Maundy Thursday
April 17, 2014
Message by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
During this evening, you will hear the events of betrayal, arrest, trial and crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. Anyone listening to the lessons must say it is a tragedy—indeed, the tragic story that has ever been told.
One of the effects it has upon us is to draw us into the story. In listening, we will naturally identify with the story; we will find our places there. And while this is a story about Jesus and his tragedy, it also has implications for our times of tragedy.
On our recent trip to Italy, one of the highlights was a visit to Milan where Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper is painted on the wall of a refectory of a former convent. We all have seen it in books but to see the actual fresco and to feast our eyes on this very large depiction of the Last Supper was amazing. But what all of us would remember the most is the different emotions displayed on the faces and in the postures of the twelve disciples at the moment when Jesus said, “One of you will betray me.”
If there is one thing that’s for sure it is that every person here will at some time or another be an actor in a drama that is tragic. And when you are, you are sure to feel, as Jesus must have felt, very sad, very much alone.
I don’t know if this was the case with Jesus, but when there is tragedy, there is often a searching question of our beliefs, even to the point of asking, “Where is God?”
We expect God to be with us when we gather for praise and prayer here in church. We expect God to be with us when it’s sunny outside and life for us is coming up roses. But we most want God to be with us during our times of tragedy, especially at times of tragedy.
Good News
This is the good news behind the sad story that brings us here tonight. Where is God? God is with us, in our human suffering, betrayal, disappointment, and trouble. There is no tragedy in which we walk that he has not walked before us so that he could be fully with us.
Where is God? God is with us in the darkness, in the pain, even on the cross, especially there. It’s a very different definition of who God really is, a vision of God that becomes great comfort in times of tragedy. If God will go even to the cross for us, then there is nowhere we are cast that is so sad and dark that it is not also the place where God is with us.
God doesn’t give us an explanation for the tragic, or rescue us from the tragic. God gives us something that may be even better—presence in the tragic. What a great comfort to know, in our moments of greatest difficulty, that God has been there.
After his son died in a car that plummeted into Boston Harbor, William Sloan Coffin preached a now famous sermon that has become a classic statement on the relationship of the Christian faith to the tragic:
When a person dies, there are many things that can be said, and at least one thing that should never be said. The night after Alex died, a woman came by carrying quiches. She shook her head, saying sadly, “I just don’t understand the will of God.”
Instantly I swarmed all over her. “I’ll say you don’t, lady! Do not think it was the will of God that Alex never fixed that lousy windshield wiper; that he was probably driving too fast in a storm? Do you think it is God’s will that there are no streetlights along that stretch of the road?”
Nothing so infuriates me as the incapacity of intelligent people to get it through their heads that God doesn’t go around with his finger on triggers, his fist around knives, his hands on steering wheels. God is dead set against all unnatural deaths. The one thing that should never be said when someone dies is, “It is the will of God.” My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die; that when the waves closed over the sinking car, God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.
We know where God is because we know Jesus. When Jesus learned of the death of his friend Lazarus, what did he do? The shortest verse in the Bible is the most pregnant with the fullness of God: “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). Jesus also wept over Jerusalem and had pity for Peter even in his denial. God’s heart was the first to break.
Where is God?
“Where is God?” Some people, for all sorts of reasons, have decided that there really is no good answer. For them, the tragic is the ultimate confirmation that God is nowhere; there is no God. Tragedy for them is proof of nonexistence, or at least the unconcern, of God. After all, God and the tragic just do not go together, they would say.
Jesus says otherwise. In Jesus, we see that these kinds of reasoning are not true. Where is God? Tomorrow, we hear Jesus cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But take notice: Jesus still calls God “my God.” God is not remote in the hour of suffering. God is there. Close with Jesus. God feels the pain, as much and even more than we do. God does not manipulate our world or our lives down here. God has created us as frail, finite creatures, but God is not absent. Jesus shows us that God is especially present in moments of suffering. We tend to think that when we are in pain, we want to get away from here and get over there, back toward God, where there should be no suffering.
But if anything, when we are in a place of cheerful comfort we may be farther away, rather than close to this God.
Where is God? Where there is tragedy, there is God. That is one of the great truths that we stand on tonight’s Maundy Thursday.
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus Christ, on this holy night, you demonstrated to us the extraordinary lengths that you would go to be with us, to save us, and to win us for your kingdom. We wondered how much God loved us and, in walking the way to suffering and death, we discovered the depth and breadth of your love.
Having come to us, having suffered with us and for us, help us to come along with you as you dare to walk the narrow way of the cross. Therefore may our tragedies be transformed in the light of your cross and resurrection, your presence, and your compassion for us. Amen.
Opening Words
There is our God,
with arms spread wide in vulnerability,
embracing the whole of life
in its every deathly reality.
There is the Christ, our God.
Gathered in those outstretched arms
is all that we are in our humanness—
all our failures and guilty secrets,
all our shame and responsibility
for the wounding to death of the innocent
in ourselves and in others.
There is the Christ, our God.
We stand in silent awe
before the power of costly life.
Benediction
Let us look to one another for support and encouragement.
Let us hold fast to our confession of hope.
Evil will not have the last word.
The threat of death cannot stop the reign of love.
Go silently from here, for there are no words that will speak of this moment in the life of God.