Maundy Thursday...

Tonight our faith community gathers to watch and wait with Jesus for one hour: we will kneel and wash one an other's feet, we will break bread and share a common cup and we will read and listen to the story of the shadows - praying the Lord's Prayer in the darkness and leaving in silence. Three written reflections have touched my heart this morning and inform both how I will pray throughout this day but also enter into common prayer tonight.

+ The first comes from the writing of Fr. Richard Rohr at the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Noting that Israel's " sacrificial instinct is the deep recognition in most religions that something always has to die for something Bigger to be born. We started with human sacrifice (e.g. Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22). We moved then to animal sacrifice as we see here (in Exodus 12) and we gradually got closer to what really has to be sacrificed: our own beloved ego—as protected and beloved as a little household lamb! We still resist this recognition, and love to look for any vicarious sacrifice other than our own selves. That is the temptation that Jesus totally resisted, and we pray with him “for one hour” (see Mark 14:37) tonight hoping we can share in his courage and love." (See more of Rohr's insights at: cac@cacradicalgrace.org)

+ The second comes from William Green of the United Church of Christ who writes about Christ's call to "love one another as I have loved you." This is not a command about our feelings, Green tells us, rather it is a call to love God and others as a living commitment or sacrifice. "It's often hard to love what needs doing, like pay attention to those we disagree with, or forgive someone as we have so often been forgiven, or love "enemies" in our own midst or beyond, as Jesus admonished.

But the commandment to love is not a commandment to condone or agree; it's a duty to respect. I can't find help and hope apart from respecting a world bigger than my own feelings... Without this, any personal difference or grievance is magnified and distorted, and we're lost in ourselves with no way out. (So as we gather in worship on Maundy Thursday we see Christ living in a way that was) beyond personal feeling, not thrown by the betrayal of a close follower and impending death. This is God's love for us. Not even the disciples understood it. But they were changed by it, and given the duty to pass it on. They did so, however imperfectly. And so can we."

I love the prayer Green ends with: Gracious God, may I not make a god of my own feelings and pass on the deeper love you make mine. Amen. (For more reflections from the United Church of Christ see: http://act.ucc.org/site/TellAFriend?msgId=25561.0&devId=28041)

+ And third there is this posting by my predecessor at First Church, Rick Floyd, who writes an insightful and theologically rich reflection re: Christ's prayer in the garden after the Last Supper. He brings together the text from Luke's gospel along with the testimony of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: ...here (Jesus) ponders in prayer to the Father if there might be some way to get out of his calling. It is not a long moment, for immediately he says, “yet not my will, but yours be done.” It may not be a long moment, but it is a significant one, because it seems to me that no Christian vocation, and I don’t mean merely that of the ordained, is without the temptation to find a shortcut, an easier way, certainly a way that avoids a cross, either, as in this case, literally, or in most of our cases metaphorically...

But how do we know how to do that? Where are we called to be, and what are we called to do? After all, the word vocation means calling. And where are we to find our particular cross to take up? Bonhoeffer himself provides a template. He once wrote, “Either I determine the place in which I will find God, or I allow God to determine the place where he will be found. If it is I who say where God will be, I will always find there a God who in some way corresponds to me, is agreeable to me, fits in with my nature. But if it is God who says where He will be, then that will truly be a place which at first is not agreeable at all, which does not fit so well with me. That place is the cross of Christ.” (Meditating on the Word, p 44–45).
(If you would like to read more from Rick, check him out at: http://richardlfloyd.blogspot.com/)

I am grateful for the wider communion of saints who not only enrich and stretch me beyond the limits of self, but also make themselves vulnerable to the world by sharing their journey in faith. And blessings to you as you enter the Great Three Days...