Mediant*
“This isn’t who I want to be. Why do I do this? This isn’t who I want to become.”
I was sitting on the couch in my sponsor’s basement, going over a 4th & 5th step—taking a moral inventory of myself and admitting the exact nature of my wrongs. I was owning up to sin in my life: the ways I have missed the mark, the ways I’ve broken relationships, the ways I have refused to love wholeheartedly.
And I was frustrated.
“Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones…” It’s an image and phrase that resounds, resonates, echoes throughout the Gospels. And here Jesus doesn’t quite finish the sentence, but elsewhere he makes it explicit. “Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to these little ones gives it to me.” This is good—giving a cold cup of water and serving the little ones—because as we do it for the little ones we do it for Christ himself.
It’s so good to see you all.
Who’da thunk it, right?
By rights—by the logic of the world—I shouldn’t be standing here. When some of y’all first met me I was a barely dried-out drunk, who didn’t even have anything nice to say about Christianity. Let alone any desire to serve in ministry. Christian community had chewed me up and spat me out. My life had collapsed around me, and I was just learning how to survive one day at a time.
Fifty days ago we gathered here, on Easter Eve, to sing a song. It was an ancient song—a song of fire and water. We sang about new fire, kindled in the darkness, greeting the new light of resurrection. We sang about deep waters—the Red Sea and the Flood—which threaten to destroy but which God uses for good. We sang about the waters flowing out from God’s Temple—the waters of salvation which God gives freely to any who thirst. It was a night to rejoice in all God’s works—in all God’s deeds of power.
“Lift up your hearts!”
The priest says it every time we celebrate the Eucharist: “Lift up your hearts!” And we answer: “We lift them to the Lord.”
That exchange is one of the oldest dialogues in Christian worship, found in the liturgies of all the apostolic churches. And it’s so short—over so quickly—that we might never stop and think about what it means.
“Lift up your hearts!”
As fleeting as that moment in our liturgy is—and as easily as we might pass the odd phrase over—the fact it has endured so universally throughout the centuries, points to an important truth about what we are gathered for today—what we gather for week after week, day after day.
On Christmas morning I preached about love. I talked about how the Incarnation is God’s Love coming into our midst. I talked about how Love came into our midst so that we can be reborn as children of God, like he was born of a brave young woman in Bethlehem. Love came into our midst to gather us up, like he was gathered up in the arms of his mother. Love came into our midst to swaddle us in himself, like he was swaddled in strips of cloth. Love came into our midst to nestle us into the bosom of God, like he was nestled to sleep in the manger. On Christmas, Love came into our midst—the Word became flesh—to love us: “his own who are in the world.” And tonight on Maundy Thursday, he shows us where that love leads as he “loves us to the end.”
“It’s a lost cause… What’s the point?”
“It’s a lost cause… Society’s burning, and the planet is drowning. It’s too late to reverse the damage we’ve done.”
“It’s a lost cause… The Church is dying; look at the numbers. There’s no hope of bringing back the people we’ve lost.”
“It’s a lost cause… He’s failed again; so why even bother? He’s fallen too many times for it to be worth giving him another chance.”
It kinda seems like a world of lost causes out there. Maybe you’ve noticed? Maybe you’ve seen them? I mean, maybe you’ve felt like you are one? I know I have in the past.
Can I tell y’all a secret?
And I know this might come as a shock, but I’m not perfect. I screw up all the time. I fall way short of the life I’m supposed to live—the life I want to live. I leave undone the things God calls me to do, and I keep doing the things God warns me not to. I say things and think things and do things that violate God’s vision of Creation as it should be. I sin—a lot. I’m not perfect. And neither are you.
And yeah, obviously, that’s not really a secret. The fact that I sin—that we sin—isn’t news. As our Old Testament reading shows us, it’s the human condition. Adam and Eve have just been commissioned by God to till and tend the Garden to God’s glory, and already we see them reaching out their hands to exploit it for their OWN glory. And the rest, quite literally, is history: a story riddled with humans misusing the gift of life that God gave us. We screw up and wound ourselves and each other—all day, every day.
But the question before us today is: What do we do with those wounds? What do we do when our eyes are opened and we see what we’ve done?
