Easter 3

Readings: Acts 2:14, 22-33; 1 Peter 1:17-21; Luke 24:13-35

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“He was made known to them 
in the breaking of bread.”
Not when he appeared beside them,
walking along the road;
not when he interpreted to them 
what referred to him
in all the Scriptures;
not when he accepted 
their invitation to stay with them,
since it was nearly evening
and the day was almost over;
not even when he sat down 
with them at table.
But only when he took bread
and blessed
and broke
and gave.

Not just bread,
but broken bread.
Not the artfully shaped loaf
fresh from the oven;
not the neatly sliced Wonder Bread
in its plastic sleeve;
not even the perfect round host,
right-sized for individual consumption;
but bread broken and torn,
passed from human hand to human hand.

Why the breaking of bread?
Why this act to open their eyes 
to his risen presence?
Why this act to open our eyes
to his presence among us today?

We know him in the breaking of bread
because to know Jesus Christ 
is to know him crucified and risen,
which is to know him as the one 
broken by human hands,
the one whom we killed,
“using lawless men to crucify him.”
It is to know him as the one
whom his Father would not 
abandon to the nether world
nor let his flesh see corruption.
It is to know him as 
the spotless unblemished lamb,
known and loved by his Father 
before the foundation of the world
but revealed to us in these last days.
We know him in broken bread
because we know him 
as the reconciling sacrifice
that rescues us from futility
and makes our peace with God;
we know him as the one who seeks out
those who would flee his presence;
we know him as the one 
who lets his life be broken
so that each of us might have a share in it.

We know him in the breaking of bread
because we cannot know him 
in our isolation 
but only in our gathering.
Christ cannot be known in my bread,
but only in our bread—
we pray, “give us this day our daily bread”—
and in order to become our bread
Christ must be broken and shared.
As St. Paul writes, “The bread that we break, 
is it not a participation in the body of Christ? 
Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, 
are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf”

(1 Corinthians 10:16-17 ).
As St. Thomas Aquinas teaches, 
“The unity of the mystical body 
is the fruit of the true body received”

(Summa theologiae III q. 82 a. 9 ad 2).

Our unity in Christ involves the breaking of his body.
This truth is perhaps obscured by the custom
of using individual host for communion,
but even so, at every Mass, 
the priest ritually breaks the bread
as we sing to Christ the Lamb who was slain,
begging him for mercy and for peace.
For it is only by the gift of his mercy and peace
that we are united to Christ the head;
it is only by his mercy and peace
that we who are many can become one body
by sharing in the bread that has been broken.

He is made known to us in the breaking of bread
because our unity in Christ is a costly unity,
a unity of sacrifice and sharing.
It is costly because it is our unity 
within the body of the one who, 
though risen,
still bears the marks of his breaking,
the one who makes his flesh the bread of heaven
by consecrating it on the cross to God.
It is costly because if I am to eat 
the bread of heaven,
I must give up my bread for our bread,
and in so doing I may find myself 
in communion with those 
whom I don’t very much like,
but whom I am called to love 
as Christ himself.

Sacrifice and sharing,
consecration and communion:
these pretty much sum up what happens
each time we break bread,
each time we celebrate the Eucharist.
And they pretty much sum up the Christian life.
The broken bread Christ gives to us
draws us into his sacrificial love
by drawing us into the life of his body.
In every Eucharist we celebrate 

we can see this happen,
for in the breaking of bread
the veil is pierced 
between this world and God’s eternity,
and our eyes are opened.
And like those disciples at Emmaus
we return to the road,
carrying with us the news of resurrection,
fragments of the bread of heaven
scattered in the world 
in the time of our sojourning,
but yet united to him and each other
in faith, hope, and love.
Lamb of God, 
whose breaking makes us whole,
grant us mercy,
grant us peace.

Holy Thursday

Readings: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; 1 Corinthians11:23-26; John 13:1-15

Preached at Corpus Christi Church, Baltimore.

The book of Genesis mentions in passing
that Joseph, the son of Jacob,
whose brothers sold him 
into slavery in Egypt,
was given a wife by the Pharaoh,
a woman named Asenath, 
daughter of an Egyptian priest.

That is pretty much all we are told about her.
But the human imagination being what it is,
a Jewish writer living around the time of Jesus
took these few verses and invented
an entire romance about Joseph and Asenath,
which Christian writers later took and adapted.
The story involves the couple 
facing trials and tribulations,
not least because Asenath 
is the daughter of a priest serving false gods,
and so an unsuitable match
for a descendent of Abraham like Joseph,
as well as the fact that she lives secluded in a tower,
scorning the advances of the many young men
who are beguiled by her beauty.
Her attitude changes, however, 
when she happens to catch a glimpse of Joseph,
but he still rejects her because she is an idolater.
The archangel Michael intervenes,
visiting Asenath and giving her 
a miraculous honeycomb to eat,
which he declares to be 
the bread of heaven
and the cup of immortality.
Joseph shows up, 
having also been visited by the angel,
who tells him of Asenath’s liberation from idolatry.
There follows a good bit of embracing and kissing,
described in some detail.

What does any of this have to do with Holy Thursday?

A pivotal scene occurs when Joseph and Asenath
go to the house of her father to make official their betrothal.
Like any good host in the ancient middle east,
Asenath’s father calls for a maid to come wash Joseph’s feet,
but Asenath will have none of it.
She says to him, “your feet are my feet, 
and your hands are my hands, 
and your soul is my soul, 
and another shall not wash your feet”
(Joseph and Asenath §20).
The washing of feet is, for Asenath,
an act of spousal intimacy.

When Jesus washes the feet of his disciples
he is abandoning his role as rabbi,
since teachers did not wash 
the feet of their students,
and he is taking up the role of spouse:
the role of one whose flesh 
has been joined to their flesh,
one whose soul 
has been joined to their soul.
At that last supper with them before he dies
Jesus does not stand among them as teacher
but joins himself to them as spouse,
in the most intimate of bonds.

I think anyone who has participated 
in the washing of feet on Holy Thursday,
either as the washer or the one washed,
has sensed the intimacy of this act.
This is what makes it 
somewhat uncomfortable, 
somewhat embarrassing,
since those involved are often
relative strangers to one another.
This is also what give it its power.
Christ becomes our spouse,
and we are joined to him
and in spousal intimacy with each other.

This, of course, is what happens at every Eucharist.
Not only the yearly ritual of washing feet
but the daily ritual of the Mass
is about the intimacy of Christ with us,
and our intimacy with each other.
In sharing the eucharistic banquet
we eat the bread of heaven
and drink the cup of immortality;
Christ’s flesh becomes our flesh,
and we become one body with each other,
joined together through our union in him.
On this night, 
and indeed at every Mass,
Christ says to us,
and we say to each other,
“your feet are my feet, 
and your hands are my hands, 
and your soul is my soul.”

But this night is not simply a night of intimacy.
It is also a night of betrayal.
Indeed, it is a night of intimacy betrayed.
Both Judas and Peter,
whose feet Jesus washes, 
to whom he has joined himself
in spousal intimacy,
will, each in his own way,
soon betray Jesus.
To betray someone with whom 
you have become one flesh and one soul
is to engage in that self-destroying action
that we call mortal sin.

I spent most of yesterday afternoon
reading through the Maryland Attorney General’s
report on sexual abuse by Catholic clergy
over the past sixty years.
It is nearly 500 pages that document
gruesome horror after gruesome horror,
both the acts committed
and the callous treatment of victims
who courageously reported these crimes.
But most of all, 
it is nearly 500 pages of intimacy betrayed,
because nearly all of the abusers were priests
who used their status as those 
who are anointed to represent Christ,
as those who celebrate
the sacrament of eucharistic intimacy,
to prey upon vulnerable children and adults.

I do not have an explanation or an excuse,
nor even an apology adequate to the betrayal.
But on this night I will say two things.

First, if we wish to see Jesus in our midst,
we should look to the victims of these crimes,
for it is in them that we will find the ones
in whom intimacy was betrayed:
it is in them that we see the Man of Sorrows;
it is to them that the Church has played the role of Judas;
it is for them that we must seek justice and healing;
it is to them that we must say
“your feet are my feet, 
and your hands are my hands, 
and your soul is my soul.”

Second, we end this night
on which we commemorate Christ’s intimacy with us
in a moment of fear and uncertainty.
We end in waiting, in flickering fear-filled hope.
At this moment of betrayed intimacy
it is hard to see how God can make a path forward.
But the hope of Easter,
the hope of our lives as disciples,
is that betrayal is not the last word.
The hope of Easter 
is that God is greater than our sin;
that God can bring sinners to repentance 
and turn victims into survivors.
The hope of Easter
is that what lies ahead of us is an empty tomb,
the stone of betrayal rolled away,
our intimacy in Christ restored.

But on this night,
as we wait for a resurrection

we cannot yet see,
the task before us is clear:
“I have given you a model to follow,
so that as I have done for you, 
you should also do.”

Palm Sunday

Readings: Matthew 21:1-11; Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Matthew 26:14-27:66

Last year, the philosopher Agnes Callard
published a column in the New York Times
reflecting on the phenomenon of social media pile-ons,
or what are sometimes referred to as “Twitter mobs.”
Someone says something 
that others find in some way offensive,
and critique cascades into denunciation, vilification,
and even death threats
as more and more people join the chorus,
convincing themselves that the offending party
must be shamed and somehow expelled 
from the realm of public discourse 
in order to restore purity
to the community constituted
by right-thinking people.

In her column, Callard counsels her friends
that, if such a thing should ever happen to her,
they should not rush to defend her from the mob,
as consoling as she might find such a defense.
As she provocatively puts it,
“If you care about me, 
let them eat me alive.”

She says this because of her conviction
that there is no way to argue a mob out of its rage,
out of its passion to shame and vilify,
since the logic of the mob is an illogic,
an irrational conviction about 
the unique evil of a single person
and how the elimination of that person 
will purify the world.
The mob convinces itself that it represents 
the right-thinking people of the world,
when in fact it isn’t thinking at all.
To act collectively against the mob,
to try to shout down its angry cries,
is simply to enter the mentality of the mob,
to succumb to its contagion.
As Callard puts it:
“You imagine that you are fighting against the mob, 
but actually you are becoming a part of it. 
Within the mob there is no justice 
and no argument 
and no reasoning, 
no space for inquiry or investigation. 
The only good move is not to play.”
The only good move, we might say, 
is to let the rage of the mob 
burn itself out.

Jesus seems to agree.
Throughout the story of the Passion,
Jesus refuses to play the mob’s game.
His actions fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy:
“my face I did not shield
from buffets and spitting.”
When one of his followers draws a weapon
to defend Jesus from the large crowd
who have come with swords and clubs to arrest him,
Jesus says, “Put your sword back into its sheath,
for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.”
When questioned by the high priest’s council,
which has transformed itself
from an instrument of justice
into an agent of mob violence,
Jesus remains silent, except to quote scripture:
“From now on you will see ‘the Son of Man
seated at the right hand of the Power’
and ‘coming on the clouds of heaven.’”
When dying in agony on the cross,
with the crowd reviling and mocking him,
he again speaks no word but God’s word, 
crying out in the voice of the psalmist:
“My God, my God, 
why have you forsaken me?”

Of course, there is a key difference 
between the mob Agnes Callard is speaking of
and the mob Jesus confronts in the passion story.
Callard’s mob is a virtual mob,
and its threats, by and large, are virtual threats:
the prospect of public shaming
and expulsion from the realms
of right-thinking discourse.
You can stoically resign yourself to such shaming
and wait for the mob’s anger to burn itself out.
But the mob Jesus faces does not want 
to shame or “cancel” or “de-platform” him.
It wants to kill him. 
The silence of Jesus,
his refusal to defend himself
or let his friends defend him,
is not simply a strategy 
of waiting out the mob’s rage
by enduring its shame.
For the rage of this mob will consume him,
not simply metaphorically,
but literally. 
The irrational, unjust, cruel conviction
that he must be removed 
from the realm of life itself
crashes over him and crushes him.

Stoic patience and resignation cannot save him.

Resignation cannot save him,
but resurrection can.
“I have set my face like flint,
knowing that I shall not be put to shame.”
Jesus faces the mob, defenseless and silent,
for he knows that humbling himself
for the cause of God’s kingdom,
“becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross,”
is the prelude to glory.
The ultimate answer 
to the violence of the mob,
to its irrationality, injustice, and cruelty,
to the contagion of sin that affects our race,
is God’s vindication of Jesus

by raising him to new life,

so that every power 
on heaven and earth and below the earth
would bow down before the humiliated one
now glorified.

As we enter this most holy of weeks,
let us set our faces like flint,
walking with Jesus 
on his silent, defenseless journey
from the shame of death 
to the glory of resurrection.