March 20, 2008
Maundy Thursday (Year A, B, C)
Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14; Psalm 116:1, 10-17; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26;
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Recently I received an email from my nephew who is working in Dili, East Timor. The president of East Timor, Nobel prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta, has been shot and is recovering in a hospital in Australia. During the attack, Major Alfredo Reinaldo was shot and killed along with several of his men. The people who live there do not feel they are getting the whole story. Radio stations are afraid to talk about it. The FBI has “kindly” volunteered to “look into the matter.”
To quote my nephew’s long email:
Major Reinaldo has an almost mythic status in the minds of many Timorese – especially the marginalized youth [over 50% of the population is under the age of 18!] In a country where Che Guevara’s face is more ubiquitous than McDonalds, Nike, or any other familiar name brands I’m used to, Alfredo Reinaldo was in many ways the Timorese version. A rebel leader, hiding in the hills with six hundred men, under-armed and relying on the support of the people for food and shelter, he also reminded Timor of its proud history of resistance to the brutal Indonesian occupation. His calls for justice were often scoffed at by international forces here, but he had strong support among many of this country’s poor. Anti-establishment rebels were well-regarded there; the current prime minister himself was a rebel leader for decades before being imprisoned in Jakarta.
Some of my best Timorese friends have brothers and cousins who were part of “Alfredo’s members,” waiting in the hills for a resolution to their complaints against discrimination in the armed forces and a wrongful scape-goating of Major Alfredo and a small group of men for the crisis that left 150,000 homeless and thirty-seven dead in 2006. Other Timorese that I know considered him a terrorist who got what he deserved. In any case his attack on the president was senseless and difficult to understand. No one can comprehend it here. Rumors abound. Some believe he is not dead, that his training would have prevented his doing such an outrageous thing as attacking the president’s home. Others say his death is a result of a government conspiracy to take him out of the picture.
But the reaction among the people has been unexpectedly calm. It seems that everyone is partly stunned by the events as well as sick of the “one more problem” in their already troubled country. A month later, business continues as usual – one less rebel leader to think about. There is still a curfew from 10 PM until 6 AM. And the prime minister has declared a “State of Siege” which puts a halt to whatever nightlife there had been, but the rest of life here is largely unaffected.
As I read my nephew’s letter, I could not help but think of Jesus on this night of all nights when the religious and political leaders conspired in the dark of night to make sure that one more rebel was out of the way and the powers-that-be could go on as usual. People, out of fear or simply dreading more commotion, got on about their business as usual hoping that it would not all be stirred up again.
Friends are forced into quiet, dark places. And the illusion that life will go on without further hassle is clutched by all.
I am, of course, not in any way comparing Major Alfredo to Jesus, except to say that both were victims of politics that sought to serve the very people that opposed those who were a thorn in the side of the establishment. Both had a vision for a world where true justice reigned. Both were political people.
Now, of course, Jesus was also a deeply holy man, a man who loved God passionately and wanted that love to be shared by all people. It could even be that Major Alfredo was, too. I don’t know; but hearing his story from my nephew caused me to think about us, 2000 years after the time Jesus was taken away in the night and put to death by the powerful government (cleverly at night so few would be watching). Now 2000 years later we have returned to a relative calm about it. And I would guess that “calm” was there for most people a month after it happened. So we reenact this night Jesus’ actions of that last evening with his friends, remembering Jesus and what he said and did for us, showing us God’s love and forgiveness of us.
I wonder? Have we dared to do what he further commanded his friends to do? Have we proceeded to stand for what he stood for? Love what he loved? Or have we become the very thing that he objected to and fought, a powerful, silent majority, not bad folks, but then not truly faithful folks either, not people who dare to stoop to serve the oppressed and poor, to wash the feet of the hungry or work to change the world with a new vision, Jesus’ vision of what could be.
Major Alfredo may be a rebel terrorist, or he may be a human being who stands up for the poor and the oppressed at the cost of his own life, a man who wanted to change his corner of the world for the better. Or he may not be, I don’t know; but I do know that if Jesus had not been who he was, preaching, living, dying, deeply passionate about God and justice in the world, then we would not have a glimpse of God and God’s hope for the world at all.
Tonight we are invited to wash each other’s feet, a thing that is uncomfortable for most of us, unbearable for some, but to quote Sally Frohring, “It’s not about the feet!” Of course, it is not about the feet. It is about a master, our Lord, our God, inviting us into an intimate, passionate relationship with him and with each other that we might never be ones who are eager to return to the calm and safety of what we have in the face of injustice. Washing feet is about taking the action of Christ into our way of being, even as we take Christ’s body into our own when we share communion, an equally intimate and fearful experience if we really stop to think about it.
“Serving” – most of us can understand this and are willing to try; but this night Jesus asked his followers to first surrender themselves to his loving care, physically, spiritually and emotionally. And he asks us to do the same. It’s not about the feet! It’s about surrendering to God and to each other. Feet are merely the imperfect vehicle for getting us far enough outside ourselves to truly let go and trust that God loves us enough to be our servant in such an embarrassing way.
And then, once we are served, we are to serve others, not only each other symbolically tonight, but to serve as Jesus served, serve those who least have a voice, those who are hidden in the hills, or whose lives are invisible because they are of a race or class or tribe that the world doesn’t give any attention to, like the lepers or Samaritans or tax collectors whom Jesus befriended, or the 150,000 displaced in East Timor. And tonight I am thinking, maybe we are called to serve those others so adamantly that we too anger the political powers that be. It’s just something to consider this Maundy Thursday when 2000 years ago the religious and political powers conspired to make sure that Jesus was swept off in the night and killed before the world of justice and equality he knew to be God’s deepest desire, could be borne into place.
Maybe we can be faithful to God’s vision too. Washing feet is a very small first step, isn’t it?
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd