Exodus 12:1-4,11-14 Psalm 116:1, 10-17 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 John 13:1-17, 31b-35
The Darkest Night
Our liturgy tonight is worship meant for the dimming of the day. Night approaches. As we gather, this particular Thursday evening in April in the ninth year of a new millennium, to light our little candles against the growing gloom, we take our places with the ancients who, some 3,500 years ago, huddled behind bloodied doorposts as death passed close and a mysterious birthing into freedom lay immanent. As is the way with story, they cower there still, caught between annihilation and liberation, and we with them.
We take our places, too, with their descendents climbing stairs to an upper room in Jerusalem almost 2,000 years ago. As is the way with story, they gather still, caught between incalculable loss and incomprehensible life, and we with them.
Only one among us knows the full depth and breadth of the death that is passing close, the dark night closing in, a night that holds in its shadowed embrace all the suffering and loneliness and alienation that breaks the great heart of creation from the beginning of time to the end. Only one knows that above and beneath, behind and before, and – inexplicably – within this darkness, pulses light immeasurable.
The One who knows is here with us tonight. He is our Host at the table that now waits glowing with white linens to hold the holy meal. He is our Servant with bowl and towel. He teaches still, in bread and wine and cleansing water.
But, soon, very soon, the bread will be broken, the cup poured out, the water spilled upon the earth from a wounded side. The table stripped, become its shadow self, a burial slab. The linens a shroud. Our Servant Host surrendered into death’s mute embrace.
This is God in God’s most confounding guise. Not shining forth. No glory here. Not Emmanuel, God with us as we would like, the comforting sound of familiar footsteps walking in the dark by our side. This is God leaving us, walking ahead into that darkest of places, disappearing around a bend barely visible in the gloom, drawing mystery around himself like a shroud.
This is the God of Isaiah, explaining, “My ways are not your ways.” This is the God of Job, refusing to explain anything at all.
But not refusing to equip, not refusing to prepare. God with us in another way. Not the way our weak and needy selves would prefer. In a way that calls us to claim an inner strength we doubt we have. In a way that awakens within us what we have always thought belonged to the Master alone.
The bread broken and shared, the cup offered. “Do this in remembrance of me.” The washing of feet. “…if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”
Such scandalous intimacy. Our feet gently held, healed of the road’s hurts, dried by hands that are not our own. Our hands becoming the hands of someone greater, someone more compassionate. Bread becoming flesh – his flesh, our flesh. Wine becoming blood – his blood, our blood. Consuming — somehow ingesting the essence, the true being-ness of the One these plain things represent. Somehow, the One who is leaving is also here, within.
The distribution of the bread, the wine. Given and received. Together we come to the altar rail, and we are linked through the One whose Being we take in – Christ, like the hub of a great wheel. Each of us a spoke.
The washing of each other’s feet. Giving and receiving. We come to be washed, bringing our need for wholeness, for care, for comfort, for community. And we wash, becoming Christ Healer, Christ Servant, Christ Mother, for one another. In this mutuality we are linked in a different way, a way more complex, multi-layered and interwoven than spoke to hub. We are Christ to Christ to Christ. Love to Love to Love.
Together, in the dimming of this darkest night, we build the Body that will be broken and mended, food and feeding, love and lover a thousand thousand thousand times before the story is through.
“Little children, I am with you only a little longer…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.” Amen.
~ Deborah Pender Hutchison
