A Homily for Holy Thursday - Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper
Readings: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 John 13:1-15
Unfortunately, if you have grown up within Christianity or its milieu, you might never notice how singular some of its claims and practices are. And failing that, you miss a measure of its magnificent meaning.
One way to see the mismatched abundance of Maundy Thursday would be to compare what happened that night with the events in a poem called “Home Burial,” by Robert Frost.
Set in the 19th century, a farmer and his wife have lost a child, presumably their first. Is there a greater grief?
People mourn differently. The farmer throws himself into work, while his wife cannot move for sorrow. She often simply stares into space. Does she see her child?
He saw her from the bottom of the stairs
Before she saw him. She was starting down,
Looking back over her shoulder at some fear.
She took a doubtful step and then undid it
To raise herself and look again. He spoke
Advancing toward her: “What is it you see
From up there always—for I want to know.”
She does not answer him.
The wife’s sense of bearing the unbearable is so strong! She sees her husband, still working in the face of death, to be nothing less than callous. Is his heart not broken as well?
When he asks her to open her grieving heart, she snaps back that he cannot fathom her pain.
“If you had any feelings, you that dug
With your own hand—how could you?—his little grave;
I saw you from that very window there,
Making the gravel leap and leap in air,
Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly
And roll back down the mound beside the hole.
I thought, Who is that man? I didn’t know you.
And I crept down the stairs and up the stairs
To look again, and still your spade kept lifting.”
Eventually, they have it out. He insists that she share her grief with him. How can they be of one heart and flesh if they do not seek solace together?
“Can’t a man speak of his own child he’s lost?”
“Not you! Oh, where’s my hat? Oh, I don’t need it!
I must get out of here. I must get air.
I don’t know rightly whether any man can.”
“Amy! Don’t go to someone else this time.
Listen to me. I won’t come down the stairs.”
He sat and fixed his chin between his fists.
“There’s something I should like to ask you, dear.”
“You don’t know how to ask it.”
“Help me, then.”
Her fingers moved the latch for all reply.
Death, the devil’s chief cudgel, has divided this couple. It may well end their marriage in fact if not on paper. Is the sorrow of death sayable? Or does it dwell in the unutterable?
How is it then, in all their centuries, that Christians have gathered each Sunday to remember, to speak of, even to proclaim the death of their savior? If he was truly loved, should we not meet in tears? How can we speak of celebrating the death of the Lord? Are we more callous, more insensitive to suffering, than the farmwife finds her husband?
And make no mistake! The meal is all about his death. He made it so. This supper is remembered because it took place the night before Christ died, when the shades of death and hatred were coalescing. The mismatch of this meal was written into it by Christ himself.
The Gospels make it clear that Jesus knew his arrest and execution were imminent. In the Garden of Gethsemane, we see him rightly fearing for the morrow. How then does he gather his disciples to celebrate Israel’s great act of thanksgiving for her deliverance from slavery? On a human level, would his disciples not have understood, and, given the dangers they were in as well, not have accepted Christ saying: “It’s just not safe. I’m so afraid. How has it come to this? What is there to celebrate?”
But that is not what Jesus did. He celebrated something akin to a Passover meal in a manner that, had his enemies known, would rightly have been used against him in the charge of blasphemy.
Why? Because instead of giving thanks for the covenant, the law and the land, Christ gives thanks to his Father for what he is about to accomplish in the death of the Son. Jesus takes a piece of bread and says, in the literal Aramaic, “This is me, for you.” He speaks of the chalice after the meal, the cup of thanksgiving, as his blood.
Put bluntly, Jesus calls the God of Israel his Father, and he gives thanks to this God for himself, for his being handed over to death and, through death, to us. This anomaly is a great testament to the truth of the Gospel, for who would, or even could, make up such a thing? In the face of his own death, Jesus thanks his Father not for the ancient covenant but for the new one, which can only come through the shedding of his blood.
That same mismatch is repeated in every Mass because the Eucharist is the church’s great act of thanksgiving. The very word “Eucharist” means “to give thanks.” So, to be plainspoken, in the face of death, even the death of our own beloved ones, the church enjoins us to gather and to give thanks. Is that heartless? Is it indifference in the face of our suffering?
No. Christ never forgot why he came into the world. So, even when death was imminent, he gave thanks to his Father for what would soon be accomplished, and we give thanks in every Eucharist because the Father gave us Jesus and his sacrificial death.
Robert Frost’s poem ends with an impasse and a threat of violence, though one might call it violent love.
“You—oh, you think the talk is all. I must go—
Somewhere out of this house. How can I make you—”
“If—you—do!” She was opening the door wider.
“Where do you mean to go? First tell me that.
I’ll follow and bring you back by force. I will!—”
Do not balk at the thought of violent love. Do not reject the scandal of the cross. Would you not grab someone bent upon jumping off a high ledge? The Trinity shows the same in the death of Christ. On the night before he died, Jesus revealed the work of the Trinity, the depth of its love. The portals of death are breached, and hell itself is plundered—and all of this, just to bring back the beloved.
