“A blessing on this food
and all who have prepared it.
A blessing on this house
and all who eat within it.
A blessing on the work
of buying and selling
of carrying and storing
of farming and of harvesting.
A blessing on the land and all who live upon it.
A blessing on the rain and sun,
the care of the Creator.
A blessing on this food.
Amen”
~ Brian Woodcock

It is Thursday of Holy Week. Some call it Maundy Thursday, others call it Holy Thursday. It is the day when we remember Jesus gathering with his friends, his disciples and sharing a meal and washing their feet. In the church we often lift these acts up as examples of how we are all to be servants of one another and in the world. It is a benchmark of being a follower of the Way of Jesus.

It is a fact that Jesus was always hanging around where food was involved. There is the feeding of the 5000. His eating with Mary and Martha at their home. All those fishing trips with the disciples. I am assuming that their fishing was about the food and not abut the sport! The Gospel of John even used food images as a way Jesus spoke about himself: I am the bread of life.Even after his death, his disciples experienced him around a campfire as they baked fish and broke bread.

Over the past several years some very important facts about eating have become clear to me. All food contains and is an act of sacrifice. A sacrifice that is made for the good of another. Have you ever thought much about this? I have become acutely aware of the mindless eating I often do. Not just eating without thinking or even tasting but without honoring all the people and elements of Creation that have offered themselves for my nurture. The seeds themselves that become plant, vegetable or fruit. The soil which houses the seed. The water taken from another source to make the seeds grow. The sun offering its light. The animals, if meat is eaten, that literally gave their lives for the protein on my plate. All acts of sacrifice.

And that is just the beginning. There are the farmers and the field workers, many of whom don’t make a living wage. No matter how careful I am in buying food that was produced in fair conditions, someone was probably treated unjustly. It is a mark of the systems we have created. There are the truckers and the engineers and the pilots all lifting, carrying, loading and unloading. There are the stockers and the cashiers, the baggers and those that haul away the boxes and cartons in which the food arrived. All these people, whose lives I know nothing about, have contributed to nearly every meal I have eaten. And that doesn’t even include meals eaten in restaurants! Think of all those other hands, and lives, that present nutrition and beauty on a plate.

All so I may live. Perhaps this is the real gift of Holy Thursday and the eating of this meal we call the Last Supper. In it we are, if we choose, reminded of all the sacrifices that are offered so we may live. In the bread….which must be broken before it can be eaten….we are connected with all those other lives and the presence of the One who offers it. In the cup….which must be poured before it can be drunk….we are asked to join in the joy of this life by those whose hands made the drinking possible.

Bread. Cup. Sacrifice. Life.

“I have to believe that you still exist somewhere,
that you still watch me sometimes,
that you still love me somehow.

I have to believe that I need to stay here for some time,
that all this teaches me something,
so that I can meet you again somewhere.”
~Ann Thorp

Eternal Light: A requiem. Howard Goodall

On this Wednesday of Holy Week, I find myself doing something I have never done before during these days. I am preparing for a funeral which will be held on Saturday. The service is for one of the true saints of our community who lived more than ninety years on this Earth. At first, I have to admit that I was a bit unnerved at the timing of this service. And then my heart opened to the great joy and celebration of this family who will have the gift of knowing their loved one’s memory will be forever connected with the celebration of Easter.

In many traditions on the Saturday before Easter Sunday, communities hold an Easter vigil. During this time the large sweep of human history, from the perspective of the Christian household, is told. Beginning with the stories of creation, the scriptures are read and often acted out. Creation….The Exodus…..the warnings of the prophets….Jesus birth, life, death. The vigil often ends there with the hope that people arrive on Sunday morning to get the full impact of the celebration of resurrection. It is a way of connecting our individual and community life spans with the much larger drama in which we are always a part.

As I have been preparing for this funeral, I realized that this is also one of the practices in which we hope to engage as we celebrate the life of one who has passed from this life. We look back through the history of their life, whether made up of many years or few, and connect it to the larger story of humanity. As people of faith, we also seek to make the already visible connections to the telling of our tradition.

On Sunday evening our Sanctuary Choir ushered our community into Holy Week with a concert of music associated with the passion of Christ. One piece was Bach, a familiar sound to those who have encountered sacred music. The other was a new piece by Howard Goodall entitled “Eternal Light: A Requiem” which used poetry of our time set to haunting music. The poem above captured my imagination and my heart. “I have to believe you exist somewhere, that you watch me, love me. I have to believe that it all has meaning, that I am useful and my life has makes a difference. I have to believe that at some time, in some place I will see you again.”

These words, for me, so encompass our deepest hope not only for those who have passed on into eternity but also for our own daily living. They are words I imagine the disciples saying as they tried to come to terms with Jesus’ death. They are words I imagine the family and friends of our beloved one whose life we will celebrate Saturday might say.

When all is said and done, I believe, we all want to affirm those connections that unite us with the Eternal Light. In our living, in our dying, in our resurrections.

“Not because
we have made peace this day.
Not because
we have treated one another as our self.
Not because
we have walked the earth with reverence today.
But because there is mercy
because there is grace
because your Spirit has not been taken from us
we come
still thirsting for peace
still longing to love
still hungering for wholeness.”
~John Philip Newell

As a teenager I remember wondering why we call the week before Easter Holy Week. In my mind at that time ‘holy’ meant something perfect, something beyond every day life, something beautiful and other worldly. It seemed odd to me that we would use that word to describe the events of the last week of Jesus’ life.

Now when I think of holy, I see it much differently. To be ‘holy’ to me now, means for something to be more whole, more its fullest expression of what it was created to be. This has particular meaning to me this Lent with our church’s theme of ‘Breaking’. Over these almost 40 days, I have been privileged to be present to people telling their stories of brokenness. In the telling I have also heard the many ways they have been transformed, mended, healed, been made whole. It has been a rich and profound time for our community.

As a culture, I believe, we do not often have the opportunity to be truthful about the ways in which we are broken, the ways in which we have contributed to the brokenness of others, the ways in which the systems and institutions we have created contribute to brokenness in the world. It is our practice to slide along the surface, diverting our eyes and our hearts from what is unpleasant or painful. Even though in some place within us we know this is unhealthy, we convince ourselves that it is easier to live our days, and in turn our lives, in this pattern. In the process we are often surprised when some word or encounter then comes out sideways, a word spoken in resentment or a comment meant to injure.

But my experience of this Lent is that more and more stories have been told in truth in our community. Once people begin to speak openly about the places in which they are broken, a slow net of safety begins to be built. Vulnerability begins to find a home. Truth telling loses its threat. Our brothers and sisters in recovery known this wisdom.

Which brings me to Holy Week. As we begin once again to tell the stories of Jesus gathering with his friends for a last supper, of his arrest and execution, of his affirmations and admonitions to all those around him, it is impossible not to see how brokenness and vulnerability and truth telling are all a part of being holy. In each act, he was becoming more whole, more of who he was created to be. Our celebration on Easter then becomes the shining alleluia. An alleluia to which we are not only called to sing but to become.

In our Lenten devotional one writer titled their reflection ‘Broken for Good’. Perhaps that is what makes it appropriate to call this week holy. The One who breathed us all into being did so, I believe, for good. Not for perfection or some other worldly living but for this world with all its flaws, in this body with its aches and pains and failings. Each of us, even Jesus, was broken for good. In it all God’s presence shines through making us whole and holy.

For the healing of the world.

“Then they brought the donkey to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it.”
~Mark 11:7

Yesterday we once again waved our palms in worship and shouted ‘Hosanna’! as those of us in the Christian household begin our observation of the week we call holy. It is always a joyous morning. Children and adults alike seem excited to be given a palm branch and to be able to do something often out of character in worship….wildly wave their arms and shout. As we do this we remember Jesus who, along with his friends, joined in a parade that took him into Jerusalem to what became a not so joyous experience.

During our prayer time one of those in our circle shared how this Sunday is one of his favorites. He loved hearing this story, he said. Knowing this person as I do, this surprised me. He is often one to question and challenge many scriptures so when he said this I felt myself smile and my heart warm. This part of our telling of Jesus’ life somehow captures his imagination. He then went on to say that on his way to church he saw a sign outside another church that simply said: “Bet on the guy on the donkey.”

Bet on the guy on the donkey. As I thought about that message I thought of last week’s frenzy over the mega million dollar lottery. It was astounding to me how people stood in long lines to buy a ticket even though most understood the incredible odds against their winning this enormous sum of money. This excitement was the lead news story on most channels. People were interviewed about what they would do with the money if they won. Another station did an in depth report on those who had won large sums in the past. I noted that, at least the segment that I saw, only focused on those who had done really good things, those whose lives had been improved by this windfall. That evening while out to dinner with friends, we shared what we might do if such a large amount of money suddenly found its way into our bank accounts. All this dreaming when, as far as I know, none of us had even purchased a ticket!

It was probably not coincidence that this church sign used a gambling term in its Palm Sunday message. Bet on the guy on the donkey. There is more excitement over suddenly becoming a millionaire than there is about choosing to give your life over to peace and justice and kindness and welcoming all manner of people into your winner’s circle. For life changing experiences, we often find it easier to look outside ourselves for some dramatic, once-in-a-lifetime act of sheer luck(whatever that means) to put us on the path to a good life. This seems much easier that the day by day work of trying to follow in the Way of one who shared food with unlikely, unpopular people and healed people through a look, a touch, a prayer.

And so with the waving of palms and shouts of hosanna, those of us who chose or were born into the Christian household, find ourselves in Holy Week. It is a week that welcomes us into the fullness of what it means to remember the stories that have shaped our faith tradition and challenged us to walk in its ways. It is a week that exposes our brokenness and vulnerabilities as we once again hear those of our brother Jesus who walked the path before us. It is a week that asks us to consider our odds and to bet on the guy on the donkey.