Just What Are We Doing Here?

Sermon by James W. Crawford

Maundy Thursday

April 1, 1999

I want to say just a word about what we do here this evening and why what we do in this chapel and around this table is important.

We meet here in a world and moment where we find ourselves particularly sensitive to the consequences of our human divisions. The headlines screaming at us in our newspapers or on television newscasts alert us to the ultimate results of hatred and vengeance, mob rule and gross lying.  We have witnessed the failure of threatened violence to work its stated ends, and indeed, the chances it will generate ancillary and unpredictable terrors.  We see confirmed our human condition run amok; innocents slaughtered; propaganda substituting for news; the powers of all sides slicing their rationale to serve their own interests; self inflicted wounds and lofty strategies turning out to be counterproductive. The fierceness of it all is appalling. The failure of diplomacy, a tragedy.  The need for it in the first place, the story of a 600 year old vendetta.

But, what we see there in Kosovo is but a small paradigm for the risks and dangers inherent in our humanity.  That early story in Genesis where Cain kills Abel, the farmer murders the keeper of sheep in a conflict of cultures, traditions, priorities—even as they are brothers—this primordial murder reminds us of the terrible chasms we dig to separate ourselves from one another. And this Balkan war, it seems, almost as old as Genesis itself, simply retells that Biblical story of brother against brother. As to whether the story really happened or not, this war proves the story true.

As does so much of our present social life. We are all alert to the abuse men can mete out to women, to the violent exclusion of gay men and women from our common life, to the still subtle and sometimes violent resistance to racial justice, to the rank differentials in privilege and possibilities a supposedly booming economy exacerbates in our social fabric.  We meet tonight in that kind of world.  We meet on a busy corner in a wonderful city where Kosovo, along with our other divisions,  provides what we might call an image of a truly fallen humanity.

Thus this table.  Thank God for it.  I remind you it comes, instituted by our Lord himself, on a night long ago when the bloodiest  and most divisive  human instincts came into play: bribery, betrayal, fear, cynicism, power abuse, a death penalty couched in high moral terms, religion collaborating with political power  to rid the world of a troublemaker.  It was a table set where religious and national outsiders were perceived as unclean, and women definitely inferior to men.

Have we come a very long way?  Maybe.  But what we do at this table together tonight shows us the nature of our mission and purpose in this kind of world—a world not so much different from the one Jesus lived in.  We call this sacrament Holy Communion.  It demonstrates what it takes to bridge the chasms, dissipate the hatreds, dissolve the fears, bring together this fragmented and fragmenting race of ours.

So, we break bread.  In doing so we show that reconciliation and community come not from beefing up our forces or seeking short cuts to self esteem, or saving face, or preserving our prestige, or justifying our interests.  It shows us we, for God's sake—for Love's sake—we need risk ourselves for our neighbor; that love puts itself on the line—in Jesus' case to the extremity of death itself.

And we pour the cup. That act demonstrates in a world where we find ourselves separated from one another, the way to reconciliation—the way to community—is pouring out our life and our love, taking a chance on forgiveness, risking the things we treasure most in order to bind up the wounds, mend the fissures, bridge the chasms we inflict upon one another.

And of course,  we eat, we drink. We share a meal together. We demonstrate, amid our diversity, meager though it may be, we demonstrate in eating and drinking together our solidarity with one another; we become a sign and  symbol of the kind of community we believe God wants for our human family.

So friends, what  we do here tonight with one another is terribly important.   Be assured, we do not simply share in some abstract and beautiful religious rite. The music, the prayers, the elements, this beautiful room are not an aesthetic exercise without ethical consequence. No way. We share by our breaking  and pouring, by our eating and drinking.  We share in a way of life we are prepared to accept for ourselves.  What we do here defines our Christian life.  What we do here demonstrates the depth and scope of God's commitment to us—and yes, it claims us for a vocation to servanthood in God's world, a vocation for each of us and for this congregation  mirroring the action at this table, in behalf of a suffering world, for Love's sake, you, me, our church: broken and poured out.  The world—finally—healed.