This is the use of memory
For liberation-not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past.---T. S. Eliot "Little Gidding."
SCRIPTURE: Luke 22: 14-20, John 17: 1-25
LITANY:
Leader: Holy God, this shall be a day of remembrance for you.
All: Remembering One, this shall be a day of personal and corporate remembrance.
L: This is the day we are recalled and re-commissioned to love.
All: "You shall love one another as I have loved you."
L: This is the day when we are mandated to remember.
All: "You shall serve one another as I have served you."
L: In eternal covenant of love for Christ, we promise to serve.
All: We seek to embody the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
UPPER ROOM MEAL:
Maundy Thursday is all about a meal. A simple meal prepared and served
upstairs. A place far away from the realm of world affairs. Yet this simple meal
became a Eucharist. What made a simple meal a Eucharist, a fellowship meal, is
the mystery we celebrate every Maundy Thursday, every Communion Sunday.
On this Thursday night, Jesus is strangely quiet. Maybe the 17 hour-a-day
work schedule did it. Teaching and ministering. Healing and comforting. Going
and coming. It is Passover. Everybody is busy. Everyone is getting ready for the
festival. Everyone is in town to celebrate the deliverance from the hands of the
Pharaohs of Egypt.
Pilate, the Roman Governor, is also in town. If Pilate is in town, Herod is not far off. Funny, how religion and politics are intersecting always. Remember Jesus calling Herod a "fox" once. I wonder what Jesus will call Pilate, if he happens to meet him. He will soon.
Jesus blesses the meal set in front of him. He breaks the bread and says, "This is my body given for you." He lifts up the cup and says, "This is the blood shed for you. Do this in remembrance of me." This is the day to remember who you are and whose you are. Remember.
Remember as our forebears remembered the sacred. Remember it in love.
"Maundy" comes from the Latin word "Mandatum," the mandate we have from Jesus. It is a mandate to our collective memory. Failure to remember has resulted in an act of betrayal of Jesus by Judas.
"THE NIGHT IN WHICH HE WAS BETRAYED":
There have been other nights of betrayals since then. Individuals and collective betrayals in history. Rape has been used as a weapon of war. There have been disappearances of children of Mothers of Argentina and elsewhere. Fifty thousand women are recruited annually into the U.S. for sexual services. There are many other crimes against humanity. Heaven alone knows how many thousands of innocents have been slaughtered and their families victimized.
The church takes on the abuses and violations as the broken and marred body of Jesus, as its own body, and speaks out on behalf of the voiceless. The church remembers. It always does. The betrayed and the Eucharist are set side by side. That is disconcerting. Isn't it? The Holy Communion took place in the Upper Room right above the meanness of human lives and this violent world. It was an Upper Room, right above the grime and gory nature of the dailiness of life below. The church remembers it. It remembers the victims; it remembers the betrayals. It remembers the treachery. And stands in solidarity with the victims, whether they are Christians or not.
Oscar Romero, the former martyred Archbishop of San Salvador, said more than 25 years ago:
For the church, the many abuses of human life. liberty and dignity are a
heartfelt suffering. The church, entrusted with the earth's glory, believes that
in each person is the Creator's image and everyone who tramples it offends God.
As the holy defender of God's right and of God's images, the church must cry
out. It takes as spittle in its face, as lashes on its back, as the cross in its
passion, all that human beings suffer, even though they are unbelievers. They
suffer as God's images. There is no dichotomy between humans and God's image.
Whoever tortures a human being, whoever abuses a human being, whoever outrages a
human being abuses God's image, and the church takes as its own that cross, that
martyrdom. (Sermon, Dec. 31, 1977).
Oscar Romero remembered and spoke out. The church ought to remember all those
who die innocent deaths, whether in war or peace times.
The church remembers and is in communion with the whole company of the church in all places and all times. With all the company of heaven and all the saints of the earth, we eat and drink. We eat and drink with all those who have gone before us and all those who are still living and struggling for human dignity and human rights, wherever they are, wherever our mission and ministry touch them.
Mark's gospel which narrates the Last Supper ends with Jesus and his disciples going out to the garden of Mount Olives for prayer and for the betrayal. Between Jesus' submission to the will of God and the betrayal of Judas is the positioning of the Lord's Supper.
As it was then, so it is today, and so must it always be in this confusing
and contradictory world. The Eucharist has for its context this world. A world
full of stain and shame, crime and cruelty. In a world like ours, Jesus takes
the elements of a common meal and blesses them and transforms them into a
Sacrament so that the believers might always remember that by his violent death
and glorious resurrection, we have hope. This, the church remembers...and will
always remember. This is how a simple meal becomes a Eucharist.
THAT THEY MAY BE ONE (John 17:22):
Christ's prayer that they may be one includes Iraqi Christians too. Iraq has had a Christian presence since the 2nd century. The Church in Mesopotamia became separated after the rise and fall of Byzantine and Persian empires. A Christianity known as Nestorian Christianity spread in Iraq. This has spread even to China where there is a famous stone tablet witnessing the arrival of Christianity long before Western missionaries went there.
The church was alive before and after the Arab conquest in Iraq. Due to the arrival of Roman Catholic Church in Iraq, the church became the Chaldean Catholic Church. This is the largest current church in Iraq. About 65 percent of Christians belong to this church. The Assyrian Church of the East is the second largest in Iraq. There are also Syrian Orthodox Church, the Armenian Apostolic Church and a tiny population of Protestant churches including about four Presbyterian churches in Iraq. In total, there are approximately 750,000 Christians in Iraq, about 3 percent of the total population. Quite a minority. But the same percentage of Christians in India and Pakistan. In Japan, there is one to one and a half percentage of Christians. This is the Body of Christ living and practicing its faith.
Let us remember the Iraqi Christians, Muslims and people of others faiths as they seek to rebuild their country from dust and ashes. Let us remember the men and women of our military who are in harm's way in the war. Let us remember all those who have lost their lives, their families, and communities. Let us continue to wage peace. In our fallen-ness and brokenness, let us experience the shared humanity of one another, as the Son of Man shows the way to peace and justice. Expanding of love is the call of the hour as Jesus expanded it on the Cross.
THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION:
(1) Look at the quotation from Oscar Romero given in this chapter. What are your insights and responses to them?
(2) What does it take to "remember" those who die innocent deaths in today's context?
PRAYER:
On this day, O God, you link us with all those who remember an Upper Room church that started a new celebration. We remember with gratitude your body broken for us, your blood shed for us on a day like this. Take us back again and again to that Upper Room church in order to renew our covenant with you, to know Christ's presence anew, and be transformed daily. Amen.