Maundy Thursday
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VIII, Cycle A
Object:
Theme For The Day
In Christ, we have nothing to fear: not even the night.
These passages occur in all three cycles of the lectionary for this day.
Old Testament Lesson
Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10) 11-14
The Institution Of The Passover
This passage, the story of Passover, has undoubtedly been chosen for Maundy Thursday because of its affinities with the Last Supper. If verses 5-10 are omitted when reading this passage in worship, some explanation should be given as to the fact that blood from the slaughtered lambs was painted on the doorposts of the Israelites' houses as a sign to the Lord to pass them by (without this background, verse 13 makes little sense). Verses 21-27a, which are very similar to this passage, are a Yahwistic account that parallels this Priestly one. The Passover meal -- reminiscent of its origins at the time of Israel's flight from Egypt -- consists of the simplest fare imaginable. The lamb is to be roasted directly over the fire using no cooking implements, the bread is unleavened, and the people are to eat this food as though they were ready to leave on an imminent journey (verses 8-11). These instructions for celebrating the Passover memorial meal are embedded in the narrative of the events, themselves, that led to its institution; this leads to the striking situation that has Moses commanding the people how to celebrate their deliverance before the deliverance is even complete.
New Testament Lesson
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
The Institution Of The Lord's Supper
These words are the oldest in the New Testament having to do with the institution of the Last Supper (other accounts, from the gospels -- which were written down some years later -- are at Matthew 26:26-29, Mark 14:22-25, and Luke 22:14-23). Paul's occasion for writing is the need to correct certain abuses that have arisen at the Corinthians' celebration of the Lord's Supper -- primarily selfish hoarding of food (verses 17-22). Thus, these solemn liturgical words, beloved my millions, have their origin in a church fight! The opening of this passage, "For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you," indicates the high importance Paul places on these instructions. They are so important that he displays their pedigree, as coming directly from Jesus (even though Paul was not himself present at the Last Supper). The phrase, "the new covenant in my blood" (v. 25) has associations both with the "blood of the covenant" Moses spatters on the people in Exodus 24:8 and with the new covenant of Jeremiah 31:31-34. The rich concept of remembrance (anamnesis) in this passage ("do this in remembrance of me") reminds us that remembrance is not only a mental process, but also a matter of performing certain actions (verses 24, 25). The phrase, "You proclaim the Lord's death until he comes" ties the past to the future -- bringing together, in a powerful way, memory and hope (v. 26).
The Gospel
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Jesus Washes The Disciples' Feet
"I give you a new commandment," says Jesus, "that you love one another" (v. 34). It is this commandment that leads to the name for this day, Maundy Thursday. "Maundy" is a corruption of the Latin mandatum, or commandment. This commandment to love is presented not only in words but also in deeds: as Jesus washes the disciples' feet, then instructs them to do likewise. How powerful an object lesson that must have been for the disciples -- to see their revered rabbi breaking all the ordinary rules of decorum, performing this humble service for those who, by rights, should have been doing it for him! Yet, that's the way love is. Love, as Paul says, "is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way..." (1 Corinthians 13:5). Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh, in their Social-Science Commentary on the Gospel of John (Fortress, 1998, p. 221), point out that in our culture, we believe dying people sometimes see their life "flash before their eyes" -- a retrospective of all they have experienced. In cultures of the ancient Near East, by contrast, a person on the eve of death -- as Jesus is, at the Last Supper -- was thought to be able to see across the boundary between life and death, into the realm of the gods. Such a person was thought to be able to foretell the future. Malina and Rohrbaugh quote Xenophon, who writes, "At the advent of death, men become more divine, and hence can foresee the forthcoming." In giving his disciples the rite of footwashing, Jesus is foretelling, at the hour of his death, just how they are going to live in the future. It is because of this radical, paradigm-breaking love that Tertullian, a century or so later, could report this reaction of the Roman pagans to the followers of Jesus: "See how these Christians love one another!"
Preaching Possibilities
Sometimes, the lectionary omits verses from the middle of its chosen passages. It always pays to give special scrutiny to these omissions because they often contain important insights that, for one reason or other, the lectionary editors were reluctant to set out upon the banqueting-table of God's people. Sometimes it is because the taste of these passages is bitter. Such is true of this Maundy Thursday gospel lesson from John.
Verses 16-31a tell the story of Jesus' betrayal by Judas -- a bitter dish indeed. The last line of this omitted passage tells how Judas departs after having broken bread with his erstwhile Lord and master: "So, after receiving the piece of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night" (John 13:30).
It was night. Those words are chilling. It was night in more ways than one.
Many of our congregations gather for evening worship on Maundy Thursday -- one of the few occasions in the Christian year when they do so. Most of the time, worship belongs to the day: "When morning gilds the skies, my heart awaking cries, 'May Jesus Christ be praised!'" "Morning has broken, like the first morning..." "Awake, my soul, and with the sun its daily course of duty run...."
Most of us like our worship services positive, upbeat, life-affirming. When the benediction is pronounced and the time comes to leave the sanctuary, we'd like there to be a bit more spring in our step than when we went in.
Pick up a hymnal and you'll see that only a very few hymns are set aside for evening worship. These are not so well-known, perhaps, as some of the others because the occasions for using them are so few. But they're lovely, all of them: "Now the day is over, night is drawing nigh, shadows of the evening steal across the sky." "Day is done, but love unfailing dwells ever here; shadows fall, but hope, prevailing, calms every fear." "Now, on land and sea descending, brings the night its peace profound; let our vesper hymn be blending with the holy calm around. Soon as dies the sunset glory, stars of heaven shine out above, telling still the ancient story, their Creator's changeless love."
One thing that's true of nearly all these nighttime hymns is that they're shot through with light. They're really very optimistic. Darkness, to the hymn-writer, is not utter darkness; it's "shadows creeping across the sky" -- which implies a source of light somewhere. The sun may be dying in a blaze of orange glory, but it gives way to glowing stars.
These evening hymns are meant to give comfort, to calm fears, to speak to that little child in all of us who's afraid of the dark. None of these typical evening hymns fits in very well with Maundy Thursday. On this night, of all nights, we move not from darkness into light but from light into darkness. When this part of the story of Christ' passion is ended, the next thing ahead of him is torture and death.
Imagine the scene as it must have been, that night so long ago. Jesus and his disciples are banqueting together in typical Greco-Roman fashion. They're lying on couches, each man propped up, according to custom, on his left elbow (leaving the right hand free to dip food from the low table in front of them). Outside the simply furnished room, everything is dark, but inside there's the rich golden hue of lamplight.
The mood is subdued, for these are dangerous times. They all know it: but, for these twelve close companions and their master, there is the abiding joy of being together.
To Jesus' right, in the place of honor, is "the disciple whom Jesus loved" -- very possibly, John himself. In this position, these two close friends are ideally situated to share food and talk intimately. The only other disciple Jesus is close enough to touch is the one on his left -- although, reclining on his left elbow as he is, to reach this man with his right hand he's got to twist completely around and look at him out of the corner of his eye.
Jesus declares that one who's present at dinner that night will betray him.
"Who is it?" they all want to know.
"The one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish." The only one Jesus could reach, besides his close friend John, is the man who's sitting over his left shoulder, almost behind him and that man has to be Judas Iscariot. Jesus regards him coolly, out of the corner of his eye, before speaking: "Do quickly what you are going to do."
"So, after receiving the piece of bread," John tells us, Judas "immediately went out." But then John adds four little words -- simple words, yet carrying a world of meaning: "And it was night."
"It was night." Not the sunset, with its golden colors, nor the bright web of shining constellations, but darkness, utter and complete. It is the darkness of betrayal. In human relationships, there are few experiences more devastating than that of betrayal. Ask the jilted spouse, the abused child. One you trusted, one you loved, suddenly proves unfaithful. The marriage implodes, the business partnership breaks up, the friendship sours. All that remains is a dreadfully cold, hollow feeling, one that not even righteous anger can offset. "And it was night."
Where do we go when it is night? To whom do we turn? What comfort can we possibly find as we see our betrayer turn on his heel and go out, or perhaps hold a dying loved one in our arms?
Thomas Lynch is a poet and also an undertaker. In the course of his work he has seen many human tragedies. One of the most gut-wrenching was the death of a little girl named Stephanie, killed in a bizarre accident. She was killed while riding in the backseat of her family's minivan driving down an interstate highway. A group of teenage boys was vandalizing a local cemetery. On a whim, they carried a small stone marker to a highway overpass and dropped it over the side. Here's how Thomas Lynch describes what happened:
"The stone was falling earthward at 32 feet per second. The van was heading south at seventy miles per hour. The stone shattered the windshield, glanced off Stephanie's father's right shoulder, woke her mother riding in the passenger seat and, parting the space between the two front seats, struck Stephanie in the chest as she lay sleeping in the backseat. She had just traded places with her younger brother who was cuddled with his two other sisters in the rear seat of the van. It did not kill Stephanie instantly. Her sternum was broken, her heart bruised beyond repair. A trucker stopped to radio for help but at 2 a.m. in Nowhere, Kentucky, on a Friday morning, such things take time. The family waited by the roadside reciting the rosary as Stephanie gasped for air and moaned. They declared her dead at the hospital two hours later. Stephanie's mother found the stone in the backseat and gave it to the authorities. It said RESERVED FOSTER and was reckoned to be a corner marker from the Foster Lot in Resurrection Cemetery."
Lynch admits to asking, and in turn discarding, the same philosophical questions any of us would ask, were we in his situation, preparing to embalm the body of this young girl. "I keep shaking a fist at the almighty, asking 'Where were you on the morning of the thirteenth?' The alibi," he admits, "changes every day."
Lynch continues the story:
"When I first took Stephanie's parents to the cemetery, to buy a grave for their daughter, her mother stood in the road and pointed to a statue of the risen Christ. 'I want her over there,' she said, 'at the right hand of Jesus.' We walked across the section to an empty, unmarked space underneath the outstretched granite right arm of Christ. 'Here,' Stephanie's mother said, her wet eyes cast upward into the gray eyes of Christ. Stephanie's father, his eyes growing narrow, was reading the name on the neighboring grave. FOSTER is what it read. It was cut in stone." (Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking [New York: Penguin, 1997], pp. 54-57)
So where do we go when it is night? To whom do we turn? In all his years of work as an undertaker, Thomas Lynch has become utterly convinced of the value of faith. For it is in these experiences of darkest night that faith shines forth the brightest. In his words:
"... better than baptisms or marriages, funerals press the noses of the faithful against the windows of their faith. Vision and insight are often coincidental with demise. Death is the moment when the chips are down. That moment of truth when the truth is that we die makes relevant the claims of our prophets and apostles. Faith is not required to sing in the choir, for bake sales or building drives; to usher or deacon or elder or priest. Faith is for the time of our dying and the time of the dying of the ones we love. Those parsons and pastors who are most successful -- those who have learned to 'minister' -- are those who allow their faithful flocks to grieve.... "Uncles find nickels behind our ears. Magicians pull rabbits from out of hats. Any good talker can preach pie in the sky or break out the warm fuzzies when the time is right. But only by faith do the dead arise and walk among us or speak to us in our soul's dark nights." (The Undertaking, pp. 80-81)
Go forth, then, into the darkness -- into the night. Go forth knowing that, though there may be no light to be seen, there is light all the same. That light is the light that came into the world when the world was new -- that "light that enlightens everyone," even Jesus Christ our Lord.
We cannot understand why, in life, certain things happen or fail to happen. We simply don't have the vision, the perspective. Yet we can trust that, when in life (or in death) it falls to us to venture out into the darkness, there is one who travels beside us. He can see -- and he knows the way.
Prayer For The Day
We ask you, Lord, for many things when we pray.
We ask you for health.
We ask you for happiness.
We ask you to help us love, and be loved.
Yet, this night, we ask you for just one thing: We ask that we may see the light,
the light that enlightens everyone
that has come into our world, in Jesus Christ.
May we see it,
and may we learn to share it,
so others may see it too. Amen.
To Illustrate
In this age of electric light, we have a very different perspective on the night than did our pre-indus-trial forbears. Roger Ekirch, a historian at Virginia Tech, has spent years studying these differences of perspective. In centuries past, he explains, people considered night so different from the day that they referred to it as a different "season."
How different, indeed, it was to walk out into the night, relying only on a hand-held candle or sputtering lamp for illumination! The hours of darkness that descended each night were hours of fear. Night was when so many bad things could happen to a traveler: falling into ditch or pit, being thrown by a horse unfamiliar with dark paths, being ambushed by bandits. In popular folklore, night was the time when evil spirits ruled and could fall upon the foolish or unwary.
With new technology, Ekirch maintains, the old experience of night was no more. A wholly new experience of night has taken its place (at least, in all but the most remote areas of the world). "Thomas Edison hammered the last nail in the old night's coffin."
-- based on Richard and Joyce Wolkomir, "When Bandogs Howl and Spirits Walk," Smithsonian, January 2001
***
At times I have found it difficult to believe that darkness could be a source of growth. Darkness to a child, as well as to many adults, can be a scary, fearsome place where wild creatures wait to pounce and prey. But, in actuality, some kinds of darkness are truly our friends. The world of our mother's womb had no light: It is where we grew wonderfully and filled out our tiny limbs of life. Our earth would be quite lifeless, too, if we did not plant seeds deep within the lonely darkness of the soil so they could germinate and bring forth green shoots. I know, too, that we would soon die of an overheated planet if nightfall did not come to soothe the sunfilled land. Darkness is very essential for some aspects of growth and protection.
-- Joyce Rupp, The Star in My Heart: Experiencing Sophia, Inner Wisdom (Innisfree Press, 2000)
***
In the midst of depression I once asked my spiritual director how I could be feeling such despair when not long before the depression hit I had been feeling so close to God?
"Simple," she said, "the closer you get to light, the closer you get to darkness."
The deepest things in life come not singly but in paradoxical pairs, where the light and the dark intermingle.
-- Parker Palmer, The Active Life: Wisdom for Work, Creativity, and Caring (Jossey-Bass, 1999)
***
Faith is the darkness in which Christ lives.
-- Martin Luther
***
There was a priest in a Midwestern city who wanted to help inner-city children. He wanted them to see something more than their own situations. He put them on a bus and took them to see some things of great beauty. They went to the art museum and saw paintings by the masters. They went to a symphony matinee and heard beautiful music. They went for a walk through a row of homes that were done over by a creative team of architects. That young priest showed those children the best and brightest things he knew.
Then they climbed back on the bus and went home. That night one of those young boys set his apartment house on fire. They rescued the neighbors and family but the place burned down. The priest was in tears when he visited the boy in a detention cell. "Why did you do it?" he asked.
"I saw all those beautiful things," said the boy, "and then I came home and saw how ugly my world was, and I hated the ugliness, so I wanted to burn it down." Shine some light in a dark place and there's no telling what will happen. When all you have ever seen is darkness, that is all you know. And when light comes, it makes for a contrast. Darkness remains a choice. In fact, it is possible for light to come into the world, and for somebody to say, "Turn out the lights!" It is possible for the Light of the world to shine on people, and those people not accept it.
-- William G. Carter, Praying for a Whole New World (CSS Publishing Company, 2000)
***
People who live close together can be sources of great sorrow for one another. When Jesus chose his twelve apostles, Judas was one of them. Judas is called a traitor. A traitor, according to the literal meaning of the Greek word for "betraying," is someone who hands the other over to suffering. The truth is that we all have something of the traitor in us because each of us hands our fellow human beings over to suffering somehow, somewhere, mostly without intending or even knowing it. Many children, even grown-up children, can experience deep anger toward their parents for having protected them too much or too little. When we are willing to confess that we often hand those we love over to suffering, even against our best intentions, we will be more ready to forgive those who, mostly against their will, are the causes of our pain.
-- Henri J.M. Nouwen, Bread for the Journey (New York: Harper Collins, 1997)
In Christ, we have nothing to fear: not even the night.
These passages occur in all three cycles of the lectionary for this day.
Old Testament Lesson
Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10) 11-14
The Institution Of The Passover
This passage, the story of Passover, has undoubtedly been chosen for Maundy Thursday because of its affinities with the Last Supper. If verses 5-10 are omitted when reading this passage in worship, some explanation should be given as to the fact that blood from the slaughtered lambs was painted on the doorposts of the Israelites' houses as a sign to the Lord to pass them by (without this background, verse 13 makes little sense). Verses 21-27a, which are very similar to this passage, are a Yahwistic account that parallels this Priestly one. The Passover meal -- reminiscent of its origins at the time of Israel's flight from Egypt -- consists of the simplest fare imaginable. The lamb is to be roasted directly over the fire using no cooking implements, the bread is unleavened, and the people are to eat this food as though they were ready to leave on an imminent journey (verses 8-11). These instructions for celebrating the Passover memorial meal are embedded in the narrative of the events, themselves, that led to its institution; this leads to the striking situation that has Moses commanding the people how to celebrate their deliverance before the deliverance is even complete.
New Testament Lesson
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
The Institution Of The Lord's Supper
These words are the oldest in the New Testament having to do with the institution of the Last Supper (other accounts, from the gospels -- which were written down some years later -- are at Matthew 26:26-29, Mark 14:22-25, and Luke 22:14-23). Paul's occasion for writing is the need to correct certain abuses that have arisen at the Corinthians' celebration of the Lord's Supper -- primarily selfish hoarding of food (verses 17-22). Thus, these solemn liturgical words, beloved my millions, have their origin in a church fight! The opening of this passage, "For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you," indicates the high importance Paul places on these instructions. They are so important that he displays their pedigree, as coming directly from Jesus (even though Paul was not himself present at the Last Supper). The phrase, "the new covenant in my blood" (v. 25) has associations both with the "blood of the covenant" Moses spatters on the people in Exodus 24:8 and with the new covenant of Jeremiah 31:31-34. The rich concept of remembrance (anamnesis) in this passage ("do this in remembrance of me") reminds us that remembrance is not only a mental process, but also a matter of performing certain actions (verses 24, 25). The phrase, "You proclaim the Lord's death until he comes" ties the past to the future -- bringing together, in a powerful way, memory and hope (v. 26).
The Gospel
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Jesus Washes The Disciples' Feet
"I give you a new commandment," says Jesus, "that you love one another" (v. 34). It is this commandment that leads to the name for this day, Maundy Thursday. "Maundy" is a corruption of the Latin mandatum, or commandment. This commandment to love is presented not only in words but also in deeds: as Jesus washes the disciples' feet, then instructs them to do likewise. How powerful an object lesson that must have been for the disciples -- to see their revered rabbi breaking all the ordinary rules of decorum, performing this humble service for those who, by rights, should have been doing it for him! Yet, that's the way love is. Love, as Paul says, "is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way..." (1 Corinthians 13:5). Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh, in their Social-Science Commentary on the Gospel of John (Fortress, 1998, p. 221), point out that in our culture, we believe dying people sometimes see their life "flash before their eyes" -- a retrospective of all they have experienced. In cultures of the ancient Near East, by contrast, a person on the eve of death -- as Jesus is, at the Last Supper -- was thought to be able to see across the boundary between life and death, into the realm of the gods. Such a person was thought to be able to foretell the future. Malina and Rohrbaugh quote Xenophon, who writes, "At the advent of death, men become more divine, and hence can foresee the forthcoming." In giving his disciples the rite of footwashing, Jesus is foretelling, at the hour of his death, just how they are going to live in the future. It is because of this radical, paradigm-breaking love that Tertullian, a century or so later, could report this reaction of the Roman pagans to the followers of Jesus: "See how these Christians love one another!"
Preaching Possibilities
Sometimes, the lectionary omits verses from the middle of its chosen passages. It always pays to give special scrutiny to these omissions because they often contain important insights that, for one reason or other, the lectionary editors were reluctant to set out upon the banqueting-table of God's people. Sometimes it is because the taste of these passages is bitter. Such is true of this Maundy Thursday gospel lesson from John.
Verses 16-31a tell the story of Jesus' betrayal by Judas -- a bitter dish indeed. The last line of this omitted passage tells how Judas departs after having broken bread with his erstwhile Lord and master: "So, after receiving the piece of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night" (John 13:30).
It was night. Those words are chilling. It was night in more ways than one.
Many of our congregations gather for evening worship on Maundy Thursday -- one of the few occasions in the Christian year when they do so. Most of the time, worship belongs to the day: "When morning gilds the skies, my heart awaking cries, 'May Jesus Christ be praised!'" "Morning has broken, like the first morning..." "Awake, my soul, and with the sun its daily course of duty run...."
Most of us like our worship services positive, upbeat, life-affirming. When the benediction is pronounced and the time comes to leave the sanctuary, we'd like there to be a bit more spring in our step than when we went in.
Pick up a hymnal and you'll see that only a very few hymns are set aside for evening worship. These are not so well-known, perhaps, as some of the others because the occasions for using them are so few. But they're lovely, all of them: "Now the day is over, night is drawing nigh, shadows of the evening steal across the sky." "Day is done, but love unfailing dwells ever here; shadows fall, but hope, prevailing, calms every fear." "Now, on land and sea descending, brings the night its peace profound; let our vesper hymn be blending with the holy calm around. Soon as dies the sunset glory, stars of heaven shine out above, telling still the ancient story, their Creator's changeless love."
One thing that's true of nearly all these nighttime hymns is that they're shot through with light. They're really very optimistic. Darkness, to the hymn-writer, is not utter darkness; it's "shadows creeping across the sky" -- which implies a source of light somewhere. The sun may be dying in a blaze of orange glory, but it gives way to glowing stars.
These evening hymns are meant to give comfort, to calm fears, to speak to that little child in all of us who's afraid of the dark. None of these typical evening hymns fits in very well with Maundy Thursday. On this night, of all nights, we move not from darkness into light but from light into darkness. When this part of the story of Christ' passion is ended, the next thing ahead of him is torture and death.
Imagine the scene as it must have been, that night so long ago. Jesus and his disciples are banqueting together in typical Greco-Roman fashion. They're lying on couches, each man propped up, according to custom, on his left elbow (leaving the right hand free to dip food from the low table in front of them). Outside the simply furnished room, everything is dark, but inside there's the rich golden hue of lamplight.
The mood is subdued, for these are dangerous times. They all know it: but, for these twelve close companions and their master, there is the abiding joy of being together.
To Jesus' right, in the place of honor, is "the disciple whom Jesus loved" -- very possibly, John himself. In this position, these two close friends are ideally situated to share food and talk intimately. The only other disciple Jesus is close enough to touch is the one on his left -- although, reclining on his left elbow as he is, to reach this man with his right hand he's got to twist completely around and look at him out of the corner of his eye.
Jesus declares that one who's present at dinner that night will betray him.
"Who is it?" they all want to know.
"The one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish." The only one Jesus could reach, besides his close friend John, is the man who's sitting over his left shoulder, almost behind him and that man has to be Judas Iscariot. Jesus regards him coolly, out of the corner of his eye, before speaking: "Do quickly what you are going to do."
"So, after receiving the piece of bread," John tells us, Judas "immediately went out." But then John adds four little words -- simple words, yet carrying a world of meaning: "And it was night."
"It was night." Not the sunset, with its golden colors, nor the bright web of shining constellations, but darkness, utter and complete. It is the darkness of betrayal. In human relationships, there are few experiences more devastating than that of betrayal. Ask the jilted spouse, the abused child. One you trusted, one you loved, suddenly proves unfaithful. The marriage implodes, the business partnership breaks up, the friendship sours. All that remains is a dreadfully cold, hollow feeling, one that not even righteous anger can offset. "And it was night."
Where do we go when it is night? To whom do we turn? What comfort can we possibly find as we see our betrayer turn on his heel and go out, or perhaps hold a dying loved one in our arms?
Thomas Lynch is a poet and also an undertaker. In the course of his work he has seen many human tragedies. One of the most gut-wrenching was the death of a little girl named Stephanie, killed in a bizarre accident. She was killed while riding in the backseat of her family's minivan driving down an interstate highway. A group of teenage boys was vandalizing a local cemetery. On a whim, they carried a small stone marker to a highway overpass and dropped it over the side. Here's how Thomas Lynch describes what happened:
"The stone was falling earthward at 32 feet per second. The van was heading south at seventy miles per hour. The stone shattered the windshield, glanced off Stephanie's father's right shoulder, woke her mother riding in the passenger seat and, parting the space between the two front seats, struck Stephanie in the chest as she lay sleeping in the backseat. She had just traded places with her younger brother who was cuddled with his two other sisters in the rear seat of the van. It did not kill Stephanie instantly. Her sternum was broken, her heart bruised beyond repair. A trucker stopped to radio for help but at 2 a.m. in Nowhere, Kentucky, on a Friday morning, such things take time. The family waited by the roadside reciting the rosary as Stephanie gasped for air and moaned. They declared her dead at the hospital two hours later. Stephanie's mother found the stone in the backseat and gave it to the authorities. It said RESERVED FOSTER and was reckoned to be a corner marker from the Foster Lot in Resurrection Cemetery."
Lynch admits to asking, and in turn discarding, the same philosophical questions any of us would ask, were we in his situation, preparing to embalm the body of this young girl. "I keep shaking a fist at the almighty, asking 'Where were you on the morning of the thirteenth?' The alibi," he admits, "changes every day."
Lynch continues the story:
"When I first took Stephanie's parents to the cemetery, to buy a grave for their daughter, her mother stood in the road and pointed to a statue of the risen Christ. 'I want her over there,' she said, 'at the right hand of Jesus.' We walked across the section to an empty, unmarked space underneath the outstretched granite right arm of Christ. 'Here,' Stephanie's mother said, her wet eyes cast upward into the gray eyes of Christ. Stephanie's father, his eyes growing narrow, was reading the name on the neighboring grave. FOSTER is what it read. It was cut in stone." (Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking [New York: Penguin, 1997], pp. 54-57)
So where do we go when it is night? To whom do we turn? In all his years of work as an undertaker, Thomas Lynch has become utterly convinced of the value of faith. For it is in these experiences of darkest night that faith shines forth the brightest. In his words:
"... better than baptisms or marriages, funerals press the noses of the faithful against the windows of their faith. Vision and insight are often coincidental with demise. Death is the moment when the chips are down. That moment of truth when the truth is that we die makes relevant the claims of our prophets and apostles. Faith is not required to sing in the choir, for bake sales or building drives; to usher or deacon or elder or priest. Faith is for the time of our dying and the time of the dying of the ones we love. Those parsons and pastors who are most successful -- those who have learned to 'minister' -- are those who allow their faithful flocks to grieve.... "Uncles find nickels behind our ears. Magicians pull rabbits from out of hats. Any good talker can preach pie in the sky or break out the warm fuzzies when the time is right. But only by faith do the dead arise and walk among us or speak to us in our soul's dark nights." (The Undertaking, pp. 80-81)
Go forth, then, into the darkness -- into the night. Go forth knowing that, though there may be no light to be seen, there is light all the same. That light is the light that came into the world when the world was new -- that "light that enlightens everyone," even Jesus Christ our Lord.
We cannot understand why, in life, certain things happen or fail to happen. We simply don't have the vision, the perspective. Yet we can trust that, when in life (or in death) it falls to us to venture out into the darkness, there is one who travels beside us. He can see -- and he knows the way.
Prayer For The Day
We ask you, Lord, for many things when we pray.
We ask you for health.
We ask you for happiness.
We ask you to help us love, and be loved.
Yet, this night, we ask you for just one thing: We ask that we may see the light,
the light that enlightens everyone
that has come into our world, in Jesus Christ.
May we see it,
and may we learn to share it,
so others may see it too. Amen.
To Illustrate
In this age of electric light, we have a very different perspective on the night than did our pre-indus-trial forbears. Roger Ekirch, a historian at Virginia Tech, has spent years studying these differences of perspective. In centuries past, he explains, people considered night so different from the day that they referred to it as a different "season."
How different, indeed, it was to walk out into the night, relying only on a hand-held candle or sputtering lamp for illumination! The hours of darkness that descended each night were hours of fear. Night was when so many bad things could happen to a traveler: falling into ditch or pit, being thrown by a horse unfamiliar with dark paths, being ambushed by bandits. In popular folklore, night was the time when evil spirits ruled and could fall upon the foolish or unwary.
With new technology, Ekirch maintains, the old experience of night was no more. A wholly new experience of night has taken its place (at least, in all but the most remote areas of the world). "Thomas Edison hammered the last nail in the old night's coffin."
-- based on Richard and Joyce Wolkomir, "When Bandogs Howl and Spirits Walk," Smithsonian, January 2001
***
At times I have found it difficult to believe that darkness could be a source of growth. Darkness to a child, as well as to many adults, can be a scary, fearsome place where wild creatures wait to pounce and prey. But, in actuality, some kinds of darkness are truly our friends. The world of our mother's womb had no light: It is where we grew wonderfully and filled out our tiny limbs of life. Our earth would be quite lifeless, too, if we did not plant seeds deep within the lonely darkness of the soil so they could germinate and bring forth green shoots. I know, too, that we would soon die of an overheated planet if nightfall did not come to soothe the sunfilled land. Darkness is very essential for some aspects of growth and protection.
-- Joyce Rupp, The Star in My Heart: Experiencing Sophia, Inner Wisdom (Innisfree Press, 2000)
***
In the midst of depression I once asked my spiritual director how I could be feeling such despair when not long before the depression hit I had been feeling so close to God?
"Simple," she said, "the closer you get to light, the closer you get to darkness."
The deepest things in life come not singly but in paradoxical pairs, where the light and the dark intermingle.
-- Parker Palmer, The Active Life: Wisdom for Work, Creativity, and Caring (Jossey-Bass, 1999)
***
Faith is the darkness in which Christ lives.
-- Martin Luther
***
There was a priest in a Midwestern city who wanted to help inner-city children. He wanted them to see something more than their own situations. He put them on a bus and took them to see some things of great beauty. They went to the art museum and saw paintings by the masters. They went to a symphony matinee and heard beautiful music. They went for a walk through a row of homes that were done over by a creative team of architects. That young priest showed those children the best and brightest things he knew.
Then they climbed back on the bus and went home. That night one of those young boys set his apartment house on fire. They rescued the neighbors and family but the place burned down. The priest was in tears when he visited the boy in a detention cell. "Why did you do it?" he asked.
"I saw all those beautiful things," said the boy, "and then I came home and saw how ugly my world was, and I hated the ugliness, so I wanted to burn it down." Shine some light in a dark place and there's no telling what will happen. When all you have ever seen is darkness, that is all you know. And when light comes, it makes for a contrast. Darkness remains a choice. In fact, it is possible for light to come into the world, and for somebody to say, "Turn out the lights!" It is possible for the Light of the world to shine on people, and those people not accept it.
-- William G. Carter, Praying for a Whole New World (CSS Publishing Company, 2000)
***
People who live close together can be sources of great sorrow for one another. When Jesus chose his twelve apostles, Judas was one of them. Judas is called a traitor. A traitor, according to the literal meaning of the Greek word for "betraying," is someone who hands the other over to suffering. The truth is that we all have something of the traitor in us because each of us hands our fellow human beings over to suffering somehow, somewhere, mostly without intending or even knowing it. Many children, even grown-up children, can experience deep anger toward their parents for having protected them too much or too little. When we are willing to confess that we often hand those we love over to suffering, even against our best intentions, we will be more ready to forgive those who, mostly against their will, are the causes of our pain.
-- Henri J.M. Nouwen, Bread for the Journey (New York: Harper Collins, 1997)
