Maundy Thursday: March 29, 2018

 Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC

Maundy Thursday- Thursday, March 29, 2018

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br. Robert Sevensky  

Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech haolam,
shehecheyanu, v'kiy'manu, v'higianu laz'man hazeh. 

Blessed are you, Lord, our God, Sovereign of the Universe Who has kept us alive, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season.

My old friend, Steve Leshner, would often speak around this time of year, Passover time, of how important and moving this blessing was for him as a young Jewish man, how its recitation marked off the seasons and initiated him and his family into their observance. Steve is not, as far as I know, in any sense observant, yet this berakah or blessing, one of thousands available in Jewish practice to be recited at various moments in life's journey, remains with him as a marker and an invitation...an invitation to move with gratefulness and awe into holy time and holy space.

The Shehechyanu is recited at the outset of the all the various festal seasons of the Jewish calendar. Now we don't generally think of Holy Week as a festal time, and especially not these Three Days, this sacred Triduum that begins today and extends through Easter Sunday. Yet remember the prayer we said on Palm Sunday, the prayer that ushered in this great week. That prayer asks God to assist us:  “...that we may enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts” (BCP, p. 270) whereby God has given us life and immortality.

What we are remembering, celebrating, observing tonight and for the next three days is precisely those great and mighty acts of love, acts of divine love, that move us individually and corporately through darkness and despair to light and life. This is a single drama of God's love for you and me acted out in history—once and for all—but having power and effect far beyond space and time and human understanding. It is our unique saving and transformative act, with many scenes and facets, some unbearably heart-rending. It is at once a life-giving and efficacious drama: cross and tomb and resurrection. They cannot be separated, indeed they dare not be.

The Shehecheyanu blessing is recited by Jews to mark the beginning of sacred times and festivals such as Passover. But there are other occasions when it is appropriate. Generally it is used when doing or experiencing something that occurs infrequently from which you derive pleasure or benefit, such as eating fresh fruit for the first time after Rosh Hashanah or performing a religious observance for the very first time or for the first time in a long time, upon seeing a friend whom you have not seen for at least thirty days or on getting a new home or at the birth of a child, and significantly for modern Jews, on arriving in Israel. It really is an all-purpose blessing.

I would dare to suggest that we enter these Christian holy days in the spirit of the Shehecheyanu blessing. That is, with a spirit of praise and thanksgiving to our Creator for having brought us once more to this holy season. And that we enter  these days with a child's eyes and a beginner's mind. I would invite us to enter into these mysteries, which some of us here have been celebrating in various ways for forty, fifty, seventy years or more, as if it were the first time, the very first time, because in one sense it always is. We are none of us the same people we were last year.

Let us enter these days as if it were the first time of having our foot washed, with all its tender and awkward associations. Or keeping night vigil, or hearing the Passion narrative sung, or seeing the Easter fire or hearing the Exsultet. Let it be as if we had no idea what to expect next, yet being fully present with eyes and ears and hearts wide open. Let the sharing in the Body and Blood of Christ this night be as though it were the very first time that you and I were tasting the food of Paradise. Let it be as if we are seeing our old friend, Jesus, for the first time, maybe not just after thirty days but after thirty years. Let it be as if you were entering your new home, as you once did through the waters of baptism, and finding there a place where you could be fully safe and fully yourself, at home within your own skin. Let it be as if you were a Jew visiting Israel for the first time and knowing deep down that in some sense have come home to your true native land.

The way to approach these days, and perhaps all of life, is with deep gratitude for having been sustained and kept alive, vulnerable and without preconceptions or expectations, but with profound receptivity and hope.

 God—blessed be the Holy One—has indeed blessed each one of us and has brought us to this season. Let us now enter together into the contemplation of those mighty acts of love. Let us hold each other and all this broken and suffering and longing world in our hearts and our actions. Let us welcome Christ, our true Light, in all his complexity and mystery, just as he welcomes us in ours. And let us bless God tonight and tomorrow and on the Third Day.

Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech haolam,
shehecheyanu, v'kiy'manu, v'higianu laz'man hazeh.

Blessed are you, Lord, our God, Sovereign of the UniverseWho has kept us alive, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season.

Amen.