HOLY THURSDAY
In her book O Pioneers! Willa Cather the Nebraskan novelist and chronicler of pioneering life in 20th century America has one of her characters say this:
“There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.”
Sometimes when I quote this line while giving a talk or teaching I will take the time to ask those gathered what they think the theme of focus of those two or three stories might be. Quickly I fill an entire white board with the ideas offered. Never have I done this simple interactive exercise when at the end I couldn’t reasonably group all the words on the board under three categories signified by three alliterative words that I believe encompass the three archetypal human stories. Those words are love, loss, and liberation. Whether simple folksy yarns or intricate lengthy epics, I believe that the three quintessential human stories that we keep repeating over and over again are about love, loss, and liberation.
Today Christians throughout the world begin to celebrate our high holy days called Triduum (in Latin three days). Liturgically speaking, Triduum is really one long interconnected worship experience beginning the evening of Holy Thursday, continuing from Good Friday through Holy Saturday, and culminating with the Easter-Vigil and Easter Sunday. Each of the three “days” represents one panel of a liturgical triptych. In a metaphorical but not exclusionary way, Holy Thursday is a story of love. Good Friday is a story of loss, and Easter is a story of liberation. Again, because it is really one story, each of the themes is folded into and present within the other two stories as well.
For Christians, this story with three movements focuses on the life, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It is referred to theologically as the Paschal Mystery, that is, the mystery that new life comes forth from death. In one of my favorite books Telling the Truth, Frederick Buechner calls this tripartite mystery “the gospel as tragedy, comedy, and fairy tale.” I like this description because it alludes to the folly of God, the foolishness of love and loss and liberation, the folly of what we celebrate these three days, and the foolishness – if we risk hearing it – of the implications of this story for those of us who (like the deny-er Peter) are affiliated with Jesus.
In H&H this month we are reflecting on and practicing holy foolishness. It might be good to enter into the familiar stories of these three days by looking and listening for the holy foolishness that they reveal, especially the foolishness of God as embodied by the foolishness of Jesus.
It is the foolishness of love. In a society plagued by divisiveness, prejudice, and walls that separate people, Jesus announces and enacts radical inclusiveness. He invites us to do the same. In a society plagued by the fear of financial security and physical safety Jesus models the foolishness of reaching out to others and sharing with those in need (whether loaves and fish or friendship and sorrow). He invites us to do the same. In a world that promotes ascendancy, Jesus willingly assumes the posture of a servant by foolishly dropping to his knees, grabbing a towel, holding and washing the dirty, smelly, misshapen feet of his friends. He invites us to do the same. Who will be so foolish?
It is the foolishness of loss (tragic, even voluntary loss). In a world in which the “stairway to heaven” is assumed to go up Jesus is foolish enough to sing “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” He invites us to do the same. Jesus allows his cousin John to baptize him in the river Jordan. He invites us to do the same which is pure nonsense, utter foolishness when we realize that from that day forward our baptismal middle name is Grain of Wheat. Jesus foolishly allows his body to be beaten, mocked, and hung from a cross beam that symbolized the cross-purposes of his life with the dominant culture of the day (his and ours), a sign of contradiction against the hubris, greed, inhumanity, and violence that perpetuate injustice, the abuse of power, the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. He invites us to do the same. Who will be so foolish?
It is the foolishness of liberation. Jesus is tortured. Jesus feels abandoned by God. Jesus is killed. Jesus dies. Jesus goes down into the bowels of death and resides there. Then, on the third day, Jesus is resurrected. Jesus comes forth from his internment. He invites us to come forth from ours. In a world of gross inequities, unnecessary malnutrition and starvation, desecration of the earth, irreverence toward human and other-than-human creatures, child suicides caused by bullying, unbearable and inexplicable suffering of those close to us, child trafficking, or the escalating addiction to violence and war, it is foolishness indeed to believe in resurrection let alone to “practice resurrection” as poet Wendell Berry encourages. But Jesus invites us to do the same. Who will be so foolish to believe in and practice resurrection?
Foolishness? Maybe. Maybe. Or as Buechner asks is the truth of “this overwhelming of tragedy by comedy, of darkness by light, of the ordinary by the extraordinary” the tale that is “too good NOT to be true because to dismiss it as untrue is to dismiss along with it that catch of breath, that beat and lifting of the heart near to or even accompanied by tears, which I believe is the deepest intuition of truth that we have”?
Is the Jesus story a story only of loss, or of love lost? Or is it a story of love and loss and liberation? Is it utter nonsense? A bad April Fool’s joke? Or is it a story – our story – in which the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God stronger than human strength? That’s the foolish truth, the foolish love that Jesus, the Jester of God, lived and died for. He invites us to be wise enough to be foolish enough to do the same.♦