An Act of Holiness

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Text: selected verses from John 13

Never before in my life have I thought so much about washing my hands… how about you?

I mean, I washed my hands before… and I hope you did, too…

But never before did I see it as such a holy and important act.

A life saving act.

In the midst of this pandemic, washing our hands so frequently is flattening the curve.

It is giving our health care workers a fighting chance.

It is protecting the vulnerable in our midst.

Never before in our lifetimes was hand-washing such an act of service to our neighbors.

An act of service and humility and love just like Jesus shared with the disciples when he got down on his knees and washed their feet.

In the midst of Peter’s protest, he reminded them that this is not just an act of hygiene… not just something that he was doing to make them clean…

It was an act of holiness.

It was a means of grace.

It was a sign of love.

So tonight, gather at your table and to eat your supper and think about our call to love…

But before you do that.

Before you eat.

Take a moment and wash your hands.

If you are gathered with your family, crowd together around the sink and wash each other’s hands.

And as you wash your hands, think not just of hygiene.

Think not just of scrubbing germs away.

But remember that this is a holy act.

An act of love and service and humility and grace.

Love, apologies, and prayer breakfasts

I sat in a room filled with hundreds of Christians and felt a little bit like an outsider.

This was the second year I’ve attended the Iowa Prayer Breakfast… held every Maundy Thursday in Des Moines.  It includes prayers for our state and leaders, music, and a keynote message.  On the site, it clearly states that “people from all walks of life come to enjoy this Maundy Thursday celebration.”

I am so grateful for the opportunity to go and be in prayer with so many faithful people and for those who have invited me.  And that is because my hope and prayer for this kind of public gathering of people of faith is that the above statement is lived out:  that the tent is big enough for all walks of life and all corners of the Christian family to find a place in that room. After all,  ALL of our prayers are needed during these difficult times.

Yet, that wasn’t entirely my experience.

I found myself constantly wanting to interject with a “yes, but…” or “what about…” or “that’s not exactly right…”

The lineup of past speakers for this event has been full of Christian apologists and I found myself wanting to apologize for the public theology I was encountering.  I looked out on the 1,000+ people in attendance and feared that some might think this was the full scope of Christianity. And while it wasn’t appropriate to stand and lift up counterpoints in the moment, I do have this platform to lift up a different voice.

During the event, more than one speaker lifted up the religious persecution of Christians and Jews.  Our governor said, “The lives, the safety, the well-being of Christians and Jews especially in the Middle East is certainly threatened.”  Yet, Religious persecution is not limited to these two faiths. In the wake of the attacks in Brussels, I mourn for the loss of life there, and know that Yazidis, Turkmen, and Shia Muslims are daily under attack from ISIS in their homes as well.  I inhabit a Christian faith that also weeps with Sikh and Muslim and Buddhist and unbelieving brothers and sisters around the world who fear for their lives because of this kind of persecution.

As Branstad turned his gaze to threats to our religious freedom in the United States, I lift up the words of George Washington in his letter to the Hebrew Congregation:

…happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it [toleration] on all occasions their effectual support… May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants – while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.

The Christian faith does not ask us to abandon our love, care, and concern for brothers and sisters of other faiths. Rather than being “under attack,” I am free to practice my faith every single day without fear and yet I know that Muslim brothers and sisters right here in Des Moines sometimes have to be careful about how they do so.  As such, I was moved to tears as Pope Francis washed and kissed the feet of Muslim refugees on Maundy Thursday.   As a fellow clergywoman, Janie McElwee Smith, wrote:

The truth is this: no matter what else we do, say, or stand for, if we do not follow Christ’s commandment to love all of God’s children as Jesus has loved us, then we have not just missed the point. Nothing else we do will matter ?

What if this Iowa Prayer Breakfast, held on Maundy Thursday, was an extension of the command Jesus gives on this day: to love.

What if we lifted up in our prayers of lament and confession the realities of racism, homelessness, addiction, hunger, and poverty in our state.  What if instead of simply naming the evils and wickedness of our nation (and subtly placing the blame on the sinful people out there), we actually turned that same introspection to our own hearts – to the intolerance, the greed, the fears we perpetuate in spite of our proclaimed trust in the Lord. In a room filled with elected leaders, what if together, we repented of our failure to love the last, the least, and the lost.  After all, Maundy Thursday reminds us that in spite of the disciples’ failings, fears, and betrayal, Jesus loved them and washed their feet and continued to trust them with the message and mission of the Kingdom of God.  This day, above all days, it is appropriate to find ourselves in that crowd of those who turned their backs and to admit our sins. What if the message we heard on this morning was a challenge to a room full of influential leaders to repent and live more faithfully as disciples of Christ in the world?

I am exceptionally curious if this event is as politically partisan as it appeared this time, every year.  It felt more like the faith was promoting the elected leadership, rather than the leadership together with the public seeking God’s direction and blessing.  If this, truly, was a space where all Christians could pray for Iowa, in spite of our political leanings, then I think there would be much greater room for confession, lament, thanksgiving, and prayers for vision and unity.  I think whenever we surround ourselves with a particular perspective, we have a hard time seeing ourselves clearly.    Our current republican administration was represented through those elected officials in attendance and I can imagine those who are tasked with organizing the event are careful not to ruffle feathers. I wonder if it felt tilted in the opposite direction during democratic administrations.  Or does this gathering represent a more particular lens of Christian tradition?   My imagination and hope for this event is that the walls dividing us politically might be leveled as we share a meal with those with which we might not agree. After all, we share a common love for Jesus and this world and that love crosses all boundaries.

Two final words:

download1) Our speaker, Dr. Alveda King, did hearken back to the original languages in interpreting Romans 13, but then lifted up a cry against using X-mas instead of Christmas… with great applause from the crowd.  Note: the X used in this expression is a Christogram, in this case the letter “Chi” and the first letter of Christ in the Greek language, often used alone to represent Christ.  It can also be seen in the chi-rho, where the two Greek letters are combined to represent the person of Christ.

2) I have only attended for two years, but I have yet to see a clergywoman speak from the platform and three pastors spoke/prayed each year. I’d be happy to hear it has been otherwise in the past. Also, only four of the speakers listed since 1977 were women, including this year’s keynote. Both years, thankfully, scripture has been shared by a laywoman.  One way to intentionally show that “people from all walks of life” are welcome is to include people from all walks of life as speakers.

 

Tables and Holy Experiences

I have a sense of my first Maundy Thursday service, but I can’t quite place where it falls in my history.  I was not a child, but not yet fully grown.  Perhaps it was high school, or maybe somewhere in my college years.  I have a sense of a fellowship area, a place not just for worship, but for eating and laughing as well.  Classmates and adult leaders alike are present as we strip off our socks, giggle about stinky feet and toe lint, and form a line to wash one another’s feet.

When I began serving in a congregation and had the opportunity to craft the service for my people, that sense of communal life was an important sense memory to hold on to.  So we gathered around tables in our fellowship hall and worshiped with food on the table, candles lit, everything set as it might be for honored guests.  There were dates and figs and olives, bread and apples, glasses of grape juice and almonds.  It wasn’t meant to be authentic.  Or a seder meal. It was meant to nourish your soul and invite you in to an experience of the table. We worshipped with prayer and singing, celebrated the great thanksgiving, washed one another’s hands, and feasted with laughter and stories and finger food.

There is immense joy and comfort in the Maundy Thursday celebration.  As Jesus ate and drank with the disciples, he knew what was coming, but perhaps that only made the stories longer and the fellowship more sweet.  It was a time to teach them, to be with them, to love them just as they were…. knowing fully that in mere hours they would fall away one by one.  He knew they would fail, and yet he washed their feet.  He knelt before them.  He showed utter devotion and compassion.  He left them with words and memories that may have seemed normal in the space of that moment, but would become so much more in the reality of their betrayal and his death and resurrection.

We cannot be bystanders to that kind of experience.  We must dive into it.  We must sit at table with friends and family and strangers and break bread.  We must feel the cool water rush over our skin and the warmth of another human body as we slowly and deliberately and carefully take the time to wipe and dry away their fingers or toes.  If we are going to sing “let us break bread together,” then we must take the bread and feel the crust and one by one tear off a section and give it to our neighbor. 

Okay, maybe “must” isn’t the right word.  But when we do, when we let ourselves be transported in worship and word and action and song from our day to day hustle and bustle of life to another physical/spiritual/emotion place… then we do encounter the holy.

This year, in a new church, I dug through my files and found the service that had sustained me all those years.  With some flexible space at the front of our sanctuary (due to a few rows of pews being replaced by chairs) we made room for tables and gathered in that holy ground for some fellowship.

I watched as one or two couples reluctantly took their places at the round tables.  They were longing for the comfort of the pew. The experience of sitting back at watching from a far. The distance. We don’t realize it is there at first, but it is when we are ten rows back with all of those wooden seats between us and the front.

But they sat down. And participated. And the moment took over. 

As we pulled ourselves back together as a large group from table conversation and we were about to pray our prayer of thanksgiving following the meal, one of those women raised her hand. 

“We should do it like this every time,” she said.

Not every Maundy Thursday… she meant every time we break bread together and celebrate the Lord’s supper. 

“We might have to get rid of the rest of the pews,” I gently responded with a smile.

I’m not sure what is next or what the path forward might be, but experiencing one another and God and the divine mystery in that holy space opened up a world of possibilities about what it could mean for us to worship that has little to do with pews or hymn books or standard orders of worship.

I have been blessed to be a part of amazing worshipping experiences that grew organically from a community of faithful people.  Some were traditional and some were emergent.  But each was an outside of the box opportunity to personally and communally encounter God with sight and sound and smell and touch and taste.  Each gave me the space to be fully present in mind, body, and spirit.  What better way to worship the one who created us, inside and out?