“They are assembled, astonished and disturbed
round him, who like a sage resolved his fate,
and now leaves those to whom he most belonged,
leaving and passing by them like a stranger.
The loneliness of old comes over him
which helped mature him for his deepest acts;
now will he once again walk through the olive grove,
and those who love him still will flee before his sight.
To this last supper he has summoned them,
and (like a shot that scatters birds from trees)
their hands draw back from reaching for the loaves
upon his word: they fly across to him;
they flutter, frightened, round the supper table
searching for an escape. But he is present
everywhere like an all-pervading twilight-hour.”
~Rainer Maria Rilke
A few weeks ago I was killing some time in Barnes & Noble in the Mall of America. I was rambling through the poetry section and opened a book by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke and saw this poem about the Last Supper. It was new to me and I found it challenging for the ways in which he spoke not only for a time for for all time. It seems he wrote it after seeing Da Vinci’s The Last Supper. I am always fascinated when one art meets another. Poet and painter forming a relationship of arts. The ways in which Rilke used words to give even greater depth to the already rich and profound images of Da Vinci grabs my heart.
Reading this poem again on this Good Friday, I am reminded of a play I saw a few weeks ago. It was called ‘Kingdom Undone’ and was a new telling of the passion of Jesus. The actor who played Jesus was remarkable, not creating a one dimensional, saccharine character as so often is the case, but a compelling and multi-layered personality full of compassion, humor and frustration. Frustration that led him to say several times throughout the play: “You just don’t get it.” He said it to his disciples Peter and James, to his mother Mary, to Mary Magdalene, to Herod and to Judas. All these characters kept trying to put Jesus in a box that was too small for his message, a box that included them but did not have room for the ‘other’.
As I have been preparing for this evening’s service and the Easter celebration which is to come, I have been reflecting on how we still don’t get it. For all the ways in which we try to follow in the Way of Jesus, we fall woefully short. The saddest thing to me is that we often do this in the name of religion, a religion we claim to be about this one whose living shows us the face of God. We don’t get it when we continue to exclude people because of belief or different beliefs. We don’t get it when we see ourselves as holding the exclusive way of being people of God. We don’t get it when we turn our backs on the needy, the hungry, the homeless, the lost and the outcast. We don’t get it when we allow the laws of our churches to be more important in how we are church together than allowing the unconditional love and example of Jesus to guide way.
So here is my prayer for this Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday: May we know in our very bones the gift of what it means to be children of the Christian household. May we once again look to the ways of Jesus to guide our way. May we understand the costs this might mean and embrace them. May we walk boldly into a new day, a new way, a new time.
May we practice resurrection.
