Making Love manifest

 Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom

Maundy Thursday, April 1, 2021

Psalm 116:1,10-17;1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17,31b-35

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

It is Maundy Thursday. I want nothing more than to be gathered in the same place as you all. To honor the holiness of this day by washing each other’s hands or feet and by breaking bread together. Oh how we do not realize how much the tangible aspects of our faith matter until we cannot share them with each other. We are embodied. We worship a God who was incarnate in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Our bodies matter. Touch matters. To feel the water on our skin matters. To taste the bread matters. To sip the wine matters. All of it matters. 

There is lament on this day. Lament for what is not possible. Lament because this is Holy Week. Lament for a week and a world that have reminded us of the horrors we human beings can inflict upon each other. The tragedy of gun violence. The trial of the officer who killed George Floyd. We have been reminded of the realities of loss and oppression all too well this week. But that is not all we remember today. 

It is Maundy Thursday. Maundy from the Latin for “Mandate” - for the new commandment that we have been given. “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’” At its foundation, at its heart, that is what today is about. 

The pouring of the water. The gentle touch of a towel. The feel of the bread in our hand. The sharing of the cup. All of those are expressions of love. They are merely tangible manifestations that point us to that far deeper and more profound truth. Ah. There it is. The reminder I found myself searching for in the midst of all the lament and loss of this week, of this season. As much as I wish to be gathered in person. As much as I wish to share the water, the bread, and the wine. Those things, those tangible realities are not the point. Love is the point. That beautiful truth. That profound reality - that we are beloved of God. So beloved that God would give anything, give everything, to show us the depth of that love. That love is not contingent on anything. It does not require us to do something. It does not require water or bread or wine to show up. The love of God is present with us, always - wherever we are. 

Now I do not want to discount the tangible manifestations of God’s love. Just because we cannot have the ones we are used to, the ones we expect, the ones we long for, does not mean we are without signs of God’s love. It does not mean we cannot make God’s love manifest for each other. 

Indeed my friends, you have been doing just that, making the love of God manifest here in this chapel space for over a year. You make it manifest with your smiles, with your words, your presence. With your trust, your tears, your grace. And I know that this time is a mere glimpse into the rest of your lives, and it consoles my spirit to know that you are making that love known in the world throughout your day, wherever you are. 

We have a new commandment. A foundational commandment. Love one another. Make God’s love manifest in the world. Let the depth of this day, of this week, of this season, of this reminder of just how profoundly we are loved by God - a love that is an outpouring, a self-giving, a love that is not earned. A love that is not contingent on anything. Let this love fill your hearts, so that you may continue to go about your lives making it manifest for all the world to see. The world needs that love. Today and always. Amen. 

Tuesday in Holy Week

Embed from Getty Images

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD
DFMS Noonday Prayer, via Zoom
Tuesday in Holy Week, April 7, 2020

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

“God, save me from this hour.” No doubt all of us have prayed this prayer many times in our lives. God save me from the evils of this world. God save me from disease or hardship. God save me from myself. God save me from the seemingly insurmountable challenge in front of me. No doubt many of us would join in Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, the prayer to let this cup pass from me. To avoid the challenge, to avoid the pain and suffering.

Of course, we would. Especially in the midst of pain and suffering, we desire nothing more than healing and wholeness. We desire a different way forward. And sometimes that is granted. Sometimes, we do indeed get a reprieve and a different path opens up. But most of the time we, like Jesus, have to follow the path that is set before us.

Now, whenever I talk about the particular challenges of pain and suffering, I think it is very important to draw a distinction between the suffering that is endemic to the human experience versus the suffering that is the result of injustice. When we encounter suffering that is the result of injustice, that is suffering we, as followers of Jesus, are called to work against. We are called to be agents of change and transformation. We are not called to merely “accept” that suffering as a part of life.

The suffering that we do have to accept is that which is endemic. It is the suffering that is the result of having mortal bodies, illness, injury, disease, and death are a given part of our life. But even though we can expect them, I don’t think any of us expected them on the scale which we are currently facing. There is a different sort of grief that comes with the enormity of this experience. Our grief is multi-layered. We are dealing with the grief of the numerous changes and losses in our own individual lives. We are also dealing with a societal and global grief as we watch the news.

So, what do we do with this reality, what insight does this Holy Week and today’s Scriptures in particular, have to offer us? Note what Jesus says after his prayer. He asks God to be glorified. He calls his followers to be the children of the light. I think there is a profound invitation for us in that. It invites us to be looking for light, looking for hope, looking for ways in which God’s glory can be made manifest even in the midst of suffering that is on an overwhelming scale.

Sometimes the journey through Holy Week is a largely intellectual one. We hear the stories, and we can imagine playing different parts in them. We can choose to enter the story as lightly or as deeply as we want. Other times, like our present circumstances, we experience the fullness of Holy Week in our own lives. The story of Jesus’ betrayal, death, suffering and crucifixion has deep meaning, not because we have chosen to enter into it as an intellectual exercise. The story of this week has meaning because the Passion Narrative resonates on a visceral level with our own experience. I imagine that is true for many of us this week.

Given that many of us may feel as though we are living out the realities of Holy Week in a profound way that makes it different from other years (and not just because we are doing our worship online), it is all the more important for us to remember that this week, that the crucifixion itself, that the worst humanity can do to each other, is not the end of the story. Death, suffering and pain never have the last word in the Christian story or in our own lives. As our Collect for today so beautifully says, “O God, by the passion of your blessed Son you made an instrument of shameful death to be for us the means of life.” A means of life. Indeed. Life, love, hope, and possibility are what follow from the Cross. Even out of the darkest moments, even out of the moments where it seems that all is lost, know that we are never lost. We are never separated from God’s love. God is our hope, and we can trust in that amazing truth. Today and everyday. AMEN.

Reflections on Wednesday in Holy Week

Cross in Chapel of Our Lord

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

Chapel of Our Lord, Episcopal Church Center

Wednesday in Holy Week, April 17, 2019

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Hebrews 12:1-3; John 13:21-32; Psalm 70

Our daughter is eight, and this winter she and I started reading the Little House Books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. These were absolute favorites of my childhood, and it has been a joy to share them with her. Currently we are in the middle of the third book, On the Banks of Plum Creek. If you are familiar with this book, then you know it is the book that has some tragedy in it. We are only a few chapters past the horrors of the grasshoppers. It reads like something out of the book of Exodus. The Ingalls family has staked their future and the house they are living in on a successful wheat harvest. A plague of grasshoppers arrives just days before the wheat is ready to harvest. The grasshoppers cover the landscape. The family tries to build fires around the wheat field. They work tirelessly and completely in vain to save their crop. The grasshoppers eat every plant for miles around. Charles Ingalls ends up having to walk 200 miles east to find work as a farmhand to earn enough money to keep the family from becoming completely destitute. I read that book many times as a child. I knew how the story went. And yet, even as I was reading it outloud to Katherine, I found myself wishing and willing for a different outcome. I somehow hoped (beyond all reason) that the story could go differently and the family could avert tragedy and loss.

Isn’t it remarkable that even when we know the story, even when we know how everything is going to turn out, we can still find ourselves wishing for a different ending? I don’t know about you, but I often find myself feeling that way at this point in Holy Week. We have had Palm Sunday. We have read the passion narrative. We are moving systematically through the story. Tomorrow will be Maundy Thursday, and then it will be Good Friday. We know where this is going. We know how painful it is going to get. We know that our Lord will give “his body to be whipped and his face to be spit upon.”  

And yet, there is some small part of us that just might be wishing it could go differently. Does it really have to be like this we ask? Couldn’t Judas have found a different way? Why did he have to betray Jesus? It is a familiar dialogue, isn’t it?

Isn’t it the conversation we have with God when we encounter our own sufferings and challenges? In the midst of an experience where our buttons are pushed by a friend who sees the world differently than we do or in the midst of a new difficulty that is requiring us to draw on our reserves of strength and creativity. Or perhaps in the midst of a time that feels very dark and seemingly hopeless. We say, “God, if there is a way I could learn whatever important lesson I am supposed to be learning here without all this suffering that would be great. Okay? Thanks very much.”

Oh, if only that were true! If only we could just ask God for the cliff notes version. It is so very human of us to want the reward without the hard work. It is so understandable that we would want to find a better way forward that minimizes our suffering.

And yet, we know that is not how it goes. Suffering is a part of life. It will come. We cannot eat, exercise, medicate, or will ourselves a life free from suffering. It is not possible. Just as this story of Holy Week cannot unfold in any other way, there will be pieces of our lives over which we do not have control. We cannot control the weather. We cannot control the actions of other people. We cannot control when those we love will die. We cannot control everything about our own health and well being. There will be suffering that will just come.

And yet, I do think there is an important distinction to make here. Our Collect for today asks that we might have “grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time.” That is a statement that can only be made from a position of privilege, and I do not think it is a fully accurate description of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Yes, there is much to be learned in the midst of our suffering. Yes, there is suffering (death, disease, natural disasters) that is endemic to the human experience. We will have to find ways to cope with it. AND, there is also suffering that is the result of injustice. There is suffering that is the result of systemic oppression. Suffering that is the result of the very human sins of sexism, racism, classism, etc. This is suffering that should NOT be. This is the suffering we Christians, especially those of us who are in positions of power and privilege are called to do something about. This suffering is not to be accepted joyfully. It is to be named, called out, and stopped.  

So, I want to go back to that feeling we get when we are wanting a story to turn out differently. Sometimes that is just wishful thinking on our part, particularly when we are reading a history book. But when it happens to us in the here and now, when we look at a situation and have a niggling feeling that things should be different that feeling is worth noting, worth paying attention to. Because it just might be the Holy Spirit inviting us to be a force for transformation in the world.

We cannot go back and redo the story of Holy Week. BUT we can use the story of this week to be an inspiration for us to act differently in our own lives. The realities of betrayal and innocent suffering are real in our world. Greed and selfishness can cause people in power to act without regard for the implications of their actions. Innocent people are punished for crimes they did not commit. Far too many people spend their days being made to feel less than because of their race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity . . .you name it.

We cannot change the story of Holy Week, but we can change our lives and the lives of those around us. May we have the grace and courage to do just that, today and everyday.

AMEN.