Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Dayenu-- Maundy Thursday

A Homily for Maundy Thursday All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C. April 17, 2014 Thomas E. Wilson Rector

 Dayenu


We tend to remember the gathering of the disciples in the Upper Room with a great deal of solemnity. When it is filmed in the Bible movies, it is usually shot through a gauze filter of extreme reverence. But it probably wasn’t a staid service as it was a Passover celebration, and those are meals of great fun. I want to believe that there were moments when they danced wildly around the room and sang songs of joy. There is a part of the meal when the people sing a song of fifteen stanzas which lists fifteen gifts that God has given them - five stanzas of how God helped the people in bondage in Egypt, five stanzas of how God was with them in the wilderness, and five stanzas of how God has been with them in the promised land. After each stanza, the people would dance and sing a response, “Dayenu”, which means “even that would have been enough”.

If He had brought us out from Egypt, and had not carried out judgments against them Dayenu, it would have sufficed us!
If He had carried out judgments against them, and not against their idols Dayenu, it would have sufficed us!
If He had destroyed their idols, and had not smitten their first-born Dayenu, it would have sufficed us!
If He had smitten their first-born, and had not given us their wealth Dayenu, it would have sufficed us!
If He had given us their wealth, and had not split the sea for us Dayenu, it would have sufficed us!
If He had split the sea for us, and had not taken us through it on dry land Dayenu, it would have sufficed us!
If He had taken us through the sea on dry land, and had not drowned our oppressors in it Dayenu, it would have sufficed us!
If He had drowned our oppressors in it, and had not supplied our needs in the desert for forty years Dayenu, it would have sufficed us!
If He had supplied our needs in the desert for forty years, and had not fed us the manna Dayenu, it would have sufficed us!
If He had fed us the manna, and had not given us the Shabbat Dayenu, it would have sufficed us!
If He had given us the Shabbat, and had not brought us before Mount Sinai Dayenu, it would have sufficed us!
If He had brought us before Mount Sinai, and had not given us the Torah Dayenu, it would have sufficed us!
If He had given us the Torah, and had not brought us into the land of Israel Dayenu, it would have sufficed us!
If He had brought us into the land of Israel, and had not built for us the Temple Dayenu, it would have sufficed us!

But God keeps on giving and for that we give thanks.


This week we have been looking at “Incorporation” in the church, and I have been looking at it in my life. On the church level we are trying to create a better system of making sure that those people who God calls to our faith community are welcomed and brought into the body of this church. As we heard at the meeting on Tuesday night, the word incorporation comes from the Latin word corpus meaning “body”.

I came to the meeting a little bit tired because I had spent the day out of the office at a service of a Reaffirmation of my Ordination Vows along with most of the other clergy in the diocese. I traveled three hours there and three hours back which gave me a lot of time to think about why the heck I ever became a Priest. I became a Priest because I am, first and foremost, a servant of Christ, and this path was the best way for me to live into that service. Tonight on Maundy Thursday we conduct our service because we are called to reaffirm our incorporation of Jesus Christ into our lives and we reaffirm our identity of being servants of the Risen Lord.

There are two parts to this service; the first part is the remembrance of Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist during the context of a Passover meal. Passover is a time when the Jewish people would gather together to remember why they are Jews and what it means that they are Jewish. They remember that their ancestors had a relationship with God and the Spirit of that God which led them out of bondage in Egypt and through the wilderness, where they were fed with bread from divine hands and brought into a Promised Land where they would give thanksgiving with the wine that was the fruit of the earth. Even if that would have all been enough, Dayenu, Jesus tells them there is more that God continues to do. Jesus takes the bread and reminds his followers that they are still reaffirming that they are heirs of the promise of a relationship with God, that God’s spirit would lead them out of the bondage in which they find themselves, through the wilderness times when they fear there is not enough for them. Yet in the wilderness they are given nourishment for the soul from the divine hand, so that they are delivered into a new place of living in the soul, tasting the gifts of God and discovering the True Self. Jesus says to his followers to take the bread and wine of the Passover and add another layer of meaning and see that he, Jesus, is giving his life, his body and blood, so that they might obtain the promises of being children of the living God.

The second part of the service is when Jesus demonstrates another way of giving himself to them and kneels down and washes their feet as their servant. He urges, indeed commands, that they become what they eat. As he is the servant of the living God and they symbolically take him in, his body into theirs, incorporate him into their bodies, so they become servants as well.
For the last 30 years I have reaffirmed my ordination vows on the Tuesday of Holy Week. Dayenu.

For the past 40+ years I have reaffirmed my servant identity almost every year on the Thursday of Holy Week when I allow my feet to be washed and when I wash another’s feet. Dayenu.

Each week I continue to reaffirm my dependence on the Spirit of the Living God when I commit to taking into my body the promises that God gives us during the Sunday services. Dayenu.

Each day I continue to reaffirm whose I am when I wake up in prayer and go to sleep in prayer to the One who gives me life. Dayenu.

God keeps on giving each minute of each day of each year. Dayenu.

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