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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