Passion

It was an evening of raw emotion.  First came the joy - and amazement - as I watched the dining room fill with people for the Maundy Thursday observance.  Up until the moment the people arrived I wasn't sure if more than two dozen people would be there (which is the number of people in the choirs).  In many ways, it felt totally out of my hands, and so I waited - and wondered - and was delighted by the outcome!  We began with singing, and praying and hearing the Gospel of John's solo account of Jesus demonstrating deep humility and selfless service by washing the feet of his disciples. 

Reading that account always takes me back to the footwashing ceremonies I've observed (and avoided) on Maundy Thursday.  During my final year of Seminary it was my turn to be in the group of students who had their feet washed by the Dean.  I switched with someone else - I felt embarrassed to receive that attention, and preferred to quietly stay in the background.  A funny story - one year when I was Pastor of a church back East, the local Ecumenical Church Group decided that they wanted to have an Ecumenical Maundy Thursday Service, but felt that reenacting the foot washing would be to "intimate."  So instead of having a traditional footwashing ceremony, the Methodist Pastor brought a feather duster, and dusted every one's shoes.

You can't make this stuff up...

Reading the account in John also makes me cringe, because I know that so much of the language in this account of the Passion has been used to fuel anti-Semitism.  I understand, as best as a modern person can, the historical context in which the narrative was written.  Yet I still struggle to read it aloud in worship, and avoid John's Gospel in worship whenever I can.  Such a pity - so many beautiful stories are interwoven with anti-Jewish rhetoric.  I struggled...

...and then there was the music tonight, which lifted my struggling heart higher and higher, even as the words of the scripture passages were piercing it through and through.  Misunderstanding, betrayal, arrest, abandonment, false accusations, abuse - all to one who embodied love and justice. 

So tonight, in the course of two hours, I felt great joy and amazement, some embarrassment, discomfort, elation, pain, sorrow, and comfort - comfort to know that the God I love truly understands all the raw emotions that fill the human experience.  My human experience...

It was a passionate evening!

Passion.  My Lenten friend Henri Nouwen describes Passion in an unique way - a way that has captured my attention:

"Passion is a kind of waiting - waiting for what other people are going to do.  Jesus went to Jerusalem to announce the good news to the people of that city.  And Jesus knew that he was going to put a choice before them:  Will you be my disciple, or will you be my executioner?  There is no middle ground here.  Jesus went to Jerusalem to put people in a situation where they had to say "Yes" or "No."  That is the great drama of Jesus' passion: he had to wait upon how people were going to respond.  How would they come?  To betray him or to follow him?  In a way, his agony is not simply the agony of approaching death.  It is also the agony of having to wait.  All action ends in passion because the response to our action is out of our hands.  That is the mystery of work, the mystery of love, the mystery of friendship, the mystery of community - they always involve waiting.  And that is the mystery of Jesus' love.  God reveals himself in Jesus as the one who waits for our response.  Precisely in that waiting the intensity of God's love is revealed to us.  If God forced us to love, we would not really be lovers."  - Henri J.M. Nouwen, "From Action to Passion," in Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter.

And so God awaits our response this Maundy Thursday, and this Good Friday, and in the stillness of Holy Saturday, and in the festive celebration of Easter.  God patiently waits for our response to the love demonstrated in the life, witness, suffering, death and resurrection of Rabbi Jesus.

How will you respond to this outpouring of Love?

I will write again the evening of Easter.  May you have a blessed journey to new life.

With love and prayers,
Kim