Maundy Thursday - Communion in the Holy Spirit

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

How shall we follow Jesus’ commandment this year? How shall we do as Jesus did? We cannot wash one another’s feet, or hands. We cannot come to the rail to have our sins forgiven, or to receive Holy Communion. We cannot visit the sick or those in prison, we cannot invite strangers, or even friends and family, to share an Easter meal with us. We cannot do any of the things that Jesus and the disciples did on their last night together, because those things are the very opposite of love. This year, gathering with others is the opposite of love. We might even say that gathering with others, being in the presence of one another, is a betrayal. We might carry this virus unknowingly to those we love, we might infect someone else without realizing that we can, we might be an agent of death for them, and so we cannot do what Jesus did for us.

Of course, we know that all of these things are not the only ways to love. Love is more than just physical presence. Love manifests in a myriad of ways, because love always finds a way. As we have come to experience in this past month, love includes praying for one another, and staying away from one another. Love in this time includes making the sacrifice of giving up our own desire for personal presence in order to save the lives of those very ones we want to be with. 

Now, Jesus did know this kind of love, too, and it is superficial to interpret him as saying that that the only way we can give and receive his love is if we are physically together in one place. You see, the Gospel of John tells us that Jesus himself knew that he would not be physically present with his disciples for much longer. In order to prepare his disciples for their separation during his arrest and crucifixion, and then for his ascension into heaven, he told them, “I will be with you only a little longer.” And then he told them that when he was gone, he would send the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Comforter, to be with them.

This is our comfort, on this evening and this coming Sunday, and all the days to come: that God’s Holy Spirit, who brings us together, whom Jesus promised to send, is coming, has in fact already come, and is far more powerful and glorious than we can imagine. This is the same Spirit that was present at creation, that was the breath of God blowing over the waters. This is the same Spirit that was present at Pentecost, coming upon the disciples who were separated from their friends as they gathered behind locked doors. This is the same Spirit who encountered Paul on the road to Damascus, who revealed Christ to Paul, not in the flesh, but in the spirit. 

Most importantly for us right now, this is the same Spirit who came upon Jesus in his baptism, and came upon each one of us in our own baptism, making us one in Christ and with Christ. The power of the Holy Spirit is the power that makes each one of us part of the whole body of Christ through baptism. Not just each of you listening now, but across time. The power of the Holy Spirit transcends the separation of time, and makes you one with your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, your ancestors in faith, and with your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren to be born. In baptism, the Holy Spirit makes us one together. And not just with our family members, but with those around the world and across time. I know there have been people from all over Canada and the States joining us for our services. In our shared baptism in Christ, we are really, truly one, and we always have been. The power of the Holy Spirit, the glory of God, transcends all boundaries and gathers us all together. We are knit together with the first disciples, and with those who will be the last, all together in Christ.

It is this same Spirit who is at work among us this evening, calling us to gather and inviting us to the table for Holy Communion. It is the same Spirit of God who enables us to see and to believe that Jesus Christ is really and truly present in the bread and the wine of this table, and of every table where Jesus is invited. Even on a normal Maundy Thursday, when thousands of churches around the world celebrate Communion in their own ways, with their own bread and their own wine, the Spirit gives us the faith to believe that Christ is present in each place, gathering us together in one.

This year, it is this same Spirit whose power is manifest in our gathering this evening, who brings us together even though we are physically apart. The Holy Spirit is not limited by our inability to be in the same physical space. God’s Spirit is powerful enough, transcendent enough, to cross the boundaries of space and time, through whatever tools are available. In this time, that means the tools of technology. Through cameras and screens, through fibre optic cables and satellites, through phone lines and network servers, the Holy Spirit yet again overcomes the barriers that keep us apart, and holds us together in Christ.

On this Maundy Thursday, we are not able to follow Christ in the ways we’re used to, but there is something miraculous in this night that we have not experienced before. Every year until now, we have been in the same physical space to receive God’s love in the body and blood of Christ. In all those years, it was an easy thing to believe that we were one in Christ. But this year, God shows us something even greater, which is that despite our physical distance from one another, we are still gathered in Christ. We are still one Body. We still taste the one bread and drink from the one cup because it is still the one Spirit who is at work in our midst, it is still the one Lord who tells us that “this is my body given for you, this is my blood shed for you.” One bread and one cup does not mean that each bite is from the same loaf or each sip from the same bottle; it means that it comes from one body and from one blood, which comes from Christ who died for us. Our physical distance cannot prevent Christ from coming to us, our physical separation cannot undo the bonds that make us one in Christ through our baptism. Of course, it has always been this way––we have always been one in Communion with every Christian around the world, with the saints of every time and every place, but this year we experience it anew for the first time. We experience the power of the Holy Spirit and the glory of God in new ways, an ongoing revelation of the greatness of the Triune God.

And this is the glorious love of God for us: that God’s Spirit of love never stops finding new ways to reach us and to gather us together with one another. Yes, we are physically alone, and must stay this way in order to love one another, but Christ has been sent out to us. Christ comes to us where we are, so that one day, whenever that day comes, we might go out to where others are, knowing truly now that Christ really is present everywhere. God really does transcend all boundaries. “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Christ is with us, the love of Christ among us, and so even as the night grows dark, even as we flee from one another, even as we face death, even the death of Christ, we walk through the valley knowing that the risen Christ walks by our side, that God has prepared a table for us in the presence of our enemy, and that Easter is coming. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Palm Sunday - In the Midst of this Earthquake

Matthew 26

Have you ever experienced an earthquake? There’s different kinds, you know. There’s the sharp jolt kind, that feels like something hit the house. The first time I felt one those, it was over before I even realized what happened, and I thought, “oh! Well, okay then,” and I carried on with my day. There’s another kind, which is fairly short and rumbly, and feels like a heavy truck rolled right by the living room window. You might hear some glasses in the cupboard tinkling against each other, or dishes rattling. Those ones are often long enough for you to notice that they’re happening, but just as you notice, then they’re gone. Both of these kinds of earthquakes are alarming, but they’re usually over pretty quickly.

The scariest kind of earthquake is the one that starts slowly, like you’re standing on a swaying floor, and then builds up and sways more and more, and goes on and on. I was in one of those once where I actually heard the earthquake come rolling down the street towards our house. It wasn’t enough time to get ready, but it was enough time to get scared. Those slow rolling ones are the worst. You can’t tell when they’re going to end, and you can’t tell how bad they’re going to get before they do. You just run and hide under the table, and hang on for dear life, and pray.

The Gospel of Matthew mentions earthquakes a couple of times. It’s the only Gospel that does, actually. In our reading for today, the Gospel says that at the moment Jesus breathed his last, the earth shook and the rocks were split. 

We can imagine what that must have been like for the disciples. Remember, with the exception of some of the women, none of them were at Jesus’ crucifixion that morning. They had fled only the night before. Perhaps they were hiding out in the houses of their friends. Maybe they were hunkered down in an alley in Jerusalem, hoping that the Roman soldiers wouldn’t find them. Maybe some of them started back to Galilee the moment Jesus was arrested, risking being out on the open road at night. Wherever they were, as the evening of Jesus’ arrest became the morning, they would have experienced an increasing fear that his death was coming. Their world began shaking and falling apart the moment Jesus was arrested, and so when the earthquake at Jesus’ death rocked Jerusalem and the surrounding areas, they would have been terrified. Nobody knew how this was going to end, whether there would be more earthquakes to come or whether this earthquake would be big enough to destroy everything. They didn’t know whether the Roman soldiers would find them where they were hiding, whether they, too, would die. The week that had started with the triumphal procession in Jerusalem, with what was actually a protest rally against the Roman Empire, ended with each of them fleeing, with Peter separated from his beloved Jesus, with Jesus himself isolated and awaiting death. They were in hiding and the earthquake was coming.

Is it too cliched, too trite, to say, I know how they felt? Because we do. This year, this week, we do. We know the feeling of being in hiding, in isolation, of being separated from those we love. We know the fear of being exposed, of being “found” by this virus, we know the fear of losing family and friends, we are coming to know the fear of our loved ones dying alone because going to be with them means risking ourselves and others whom we love. 

And, even though we live in the prairies, we now know the fear of being in an earthquake, as this slow-at-the-beginning virus picks up in intensity and speed. It has hit the world like a rolling earthquake, and as we hang on for dear life and pray, we don’t know when it will end, or how much damage will be done when it does. As this Holy Week progresses from Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday to Good Friday, we identify even more closely with the journey of the disciples than perhaps ever before.

But there is one key difference between us and them. One absolutely critical difference that we cannot overlook.

We know how their story ends. We know that their earthquake stops, and that when it does, the cross is empty, and so is the tomb. We know that their fear ends in rejoicing with the risen Christ. We know that their hiding behind locked doors ends with them being found by Jesus himself, the Lord of life. We know that their week ends in Easter.

Now normally, pastors don’t like to rush from Palm Sunday to Easter. It’s important to take the time in the middle for Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, to lament and grieve and understand our part in Jesus’ death. But I think this year that we are lamenting and grieving and understanding our part in the death of others enough. And to survive through our earthquake, to have hope even, we need the reminder that Easter is coming. In fact, Easter has already come. Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

And so, just as the disciples’ story ends in Easter, we can put our hope in the promise that our story will end that way, too. The resurrection on Easter, the new life promised to all, the defeat of the power of death, this is the way all stories end. No matter how bad it gets in the middle, we always end with Easter. We do not know how long this earthquake will last, although we know it will get worse. We do not know how long we will be separated from those we love. We do not know which of our loved ones will die, and which of the structures that we thought would stand forever will fall. But we do know that the earthquake will not last forever, we know that separation is not forever, we know that even death is not forever. The disciples’ story, and ours, ends in the resurrection of the One who was betrayed, isolated, and died. It ends in the risen Christ. And so, even this week, and especially this week, as we take shelter and as we pray, we know that God hears us, and so we say, Thanks be to God. Amen.