Since becoming an Anglican, I have been astonished at how much I draw from church services that has nothing to do with the sermon. I count it one of the greatest strengths of the Anglican tradition, in fact: that it is the least anthropocentric worship I have ever encountered. Indeed, the preaching takes up so little of the service (as it should) and the focus is on the reading of scripture, the singing of hymns, prayer, and culminating in the Holy Eucharist.
Having been raised in the Southern Baptist tradition, I must claim that for most of my life I had no idea such a thing existed, and given the things I heard growing up at church and at home, I honestly didn't believe that anybody who wasn't an evangelical (that is, had been "born again" in the narrow understanding the evangelicals have of that phrase) probably wasn't a real Christian.
Yet last night, at the Maundy Thursday liturgy, I was moved to tears on a number of occasions. It had nothing to do with the sermon. Not that the sermon was bad; it wasn't. But it just so happened that although making a couple of rather important points, it was just a fraction of what the service was about. For those of you who, like me, were raised in a non-liturgical church, Maundy Thursday is the commemoration of the night in which Christ was betrayed in which he did two things that are now essential elements of our understanding of Christianity.
For one, he instituted the Holy Eucharist, or Lord's Supper. This is the focus of the Synoptic Gospels' account of the night. Additionally, as we find in the Gospel according to St. John, Christ instituted the new command (from whence we gain the term "Maundy" from the latin for mandamus or mandatem, meaning "mandate"). In John's Gospel account, in fact, we get a rather lengthy treatment of the night's events.
It begins with the Christ's washing of the disciples' feet:
After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?"Jesus replied, "You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand." "No," said Peter, "you shall never wash my feet." Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no part with me." "Then, Lord," Simon Peter replied, "not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!" Jesus answered, "A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you." For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean.
When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. "Do you understand what I have done for you?" he asked them. "You call me 'Teacher' and 'Lord,' and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.
What a remarkable passage. I could not stop thinking about it after it was read; throughout the service, last night after getting home, this morning when I woke up. These are my reflections on that passage and its place in the context of the rest of the New Testament.
First, there is a distinctive parallel between Peter's refusal to allow Christ to wash his feet and John the Baptizer's incredulity at Christ's desire to be baptized by John. From St. Matthew's Gospel, we hear him say "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" To which Christ replied "Let it be so now, for it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness."
In both circumstances, a follower of Christ was in some way served by him, although thinking that it should have been the other way around. In the case of John the Baptizer, Christ said that "it is proper for us to do this." Not being a Greek scholar (though I wish I were), I can only interpret based on the English translation, but it certainly seems that Christ's use of the word "us" is in the literal and immediate sense of he and John there and at that point in time.
I come to this conclusion by interpreting the circumstances through the parallel we find with Peter in St. John's Gospel account. The operative hermeneutical tool is the penultimate line of the foot-washing narrative, where Christ says "I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him." These twin circumstances seem to point towards Christ's reverence of God the Father--and his desire for his disciples to ensure that their reverence was rightly placed. Christ always references himself as being sent by God--that is, as a messenger.
We find further evidence of this entire paradox (though only compounding the paradox) in St. Paul's cryptic discussion of the subject in his letter to the Philippians, saying, "Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness."
Far from denying Trinitarianism and the begottenness of Christ these Scriptures help us from straying into the realm of semi-Docetism (Docetism being the heretical view that Christ's physical body was only an illusion). The humanity of Christ is as important as his divinity, and I have found that many, especially in the evangelical community, tend to de-emphasize the fullness of Christ's humanity. For it was not that Christ was half human and half divine or half human and fully divine, but rather that he was both fully human and fully divine. And he invites us to be like him. Not to act like him, but to be like him.
By virtue of the fact that he was the begotten Son of God, his divinity was manifested from all eternity, as we find expressed in the words of the Nicene Creed, that he was "begotten of his Father before all worlds, God from God, Light from Light, Very God from Very God, begotten and not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made." Yet as created beings, and not begotten ones, we humans in our own incarnations are invited to become immortal beings, as part of the divine essence with Christ.
I believe this is a correct rendering of St. Paul's usage of the forms of the word "adoption" in his letters to the Romans and the Ephesians. We are all to be adopted as Children of God, to reign with Christ in God's Kingdom, being all "members incorporate in the mystical body of Thy Son, the blessed company of all faithful people," to quote from the final Eucharistic Prayer in Rite I of the Anglican liturgy.
All of this is likely enough to take in, but I would be remiss if I did not continue, for there is an even greater richness in our original Gospel passage. As we begin to reverence Christ in this new context, and to take heed in his words that we do likewise to our neighbor, I believe that the message we must extract from the foot-washing narrative culminates in the New Mandate Christ instituted on Maundy Thursday, which is:
"Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know you are my disciples, if you love one another."
Given the perpetual New Testament theme of the triplet set, it is not surprising that Christ, in as many sentences, commands his hearers three times to love one another. Yet again we overlook a crucial word of the text. Christ says "a new commandment I give to you." Some might argue that this is technically inaccurate, for how could this commandment be new? When pressed by the Pharisees to cite the greatest commandment of the Old Testament, Christ had previously stated that it was "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and all your soul. And the second, which is like unto it, love your neighbor as yourself."
But notice the difference in the New Commandment and the old one. The point of reference had changed. For the Old Testament reader, one could possibly conceive of no greater love than one had for himself. Indeed, the Old Testament said in essence "put people on equal footing with yourself." The Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" fits directly into this context. Christ, however, truly gives us a new command. For when he says "Love one another even as I have loved you," he is veritably saying "Love your neighbor more than you love yourself," and its corollary, "Do unto others in a manner than is even better than you would have them do unto you."
Perhaps now we have an even better understanding of the previously quoted passage from St. Paul's letter to the Philippians that we are to be like-minded with Christ. Christ, being in nature God made himself lower than his equal. We, being human, ought to make ourselves lower than our fellow humans. This is how we reach the divine presence; this is how we realize our full status as the adopted sons of God. This is the same, but differently worded paradox of Christ that "he who will save his life will lose it, and he who will lose his life will save it."
It is with that single condition (and notice none others are mentioned in this passage, which is Christ's last teaching session with his disciples) that Christ says we shall be known as his disciples: the loving of one another with a sacrificial love, that is, one that imitates Christ's love. In the grammatical sense, the logical antecedent of Christ's conditional statement is "if you love one another." The consequent is "then you will be known as my disciple." The antecedent is a sufficient condition for the consequent. That is, in any context in which one is abiding by the commandment to love one another, then that person is known as Christ's disciple. It is unequivocal and unqualified. This is the highest calling of man. All other good things flow from it.
This is why St. Paul said in his letter to the Romans that the greatest of the virtues is love, and that without love there is nothing. There is no grace, there is no faithfulness, there is no joy, there is no freedom, there is no peace. Without love, all is for nought. This is the consistent, redundant, and perpetual message of the Gospels and the entirety of the New Testament's writings. The moment we get away from this--the moment we stray into adding commandments, is the moment we lose sight of the entire life of Christ, the purpose of his death, and the meaning of his resurrection.
But it is also the loftiest of the commands. I have frequently heard many Baptist preachers talk about how much easier things are because of Christ, that we are no longer under the weight of keeping the thousands of technicalities of the Old Testament laws. I would argue (and not at all contradicting Paul's pleadings with the Jewish people about being liberated from the law) that it would be easier to keep the technicalities of the Old Testament Law than to remain in a constant spirit and state of loving one another in the way that Christ loved us. There is a reason that only one man (Christ himself) can make the claim that he achieved that end, for it is not an easy accomplishment.
As we now look to this day's services, the Good Friday liturgy and the Stations of the Cross, let us be ever mindful of the emptying of Christ, both spiritually and physically, so that he could perform that ultimate act of love, the laying down of his own life. More thoughts to come this afternoon and evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment