In his final hours, Jesus wants us to know just how intimately God loves us. This has been handed down to us. How will we hand it down to those who come after us?

Vicar Meagan McLaughlin
   Maundy Thursday
   Texts: Exodus 12:1-14, Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, John 13:1-17, 31b-35

My brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace and love to you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

What traditions or wisdom have been handed down to you? I learned how to make popcorn from my grandmother. I use a big pan—the kind with two handles on it—and put in just enough oil to cover the bottom. Add exactly three kernels of popcorn, put it on medium heat on the stove, and when the third kernel pops, add the rest of the popcorn. Shake occasionally, and when the popping slows, remove from the heat, and when all the popping has stopped, pour the popcorn into the bowl. Add real melted butter and salt—don’t skimp!

Over the years, I have tried many ways of making popcorn, from air poppers to oil poppers to kettle corn makers and even microwave, and none have ever measured up. A big part of it is the taste, of course, but more important than that is the connection I feel to my grandmother. Sure, I use olive oil instead of Wesson oil, and Kosher salt instead of regular table salt, but in all essentials, each time I make popcorn on the stove, I am participating in what my grandmother handed down to me. What has been handed down to you?

Jesus knew the hour had come for him to depart from this world. Jesus knew that this was the last time he would sit with his disciples, share Passover with them. It was his last opportunity to hand down his most sacred thoughts before he died, his last chance to show them, and us, what is really important.

Tonight we celebrate Maundy Thursday, and so we begin the most sacred days of the Christian church year. This is a time set aside for us as a community to remember. We have come before our God, acknowledged our sin, and received God’s love and forgiveness. We have prepared ourselves, and now we begin this journey. Over these days, we remember the extravagant, redemptive, love of God for us and for all of creation revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We share stories of God’s loving work throughout all of history. And tonight, we remember what our dear friend, Jesus, handed down to us in the final hours before he died.

Jesus and his friends were celebrating Passover together that night. Just as we gather today to remember, they gathered to remember how God saved them. They were following an ancient command that had been handed down to them to tell and retell the story of how God brought them out of slavery and led them to freedom.

Jesus wants us to remember, too. When we are bound in shame, and the fear that we are not good enough, and we can’t see how God—or anyone else—could ever love us, Jesus wants us to remember. When we are ensnared in problems of our own making, when we have hurt those we love the most, when we have sinned and feel beyond forgiveness, Jesus wants us to remember. When our bodies and minds are falling apart, when we feel trapped and useless, Jesus wants us to remember. Even death cannot hold us forever. God freed the Israelites. God frees us from all that enslaves us. The command to remember has been handed down for centuries, and it is ours now.

On that last night, sharing a final meal with his friends, Jesus wanted us to know that God frees us. And he wants us to know how far and deep that freedom goes. Jesus wanted his friends to know that in spite of what would happen later that night and the next day, no matter how much grief and despair they would feel, Jesus’s death would not be the final word. Jesus would rise again, and death would be overcome. Jesus tells us to share the Eucharist as a remembrance of his death and promise of resurrection, and every time we celebrate the Eucharist, Jesus shares his very life with us.

When we face death and grief and despair, Jesus wants us to remember that the promise of the resurrection is that God can overcome even death. We celebrate the Eucharist and we are nourished, body and soul, as our bodies are fed and our spirits filled again with the promise of life and forgiveness. Paul says, “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you.” And so it has been handed down to us.

After Jesus and his disciples had finished eating their final meal before his death, knowing that words would not be enough, Jesus knelt down and washed the feet of his disciples. It was, of course, an act of humility and service. But more than that, washing another person’s feet is incredibly vulnerable, intimate, full of love.

Jesus was telling his friends, “I know you. I know those parts of you that you keep hidden. I know your dirt, your sweat, your warts, your pain, your exhaustion. And I love you.” On the night before he died, at the last meal he would share with his friends, Jesus showed them how intimately God loves us, warts and all. There is no part of you that God does not know, intimately. And there is no part of you that God does not love.

And then Jesus says, “For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” We are called to know and love one another that way, actively, humbly, intimately. We are called to see one another’s warts, and love them. We are called to allow God, and others, to see our warts, and let them love us. This vulnerability is terrifying . . . and it is precisely how God heals and frees us to be the people we were created to be. And it is how God works through us to heal and free others. This kind of love will not be contained. It must be handed down, and down, and down.

As we gather to remember, and as we wash one another’s feet tonight, we are reminded by the water used to wash our feet of the waters of our baptisms, and the promise of God’s radical, unconditional love and forgiveness. We are called to remember that God overcomes even death. We are called to remember that no matter what has us enslaved, God has set us free. This is what has been handed down to us, and this is what we are called to hand down to those who come after us.

Tonight we come together to carry on sacred traditions handed down to us, and as happens each time I make my grandmother’s popcorn, we are carried beyond ourselves, beyond this moment in time. This is about us, but it is not just about us. As we wash one another, share the Eucharist, and tell the stories, we are profoundly connected to God, to one another, and to our whole Christian family around the world, going back generations and generations. We remember who we are, who we are called to be, as children of God. This is what has been handed down to you. How will you hand that down to those coming after us?

Amen.

We stay awake with Jesus this week, walk with Jesus this week, so we can learn the depth of God’s love for us and the world; so we can find courage to take the same path; so we can be waiting at the tomb for the resurrection life God is bringing.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
   The Sunday of the Passion, year B
   text:  Mark 14:1 – 15:47

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

I understand why they kept falling asleep.

It was late on a stressful day, where all Jesus’ words carried unspoken pain and sorrow. Past midnight on a warm spring evening, in a sweet-smelling olive grove, Jesus has moved away to pray. What if I lay my head down a minute . . . I would have slept, too.

I understand why they fled. Mark shows Jesus utterly alone at his trial, utterly alone at the cross, barely mentioning the other two crosses, saying the women were “looking on from a distance”. It makes sense many disciples weren’t anywhere near, even at a distance. This was unimaginable horror, to see Jesus taken away violently. He was the one to encourage, strengthen the disciples. With him arrested, no one to say, “Don’t be afraid,” . . . I would have run, too.

What are we doing here this week?

Our ancestors in faith sang of walking with our Lord through this week, keeping watch in the garden, gathering at the foot of the cross, seeing where his body was laid, as if they were there. As if we could be.

There’s no point blaming Peter, Judas, the others, for their sleep, their flight, their denials, their betrayals, their terror, their cowardice, their hiding. We do what they did. When we treat this week as a Hollywood drama to watch once more, remember the good parts, repeat our favorite lines, be thrilled, and two weeks from now are back to our lives. When we sleep through our lives as if what happens this week stays in this week. When we flee from the thought that what we see here is what we might be called to walk.

Go to dark Gethsemane. Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Here might I stay and sing. Our mothers and fathers before us sing as if we really can be there and find God. They sing to us to walk with Jesus not as spectators but as companions who risk everything Jesus risks. To stay awake, put aside our fear, and see what God is doing.

We avoid this walk because we misunderstand what God is doing.

We make Jesus’ suffering and death into a theory of how God saves us, as if this suffering, death, and burial are a legal maneuver to trap God, a sacrifice to appease God, or a bribe to buy God off. As if a theory saves us. As if all we need is our golden ticket.

The suffering and death of Jesus are not a past event we understand as a transaction that somehow helps us. They are the deepest mystery of the love of God we can only experience in our bodies and souls if we actually look. They are the deepest mystery of the love God wants for us to live that we can only know as our good if we actually walk it.

We walk with Jesus this week to see the depth of God’s love.

If we stay awake with him we will see the Christ, the Son of God, hear “no” from the Father and accept it, though he is in pain, afraid. We will see the Triune God willingly suffer the worst of this world rather than turn away or destroy.

When we find the courage to look into the face of the Son of God on the cross, we begin to grasp how much God loves this world. Simon of Cyrene, a random bystander, carries the wood of the cross for Jesus and he and his sons become believers. What might happen to us? Will we not be changed?

Can we look into the eyes of the dying Son of God and ever believe there is a single child of God on this planet who is not embraced in that love?

We walk with Jesus this week for the courage to walk our path.

This week shows us this path of Jesus is our path for the rest of our lives. If we stay awake and hear Jesus say, “not what I want but what you want,” we learn that sometimes God’s “no” means a greater “yes” waits ahead. This gives us strength for our failing nerve, courage for our fainting heart.

We don’t fail to wholly love God or love our neighbor because we don’t want to. We fail because it’s hard to do, it looks like we’ll be hurt, or taken advantage of, or inconvenienced, and we falter. We are afraid.

But walking with Jesus, we always have the One with us who says, “Don’t be afraid.” We don’t need to run from the challenge of love, the pain of forgiving, the hesitance to care for others. We see God’s Son face doubt and fear and hesitance and find courage to do what he was meant to do, and there find our courage.

Our walk with Jesus this week eventually rejoins the women, at the tomb.

We should walk with them awhile and learn. They stayed awake, set aside their fear, and followed to see where their Lord’s body was laid. They watched the stone roll shut. They waited to see what God would do.

That’s our walk of faith. Awake, finding courage in each other and in God’s love, even when sometimes all we can see is stone tomb in the cold of twilight.

But these women say looks are deceiving, and God is even now at work. The morning is coming.

And so, we walk, and watch. And wait.

+ Amen

We stay awake with Jesus this week, walk with Jesus this week, so we can learn the depth of God’s love for us and the world; so we can find courage to take the same path; so we can be waiting at the tomb for the resurrection life God is bringing.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
   The Sunday of the Passion, year B
   text:  Mark 14:1 – 15:47

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

I understand why they kept falling asleep.

It was late on a stressful day, where all Jesus’ words carried unspoken pain and sorrow. Past midnight on a warm spring evening, in a sweet-smelling olive grove, Jesus has moved away to pray. What if I lay my head down a minute . . . I would have slept, too.

I understand why they fled. Mark shows Jesus utterly alone at his trial, utterly alone at the cross, barely mentioning the other two crosses, saying the women were “looking on from a distance”. It makes sense many disciples weren’t anywhere near, even at a distance. This was unimaginable horror, to see Jesus taken away violently. He was the one to encourage, strengthen the disciples. With him arrested, no one to say, “Don’t be afraid,” . . . I would have run, too.

What are we doing here this week?

Our ancestors in faith sang of walking with our Lord through this week, keeping watch in the garden, gathering at the foot of the cross, seeing where his body was laid, as if they were there. As if we could be.

There’s no point blaming Peter, Judas, the others, for their sleep, their flight, their denials, their betrayals, their terror, their cowardice, their hiding. We do what they did. When we treat this week as a Hollywood drama to watch once more, remember the good parts, repeat our favorite lines, be thrilled, and two weeks from now are back to our lives. When we sleep through our lives as if what happens this week stays in this week. When we flee from the thought that what we see here is what we might be called to walk.

Go to dark Gethsemane. Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Here might I stay and sing. Our mothers and fathers before us sing as if we really can be there and find God. They sing to us to walk with Jesus not as spectators but as companions who risk everything Jesus risks. To stay awake, put aside our fear, and see what God is doing.

We avoid this walk because we misunderstand what God is doing.

We make Jesus’ suffering and death into a theory of how God saves us, as if this suffering, death, and burial are a legal maneuver to trap God, a sacrifice to appease God, or a bribe to buy God off. As if a theory saves us. As if all we need is our golden ticket.

The suffering and death of Jesus are not a past event we understand as a transaction that somehow helps us. They are the deepest mystery of the love of God we can only experience in our bodies and souls if we actually look. They are the deepest mystery of the love God wants for us to live that we can only know as our good if we actually walk it.

We walk with Jesus this week to see the depth of God’s love.

If we stay awake with him we will see the Christ, the Son of God, hear “no” from the Father and accept it, though he is in pain, afraid. We will see the Triune God willingly suffer the worst of this world rather than turn away or destroy.

When we find the courage to look into the face of the Son of God on the cross, we begin to grasp how much God loves this world. Simon of Cyrene, a random bystander, carries the wood of the cross for Jesus and he and his sons become believers. What might happen to us? Will we not be changed?

Can we look into the eyes of the dying Son of God and ever believe there is a single child of God on this planet who is not embraced in that love?

We walk with Jesus this week for the courage to walk our path.

This week shows us this path of Jesus is our path for the rest of our lives. If we stay awake and hear Jesus say, “not what I want but what you want,” we learn that sometimes God’s “no” means a greater “yes” waits ahead. This gives us strength for our failing nerve, courage for our fainting heart.

We don’t fail to wholly love God or love our neighbor because we don’t want to. We fail because it’s hard to do, it looks like we’ll be hurt, or taken advantage of, or inconvenienced, and we falter. We are afraid.

But walking with Jesus, we always have the One with us who says, “Don’t be afraid.” We don’t need to run from the challenge of love, the pain of forgiving, the hesitance to care for others. We see God’s Son face doubt and fear and hesitance and find courage to do what he was meant to do, and there find our courage.

Our walk with Jesus this week eventually rejoins the women, at the tomb.

We should walk with them awhile and learn. They stayed awake, set aside their fear, and followed to see where their Lord’s body was laid. They watched the stone roll shut. They waited to see what God would do.

That’s our walk of faith. Awake, finding courage in each other and in God’s love, even when sometimes all we can see is stone tomb in the cold of twilight.

But these women say looks are deceiving, and God is even now at work. The morning is coming.

And so, we walk, and watch. And wait.

+ Amen