Good Friday. The Garden and the Tree

Garden Tomb

The story we hear tonight begins and ends in a garden.  At midnight, they come for him.  A swat team, armed forces.   In the garden of Gethsemane.  Among the olive trees. The warm night air, a cool breeze, silence and the rustling of leaves.   In prayer, he waited.  To be handed over.  And accused.  And beaten.  And mocked.  And hanged on a tree.  Cursed be he who is hanged on a tree.  He waited for the curse to take effect.  The curse that effected everything, that infected everyone.  The curse that wounded and paralyzed and blinded and impoverished and killed them all in one way or another.  The garden’s curse.         

We, people of the book recall that first garden.  Adam and Eve and the tree and its fruits.  Edible and delightful, yet prohibited.  Prohibited by the God who made them and loved them;  loved in their innocence, their vulnerable nakedness, their soft skin and bright eyes and faces full of curiosity and wonder and awe as they take in with their keen senses all that God had made.  These babes.  These young ones.  Children of the earth, children of God.    They were beautiful and fragile and sacred, beloved creatures made in the image. 

Until, tempted by their insatiable appetites and their desire for power they eat from the tree and become aware of themselves and their surroundings and their vulnerability, their weakness.  Aware of their disregard of, disrespect for, distance from God—they feel shame and guilt and learn to hide.  They learn to lie.  They learn to lie low and protect themselves at the expense of the other.  They learn to gratify their own desires and ignore the desires of the other.  They learn to trust snakes and ignore their God.   

And so they expel themselves into a world of danger and darkness and death.  Much of which they bring on themselves and on their descendants forever.   From the garden they roam.  They plant and build, but never recreate the garden.  They cannot return.  We are lost, displaced, a long way from home.  It didn’t have to be this way; this dark, this lonely, this ugly, this violent, this deadly. But we have made it thus.    

Maundy Thursday

Love one another as I have loved you.  In the night he is handed over, he teaches his disciples the one thing they must learn:  What must characterize the Christian community? Is it church buildings, altars, priests, pulpits, pews, stained-glass, pipe organs?  What is the essential mark of the church defined and commanded by Jesus?  In this intimate setting, the Passover meal, Jesus reveals to us the divine initiative---LOVE.  Not abstractly.  Not romance.  Not poetry.  Not even familial love.  Agape love.  Love demonstrated in humble service.  In a physical act; the washing of feet.  Its ancient meaning was clear:  Cleaning off the feet meant touching whatever you had stepped in as you walked the dirty streets of the village or in the case the city.  This act was either a personal hygiene task or a task performed by a woman.  The host would not perform this function.  It was no ritual.  This was about hospitality and cleanliness.  And Jesus performs this task to demonstrate the posture of a loving servant. 

The selfish ego refuses to care for the dirty physical needs of another.  Not so with the loving servant, who stoops below, who kneels, who touches, who humbles himself.  The shamed ego refuses to be served, to allow the other to come near and serve.  Peter could not imagine allowing the Lord and teacher to do this menial, dirty, chore for slaves.  It was scandalous then.  Overturning the order of things. A disciple is not above the master.  And yet, this master bends down and teaches from below. 

I have a friend who has been spending time at Water Street Mission with the homeless women who are living there.  She and some friends have been visiting them and providing hand and shoulder massages to them.  This gentle, physical touch is a sign of love, a gesture that says, “You are a human to me, a beloved child of God.  You are worthy to be seen and heard.  You are worthy to be touched and known.  My friend says that the women they have met are beautiful to them.  If you have hit the bottom, feel unloved and unlovable and someone comes to you and simply says you are beautiful, let me care for you- what must that mean? 

For over two years now, kneeling has been painful for me.  And when I do it, getting up is hard.  Kneeling is a position of discomfort.  And to do so puts one at a disadvantage.  But kneeling teaches us the way of Christ---it is the downward way.  Acting from below.  

Tonight, the physical conveys for us deep sacred, spiritual truths.  In water, in simple food and drink---Jesus is remembered.  To re-member is to put back together again the broken parts.  To call out of memory what was, so that it might be present again.  Jesus is present in the body.  Because bodies matter.  Yours and mine, made in God’s image, are cherished and redeemed.  Jesus rescues our bodies, minds and Spirits from the self-destructive, self-idolatrous, self-centered way we treat ourselves and others.  And he sets us free on this Passover night, to stoop down in humility and serve one another.  This puts an end to competitive egos that drive us apart, and set us against one another.  Love does not oppose the other.  Love accepts, welcomes, and blesses the other.  Love invites the other to be, with no agenda, no self-interest.  Love treats the other with honor and respect.  This is the way of Jesus, the way of the disciple, the calling of the church in every circumstance—love governs our action.  We may ask, is this action or word demonstrating love?  May you experience the love of Jesus, a love that changes hearts, clears minds, and washes and soothes weary, wounded bodies.  Amen.