The lectionaries for each Sunday can be found in a calendar format at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/19625_21607_ENG_HTM.htm.

March 20, 2008
Maundy Thursday, Year A
Propers for the same
The Rev. Timothy E. Kimbrough
Timothy E. Kimbrough
Church of the Holy Family

There are so many ways in which our secular maturity is determined by an increasing inclination toward independence and a determined eschewing of vulnerability. The toddler’s defiant declaration, “I can do it myself” yields to the pre-teen’s “Aw, mom, do I have to”. The ritual driver’s license acquisition is followed by voter registration, High School graduation, college matriculation or first job, and attaining the legal drinking age. Each milestone takes the youth one step further away from dependence on apron strings and allowance. Parents watch with a measure of ambivalence—distressed at the overt challenge and rejection of authority that often comes with increasing autonomy but often quietly pleased that their child is acquiring the assertiveness skills and street smarts that will help keep him/her from getting hurt in the future.

To be vulnerable is to be weak. To be weak is to fail. And failure rarely comes to those have learned to assert their independence, knowledge, and skill to their maximum benefit. Barnes and Noble has a book for you that tells you how to dress for success. Toastmasters can teach you how to speak with authority, candor, and humor. Your therapist might make you a little more aware of your body language and what you are unconsciously saying when you walk in a room. And then there are your financial advisors, who will tell you what you should do with your money. Learn to lead with your strengths.

Unfortunately, when it comes to understanding the Good News of Jesus Christ, when it comes to the pursuit of the Kingdom of God, when it comes to practicing the habits of the Christian life—the Eucharist, the Daily Office, the adoption of the Servant’s posture, peacemaking, the implementation of the Beattitudes and the fulfillment of the Law in your life—independence, autonomy, and success, as defined by leading from your strengths, and will get you nowhere. Instead in everything the secular pursuit of maturity has sought to subvert what Jesus would teach us about the life of a disciple. And let’s be clear we are ambivalent about this.

It’s one thing to issue the call to your place last in line. It’s quite another to find yourself waiting at the end of the line. It’s one thing to encourage the pacifist’s turning of the other cheek. It’s quite another to pick yourself up off the ground with both eyes bruised black. It’s one thing to bless the poor but quite another to be poor. We are ambivalent about this immortal God who would die on our behalf and quite uncomfortable that he kneels to wash our feet this evening.

I need a heroic master that won’t confuse failure with success, a master that will let the limo take him uptown, a master that can lift up (the standard of living) for the masses or at least take his place at the head of the table in the board room. You see, a master that won’t sleep in the Manor (or in the penthouse on 5th Ave) is a problem. Before you know it no one will want to sleep in the Manor and where would that leave the economy?

I need a God that won’t die. I need a God that will leave my body alone. I need a God that will recognize my right to privacy. I need a God that will teach more about independence. I need a God that will lead me in the paths of self-assertion. How else am I going to get ahead in this world? How else will anyone recognize me as mature?

Instead we are sent this suffering servant who demands to wash our feet. If you would follow me, you must become vulnerable to me, to your Maker, and to one another. We must unlearn everything we’ve been taught about self-protection and yield to God. This footwashing tonight embodies that call to vulnerability. In taking off your shoes and your socks, the private becomes public, and you trust another (in Christ) with a task you haven’t trusted anyone with since your mother last bathed you as an infant. The one who presents himself for the washing (in Christ) makes himself vulnerable. The one who would serve as Christ has served makes herself vulnerable assuming the posture of the least of these. She must take the greatest of care in handling the feet of another. Watch the Body become one as the servant washes and the guest is served. You can neither serve nor remove your shoes without asking God to remove every hint of pride from your heart.

A Christian community, a parish church so characterized by this vulnerability is one that recognizes the New Jerusalem it longs to become. The whole of the parish pastoral care ministry calls us to such vulnerability. The one who is sick, laid low by weakness, is not set aside as insignificant or as a non-contributor. Instead she becomes the occasion for Christ’s self-revealing suffering glory. As the care-giver meets the one in need a glimpse of the Kingdom is garnered and the compass reset for grace.

The parish prayer team ministry is yet another place God calls us to be vulnerable to him and to one another. When we pray together, naming the darkest of fears and the deepest of secrets of our lives, we trust our fellow members in the Body to lift us up in joy, in the communion of saints, and in confidence. When we receive the prayer requests of others God places before us the opportunity to serve. It may be an uncomfortable place to be—receiving the prayer requests of others, asking your neighbor to pray for you—but if you continue to walk alone pursuing maturity as the world might define it, characterized by autonomy and independence, you will miss the glory that the Suffering Servant offers you today.

Supremely, we are called to become vulnerable to God and to another in the practice of the Holy Eucharist. When Dom Gregory Dix writes in his The Shape of the Liturgy, “Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need, from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacles of human greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth”… when DGD writes this, he understood the great gift that the Eucharist is. He, however, also appreciates its universal character and the way in which God’s people would starve without it. This sacrifice will have us assemble before the Lord and lay all that we have been, all that are, and all that we will ever be before him—laying our lives bare.

It was to the rhythm of this sacrifice that the words of the New Testament were written. It was to the rhythm of this sacrifice that we learned of the Trinity. It was to the rhythm of this sacrifice that the Creeds were birthed. It was to the rhythm of this sacrifice that we have been molded after the mind of Christ, dressed in servant’s clothing, equipped with the love of God and love of neighbor, and made vulnerable to God, to one another, and to powerful of this world.

Before there were bishops, there was the Eucharist. Before there were any of the church structures as we know them, there was the Eucharist. The Eucharist bids us sit still for the Reading of the Word of God. The Eucharist calls on us to profess the Faith once given to the saints. The Eucharist would have us pray for one another and for the Life of the World. The Eucharist puts us on our knees to confess our sin before God and all creation. The Eucharist presses the Body of our Lord into our hands invading every privacy and seeking the submission of creation to Creator. The Eucharist then sends us out into the world to proclaim this Good News of Jesus Christ.

Tonight there’s no leading from our strengths. Tonight there’s no standing on our own two feet. Tonight there’s no “I can do it myself”. There’s only the nakedness of my soul and the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ making holy the common People of God.