and compassionate in her attention and care. And for the medical people, of course.

Then there's Joel, beloved spouse of Margaret and informally-adoptive parent of Juan Manuel. Joel has had a bad attack of myasthenia gravis and they almost lost him a few nights ago. He is doing better, "guarded," as they say, and has a host of praying and caring folks in his life, not least of them our Margaret. Please pray for Joel, for Margaret, for Juan Manuel, and of course for the physicians and nurses and other caregivers.

And Fran of Smallbania, dear friend of mine and of many of us both irl ("in real life") and in the blogosphere, has had to forgo a vacation abroad with her spouse and daughter because of a most unpleasant episode in the hospital involving a gall bladder (now gone, bye-bye gall bladder) and several related complications. Fran is at home resting up and improving every day, but she could use some more prayers. She continues to be her thoughtful self and is black to blogging, a sure sign she is on the mend.

Here's a link to the Taizé chant "Bleibet hier" (literally "stay here" and known and sung in English as "Stay with me, remain with me, watch and pray").

Please pray also in happy thanksgiving for Nathan, a young man I've prayed with and mentored a bit, who was baptized yesterday at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Greensboro. Nathan had been baptized as a child but in the tradition of his family, the Jehovah's Witnesses, who do not baptize in the name of the Holy Trinity. So, after becoming quite involved in the Episcopal Church, he asked to be baptized with the ancient Trinitarian formula which is that of most Christian traditions including the Anglican one. Nathan is a member of St. Andrew's but is also involved at St. Mary's House, where he has been co-convening the Centering Prayer and Taizé Prayer with me. (We are on break for July-August but will resume our hour of contemplation -- half Centering Prayer, which is a Christian form of silent meditation, and half Taizé prayer, with chants from the Taizé community, readings, silence and simple prayers -- in the fall semester.) He also helped start a local chapter of Integrity. He is a wonderful young man with much enthusiasm and feels blessed to have found a welcoming and inclusive church with a strong and long historical tradition.


Finally I ask your prayers for me, Jane. I am in hermit mode, chugging to the finish on a very large and long theological project known to the general public as The Big Tome. I have burrowed deeper into solitude and struggle in order to get it done and it is very intense work, even when I am not working consciously. I am well and healthy, I get good nutrition and enough sleep, enjoy the solitude much of the time, and have the wonderful company of Maya Pavlova, Feline Bishop Extraordinaire. She is very good at sleeping, napping, being playful, and keeping me company at the keyboard. She usually sleeps all afternoon but in the evening she tends to be in supervisory mode and hang out here in the study. I have no idea what she does in the morning, since I am keeping odd hours and am asleep much of the a.m. +Maya does come and visit after the alarm clock rings and usually settles on my chest for a while. She is a very civilized cat and does not wake me at 6 a.m. as some other cats are wont to do to their human companions.

I need and welcome your prayers, good vibrations, chants, meditations, and other holy expressions of support. Thank you! Come, Holy Spirit.*

*That's a link to the Taizé chant "Veni lumen" -- "Come, light" in Latin. "Come, Holy Spirit, light of our hearts," etc.

It is beastly hot here in Greensboro as in much of the Eastern part of the U.S. but I do have an air conditioning unit in the study and another in the kitchen/dining room, so I am managing, though the air conditioning is noisy and it is odd to be spending 90 to 95% of my time indoors in the summer. The phlox are blooming outdoors and surviving nicely. The humans, however, are wilting.

Peace to you all, and to all sentient beings.

A photo for fans of +Maya Pavlova

I posted this on Facebook, but those of you who are only blog-readers will enjoy this too, I hope. I took it with the BlackBerry phone camera, so it's a bit fuzzy, but it captures the mood, which is "Ooh, clean laundry!" Not warm, since it had been there for a few days (and to the right you can see the plastic enclosing a freshly dry-cleaned comforter I had brought home around the same time, that's what the shiny thing is) but a great temptation for cats. I'm surprised she didn't burrow in there sooner, but she has other places to go. This was just a brief sojourn.

Some +Maya photos from early spring

It's been too long and you have been waiting patiently for the latest photos of the Right Reverend and Right Honourable Maya Pavlova, Feline Bishop Extraordinaire. Enjoy.

Slightly edited --two photos added-- 15 minutes after initial posting.
As always, click on photos to enlarge and see detail.

In the late winter especially, +Maya was very fond of sleeping on the desk chair in my study.


It was a long, cold winter. Flannel sheets, anyone?




The house is all right, but not half as pretty as our old place, the one on which the tree fell. No more pretty windows with wood trim. Cement walls, windows cut out of the walls with no window sills, a bit of peeling paint, a bit of rust. But it's still cozy: a cat lives here.

The author of the definitive pastoral letter on naps continues to be very good at zonking out.





She's also good at waking up.


She's not bad at balancing on the mantel, either.


And here we have Lady Radar Ears (who made an appearance on Facebook recently).


This is when we were working on a sermon about a passage from the book of Revelation...

She likes to help me write.


+Maya has several sleeping places. This is a perch in the bedroom. The pillow is all hers.


Of course, one has to clean up after naps.




This is +Maya seen from outside through the living room window on a sunny day in early May.


Alert, wise, thoughtful, and lovely. The perfect feline bishop.


She is a good Anglican with an inquiring mind.


These next two photos, taken with my BlackBerry, have already made their appearance on Facebook:

Get me away from the paparazzi!

Yes, Your Grace. For now.

Yes, we're still here

Stay tuned for the return of blogging now that the academic year is ending. 'tis a harsh and demanding job here. I've been in campus, parish, and urban ministries, and they are a walk in the park compared to teaching at an undergraduate institution. Or maybe I should say at this undergraduate institution. Or perhaps I should say at an undergraduate institution in this day and age. Hard to tell sometimes. Anyway, we're back. +Maya is well. I am too, and catching up on sleep. Soon my writing brain cells will return. Over and out.

Photo: +Maya helps Jane write. BlackBerry camera photo taken with Jane's right hand, spring 2010.

More magnolias: the last hurrah and the decline

The magnolia blossoms don't last long.

Sic transeunt magnoliae.









But in a bright sunset, the blossoms shine one last time.







One last hurrah.

Click on photos to enlarge and see detail.

Crocuses, Day Two

More crocuses today (or rather yesterday, since it is now Wednesday, 1 a.m.). They came in threes. The first cluster was yesterday's lone crocus with two new companions. The second cluster was behind the house.

The Sermon to the Snakes

"What is the whole of our existence," said Father Damien, practicing his sermon from the new pulpit, "but the sound of an appalling love?"

The snakes slid quietly among the feet of the empty pews.

"What is the question we spend our entire lives asking? Our question is this: Are we loved? I don't mean by one another. Are we loved by the one who made us? Constantly, we look for evidence. In the gifts we are given--children, good weather, money, a happy marriage perhaps--we find assurance. In contrast, our pains, illnesses, the deaths of those we love, our poverty, our innocent misfortunes--those we take as signs that God has somehow turned away. But, my friends, what exactly is love here? How to define it? Does God's love work in our lives? Or is God's love, perhaps, something very different from what we think we know?

"Divine love may be so large it cannot see us.

"Or it may be so infinitely tiny that it works on a level where it directs us like an unknown substance buried in our blood.

"Or it may be transparent, an invisible screen, a filter through which we see and hear all that is created.

"Oh my friends..."

The snakes lifted their bullet-smooth heads, flickered their tongues to catch the vibrations of the sounds the being made somewhere before them.

"I am like you," said Father Damien to the snakes, "curious and small." He dropped his arms. "Like you, I poise alertly and open my senses to try to read the air, the clouds, the sun's slant, the little movements of the animals, all in the hope I will learn the secret of whether I am loved."

The snakes coiled and recoiled, curved over and underneath themselves.

"If I am loved," Father Damien went on, "it is a merciless and exacting love against which I have no defense. If I am not loved, then I am being pitilessly manipulated by a force I cannot withstand, either, and so it is all the same. I must do what I must do. Go in peace."

He lifted his hand, blessed the snakes, and then lay down full length in a pew and slept there for the rest of the afternoon.

Louise Erdrich

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

(c) 2001

2002 paperpack, HarperPerennial, pp. 226-227

Beautiful +Maya, the photogenic feline

She looks like this, lying on her side with a paw over her nose and her fuzzy tummy showing, but she's under the desk lamp right now, snoozing on the wooden desk next to me.

I really need to start taking pictures again.

I tried out the camera on my new BlackBerry (free when I joined up with CREDO Mobile) and its first picture (if you don't count the two accidental ones) was this. Speaking of fuzzy.



+Maya Pavlova is still the most beautiful cat on the planet. And soft! Must be the organic cat food.

Friday cat blogging, deferred: a message from +Maya

It is I, Maya Pavlova, Feline Bishop Extraordinaire. I have been napping in an open drawer here in the study. The Canon to the Extraordinary has left the drawer open because she doesn't use the soft things in it that much, and frankly, I look and feel cozy and adorable in it and I can keep an eye on her if I need to.

The Canon tried to take a picture of me a few minutes ago. She has a new camera -- well, a no longer new to her lovely hand-me-down (thanks to You Know Who You Are) which for some bizarre reason she did not learn how to use this summer; something to do with a Big Tome and concentration. She finally got the batteries in it while I was napping and printed out the Big User's Guide and came up to me and pow! A flash in my eye. But she's not sure whether she really took a picture and she needs to study the manual some more, and that will take her an hour, which is going to have to be tomorrow, because she has to write. Silly human.

I am very well. I have the Canon close at hand and I keep close tabs on her. She has been away far too much for my taste. It's not that I starve or get cold, but I like my human and in those hours when I am awake, I like to converse with her and butt into her business. So I have been sleeping a little less than usual since she settled down at home for a few days and spending extra time butting in. I also jump on counters and on the kitchen table -- a lot.

I must go supervise the Canon, who is trying to get some work done on that Tome thing. I think she needs help.

Thanksgiving

This here is an Array Mbira, which is a modern U.S. adaptation of a Zimbabwean Mbira. Enjoy the music.

In other news, I invented a dish involving collards and caramelized shallots for today's dinner, and on Monday evening, I went to a "Thanksgiving rebellion" dinner hosted by the Native American student organization at Guilford. Tomorrow, blogging will return. At least that's the plan.

Sorry for the long absence. It's partly Facebook's fault and partly due to my insane work schedule and to my having been in a bit of a funk -- and committed to getting enough sleep to stay healthy on the job. Which didn't keep me from getting sick before and during fall break.

We've had a lovely Thanksgiving so far, +Maya Pavlova and I. We wish you and your loved ones a peaceful night (or day, if you have begun the new day on the other side of the globe) and we remember with respect and gratitude the First Peoples on whose land we live, the earth and its waters and skies, and the farmers who worked to grow our food. Her Feline Grace, who was in a playful mood for a good part of the day, is now asleep in an open sweatshirt drawer. Perhaps she will allow her picture to be taken tomorrow. Over and out.

A day of mindfulness: more in the "DO SOMETHING for Health Care Reform" series

I promised you a mindfulness exercise for Tuesday and it's Thursday. I really ought to remember that Tuesday and Wednesday are my long days at work. I did, mindfully, watch two presidential speeches, one each day. I will post links to them, back-dated, so you will find them below soon.

What I meant to do, though, and I am doing now, is to invite you to take a break from the politicking and letter-writing and move into a day of mindfulness about health. Your health. The health of others. What constitutes good health.

This goes beyond good health insurance coverage, of course. A few times today and this evening, observe your breathing. Then take some deep, slow, breaths.


When you get up, what do you do for your own health and well-being? What does your understanding of health include in your daily life? Sleep? Food? Exercise? Drinking water? Laughter? Community? Spiritual practice? (For some this means prayer or meditation, for others it may mean Tai Ch'i or reading or baking. Think about what this means for you.) Intellectual or physical activity? Creative work?

As you go about your day, do you think about your health? In what way? What is the place of self-care ? How much time and energy does worrying take? Do you have one or more conditions that require treatment or visits to health practitioners?

Simply observe. Do not judge.

As you go about your day, do you think about the health and well-being of others? In what way? What form does this take? Who are the others? Are they persons and animals who are members of your household? Are they at your workplace? In your congregation or other community of spiritual practice? Are they at the place where you volunteer?

Take your time. Notice.

Are there ways in which "health" becomes particularly concrete for you? Are there ways in which "health" is an abstraction?

What happens when you take time simply to observe, to notice, and then perhaps to name, taking time out from the rush of acting and doing?

See what happens to your day, your health and your approach to health when you consider these questions.

Try to do this without judgment and without undue rush.

If you like, write us in the comments to this post and let us know your observations, experiences, and thoughts.

Peace to you.