DARKNESS AT NOON Good Friday 2010

When darkness falls, the day is over. It's as simple as that.
But on THIS day, darkness came not at sundown but at noon—high noon—the hour when the sun had reached its greatest height, the very peak of the day.
It didn't make any sense to those who gloated at the foot of the cross. At the very moment when they sensed their utter and complete victory, suddenly, inexplicably, the sun's light disappeared and darkness covered the land.
In John's account of the crucifixion of our Lord this wonder if never mentioned. Perhaps for John the whole day was filled with darkness. Or perhaps his vision was affected by the One who claimed to be the light of the world, the Light which John himself testified about—the true light that enlightens every man-- the light that the darkness of this horrible day could not extinguish.
But Matthew, Mark, and Luke saw the darkness. It had been there all along, but now it was visible to everyone standing there that day.
The darkness muffled the gloaters. First darkness—reminiscent of the darkness that covered the land of Egypt many Passovers ago—but then, after the darkness, what would be next?
If it was a victory for them, it was short-lived at best. But for the first time these people who dwelt in the land of deep darkness found themselves afraid of the dark. They had to sense that God was up to something there. After all, it's never dark at noon.
"Maybe we should postpone the party," someone might have said. Indeed! Who can party when God is up to something great, unpredictable and mysterious?
They should have sensed it earlier. They COULD have sensed it earlier. One would expect that the pain from the nails would have been enough to bring a man to total rage at his enemies, but not at THIS cross. What did he say? Did I get that right? "Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing."
How incredible! How absurd! How could he say that? Certainly they knew WHAT they were doing—they knew exactly what they were doing—their hopes and their plans were coming to fruition. Success at last. No more Galilean nonsense to put up with. These educated, sophisticated, and wealthy people had thought it all through, and once they discovered Judas, the trap was set, the end they longed for finally came into view.
They knew exactly what they were doing. Didn't they? How could he make such an outrageous statement?
But what did he mean by praying, "Father forgive them?" Talk about outrageous! Who did he think he was, anyway, asking God to forgive his enemies, the very ones who had purchased the nails and set the plot in motion? This was a clue to a mystery far beyond their pay grade.
Then they heard another clue. The thief dying beside him certainly deserved his fate—just as much as the man in the middle. It's hard to imagine that he would have the nerve to ask for a future with him. It was only a matter of hours until both of them would be dead, and it wouldn't be much longer until they would be buried, out of sight, out of mind, forgotten, good riddance!
Talk about absurd? Why ask a dying man for a future? But then again, what did he have to lose?
Or was it that this thief was able to see what the educated, sophisticated religious leaders were unable to see? Blinded by their overblown estimation of their own egos?
"Today, you will be with me in Paradise," the man in the middle said. Oh really? A thief in Paradise? Rewards for the reckless and irresponsible? How could he make him such an offer? Who DID he think he was, anyway?
But then again, they might have seen the clue that stared them right in the face. The promise was given not by the other thief. It came from the "man in the middle." Do you suppose that being in the middle was more than just a coincidence? Maybe it was another clue God was using to disclose to those who could see in the dark that this man saw a future that others could not even conceive of.
The moment they waited for finally DID arrive. The sand in that fragile hourglass eventually ran out, thank God. Those three hours of darkness must have felt like an eternity. Was it ONLY three hours? Or, WAS it Eternity condensed into just three hours?
His voice was much louder than anyone might have expected. It was so loud that they could feel it deep inside their souls. Who could imagine that he would be able to summon up such strength at his moment of greatest weakness and desolation? "Father," he said. How could he even call God "Father" at a moment like this? Weak, wounded, abandoned—What kind of "Father" could he be, anyway?
"Into your hands I commit my spirit," he said. He had reached his final destination, after all. He returned to the One from whom he came. Gone. Soon to be forgotten. Not soon enough for some, but at least it was FINALLY over. The darkness would lift. The New Day would dawn. The agitator would soon be forgotten, and life would return to normal again. Leave his body on the cross. Let the vultures come and have their feast. And those who made it happen could also have theirs.
What are they doing? Taking his body down? Cleaning it? Wrapping it with cloth filled with spices? No reason to do that! But let it be—at least now the darkness could end and life could return once more to what it had been before he came. Yes, the victory was theirs. Final Victory! Or so THEY thought.

SUPPER AT SUNDOWN

(This is the first of three sermons preached at Hope during the Triduum—Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. I actually did not preach THIS sermon. I should have. But since so few people were there to hear what I did preach, I think it is best that I offer this one instead. It's a better sermon than the one I preached.)

In recent years on Maundy Thursday we have focused much attention on the event which is at the heart of the gospel lesson appointed for the day in the Gospel of John, chapter 13. That story is John's equivalent story to the accounts in the other three gospels where Jesus institutes the sacrament of Holy Communion.

In John's Gospel, instead of hearing the Words of Institution which we use in every eucharistic service as the bread and wine are consecrated, we hear Jesus giving the "New Commandment" gave to his disciples and we see Jesus humbling himself to wash the feet of his disciples. Curiously, John makes no mention of the elements of the meal itself, the institution of the sacrament, or the promise of the forgiveness of sins—all of which have been the central elements of Christian worship for twenty centuries.

I'm not sure what the motivation is behind placing the focus on the act of feet washing, and I wonder whether worshipers understand it any better understanding than I do. One thing, however, has become perfectly clear to me over the past 27 years at Hope after having offered the invitation to people to come forward so I can wash their feet. That is that people much prefer coming forward to receive the body and blood of Christ and clearly do not have any interest in having their feet washed.

Their reluctance to coming forward is no mystery to me. In fact, I wonder why those who do come for the feet washing do so. Is it just out of compassion for me as the pastor, to avoid embarrassment?

In fact, I wonder about the ceremony itself. It is obviously a "symbolic" ceremony, but when we do it the symbolic values of it seems to go unheeded. The ceremony could quite easily be carried out totally apart from a worship service, and certainly apart from the context of the Lord's Supper or even Maundy Thursday altogether. After all, John himself didn't see any need to mention the nature of the meal they were celebrating that night at sundown. In John's gospel the event is actually a "pre-Passover" meal he says they shared "before the festival of the Passover" (John 13:1). From his perspective it was not a Passover meal, as all three synoptic stories all seem to presuppose.

Don't misinterpret what I am saying,. I'm not against washing people's feet (at least not as much as nearly EVERYONE ELSE who came to worship on Maundy Thursday seem to be.) I just wonder whether continuing to offer people a chance to take part in a ceremony that they don't take part in is a good way to conduct a public worship service.

To state it differently, what would it be like if, when the time came for people to come forward to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion, everyone decided to stay put instead of coming forward? How would we make sense out of continuing to celebrate Holy Communion? Would we keep offering it?

There are two sad implications coming out of our current practice of offering to wash people's feet. First, the lack of participation negates the very message Jesus was trying to get across in the original context. If no one is willing to even allow their pastor to wash their feet, a rather passive, non-labor intensive action, then how can we believe that they are more willing to do the harder part of what Jesus was demonstrating by this action, i.e., to keep the "New Commandment" he gave? Actually can we even call the "New Commandment" a "commandment" if no one actually obeys it? Like the old question "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, does it make any sound?"

The other sad implication of continuing to offer unwelcome invitations for feet washing is that it diverts attention away from the one part of the Maundy Thursday story that we actually DO take seriously, the Lord's Supper. That part of the Event of Maundy Thursday gets more-or-less relegated to the "Let's get this long service over" portion to the evening instead of serving as the climax of that sacred hour.

How different we might feel like at our Maundy Thursday celebrations if, instead of doing something no one wants to do, we offered people a whole, real meal with real food, and then brought it to the high point of "re-membering" the new covenant by sharing significant pieces of bread and real cups of wine and giving people enough time to eat, drink, and then reflect on the meaning of THAT, as I am sure those bewildered disciples must have done. I wonder whether the "sleepiness" of the disciples might have been caused by what they had just experienced, and not just by the busy-ness of the day.

Something important happened that night at sundown. Yes, Jesus gave a new commandment to his followers, and we would do well to focus long and hard on how good a job we do on keeping that, although I wonder whether the best time to talk about that is when the vast majority of the congregation isn't even present. But the other thing that happened is that these disciples who gathered there that night left that upper room much different from the way they began the evening. By eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ at that supper at sundown they were transformed into the very Body of Christ themselves for the sake of the world. They became what they ate (and drank) and the world has never been the same since.