"Cruciform Community" - Sermon for Maundy Thursday

Cruciform Community
Maundy Thursday – Narrative Lectionary 4
April 17, 2014
Grace, Mankato, MN
John 19.22-27

For those who keep track, you no doubt have noticed this is not your typical Maundy Thursday texts. There’s no foot washing at the Lord’s Supper where Jesus gives an example of humble service for his disciples to follow. There is no commandment to love one another as he loves them, and there are no words of institution. We left behind the foot washing early in Lent as we have been walking with Jesus to the cross. Since that time, Jesus has been arrested, hauled before the chief priest, denied by his closest follower, endured the pretext of a trial while caught in a power struggle, flogged, insulted and paraded to Golgotha. Throughout it all, although it appears otherwise, Jesus is not a helpless victim but rather is in charge of his mission to heal the broken relationship between God and humanity.

However, I think our text for tonight is a good Maundy Thursday scripture. It contains what I think are two of the most poignant scenes in the passion story, if not the entire Bible. The first scene, the stripping of Jesus and gambling for his clothes, is something we will reenact later in worship when we strip the altar. But for now, imagine for a moment that you are dying and before you are even dead people start arguing about your stuff. It’s like children fighting over who is going to get what when mom or dad are gone when they are still alive. No doubt there is symbolism in the “onesie” that Jesus wears, and much ink has been spilled about it, but those are deep waters for another time. I’ll only wade around a bit by noting note our inclination for dividing Jesus into parts. Just this last week, in fact, there was one of those quizzes going around on Facebook, “What Kind of Jesus Are You?” I don’t remember all of the kinds, but the idea that Jesus can be parceled is anathema. (By the way, I was “Jesus, MD.”)

I wish to avoid the even deeper symbolic waters of the following scene where Jesus gives his mother to the beloved disciple and he to her. Staying with the shallow end, at its simplest through these acts Jesus creates new community. Isn’t it ironic that while the soldiers are arguing about possessions, Jesus focuses on relationships? The term “Jesus’ mother” emphasizes community and the new relationship between her and the disciple Jesus loved that is formed at the foot of the cross. This act is beginning of a new people of God. Jesus does, indeed, love them to the very end as we heard earlier in the story. It is at the cross that our most important relationships are formed, between us and God and between us and one another.

This new cruciform community provides different ways of living, but I’ll name just two. First, the community formed by the cross does not shy away from nor deny suffering. In fact, being a member of the cruciform community means we lean into it, embracing the other in suffering. How many times have we provided meals to families grieving loss or going through cancer?
How many prayer shawls and prayer chains and prayer circles and prayer lists and hugs have been poured out upon the broken? How many meals have been served or provided for the disadvantaged, where we haven’t just fed them, but sat with them and shared their lives? That’s cruciform community.

That brings us the second way of living, the call of the table that continues to create and sustain community. Growing up, one of our family values was to eat together every night and say grace together. You didn’t miss a meal unless it was for an important reason, and there weren’t very many important reasons. That may be one reason why I am so passionate about having Holy Communion every service every week at Grace; we need to eat together. We shouldn’t miss eating together except for an important reason, and I don’t think there are many of those. That’s something our 5th graders discovered last evening as they deepened their understanding of Communion. It’s something that will continue to unfold for them (and us) in the years ahead. Forgiven for those times we have fractured community through what we think, say, and do, we are re-knit together as mother and father, sister and brother, son and daughter, set free to live and serve. Jesus calls us from the cross to this meal in which he gives us his very self, loving us to the end. Thanks be to God. Amen.