Sam Bush, “The Nature of Grace, Made Plain By Its Absence: A Sermon For Maundy Thursday”
Imagine a world that is exactly like the world we live in except for one thing: there is not a single Cross in sight. Not on a steeple or a bumper sticker or the pendant of a necklace. Imagine that it’s a completely irrelevant shape, as rare as a rhombus. At first glance, daily life would be as it always has been: the morning commute,
getting groceries, folding laundry, dinner and the dishes. Marriages come and some marriages go. People who do wrong are punished, everyone more or less getting what they deserve. Life goes on, except one thing’s missing.
Every Maundy Thursday, we are given a chance to imagine such a world. In just a few minutes, as this service ends, the altar will be stripped of all its linens and ornaments so that not even a candlestick remains. Only the crosses are left, each covered by a black veil. It can be a jarring experience, watching the liturgical colors slowly drain away until all that’s left is black on wood. There is a quiet drama to it. Flannery O’Connor once said, “Often the nature of grace can be made plain only by describing its absence.” Like so many things, we might not realize how much we need it until it’s seemingly taken away.
Tonight we are given a chance to put ourselves in the disciples’ shoes the night of Jesus’ arrest. We strip the altar as a symbolic recital of the night they were stripped of their Savior. Hours before, they had hovered over Jesus as he instituted communion and washed their feet. But when Jesus is led away by a large crowd, they are left defenseless in the garden. As soon as Jesus is taken, the disciples flee the scene. There is something about the absence of Jesus that invites all hell to break loose. Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter.
Hours before, Jesus gave his famous command to them: “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another,” he says as he dries the last disciples’ feet with the towel around his waist. Those who were instructed to love perfectly are suddenly completely incapable of loving each other at all. Jesus, it turns out, was the source of their security. When the source runs dry, fear immediately takes over. You know that verse, “Perfect love casts out fear?” Well as soon as Perfect Love (i.e. Jesus Christ) is taken away, fear takes over.
There’s an episode in Seinfeld - I’m just going to give you a minute to breathe - Jerry and Elaine are driving to upstate New York and following George’s car because he knows the way. But George, who always has to make good time, drives so fast that it’s impossible to keep up and Jerry loses sight of him and, without George they’re completely lost. When Elaine says, “Don’t you have the directions? How could you not have the directions?” Jerry replies, “Because he IS my directions!” That was meant to be funny but apparently it was extremely profound. Without their rabbi, the disciples are on their own with no direction home. Like a wheel without a hub, the spokes collapse into a pile of sticks.
Tonight, we are given a chance to imagine ourselves directionless, abandoned and alone. Suddenly, we are left to bear the world on its own terms without any mediary. Imagine standing in front of the judge without an advocate. Imagine being a sheep without a shepherd to protect you. Without Jesus by our side, we may resort to fight or flight. We may draw our swords or hightail it to safety, but neither of those options leads to life. We either die by the sword or die in despair.
I remember the first time I attended a Maundy Thursday service, watching the altar cross disappear under a black veil, and being completely undone. I remember thinking, “There goes my redemption. Take away the Cross and you may as well take away everything else.” Until that moment, it did not occur to me that my entire life was hinged upon Jesus’ death and resurrection. Without it, I am, as the hymn says, “laden with guilt and full of fear” with no relief in sight. The nature of grace was made painfully plain by describing its absence.
And yet, I have taken some artistic liberties tonight. The focus of Maundy Thursday is not the absence that we experience, but the absence that Jesus himself experienced. The altar is stripped not to deprive us of the Cross (as if that could ever be taken away) but to demonstrate the stripping of Jesus by the soldiers. He was stripped of everything from his clothes, to his rights, to his status as the Son of God.
While the altar is stripped, we will hear Psalm 22 read out loud which illustrates that Jesus is the one who has been abandoned. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me?” Before the service ends, the very last words spoken are, “Then all the disciples deserted him and fled.”
He alone, it turns out, experienced a world without grace so that we could live in the reality of God’s grace every day. He alone experienced a world where judgment defeated love so that we would be safe in God’s endless mercy. He alone knew a world where death defeats life so that you and I may have life eternal. He was left alone on your behalf so that you would never be alone. His final words in Matthew’s gospel, of course, being, “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
As the final cross is veiled just a few minutes from now, we may feel as the disciples did, cast out into the night, defenseless and afraid. On our way home however, you may catch a glimpse of a cross - on top of a steeple or on a bumper sticker or the pendant of a necklace - and not only be reminded that the world has been redeemed, but that you have been redeemed. And that our Redeemer lives.
Amen.
