Stripping the Altar
Maundy Thursday

Exodus 12:1-14a        1 Cor. 11:23-26            Luke 22:14-30

Many of us, I would guess, were drawn to the Episcopal church in part because of the use of liturgy and symbol, both of which help to anchor us in our faith.  At no time are these worship aids more powerful than during the Lenten penitential season and Holy Week observances.

Several years ago a dear friend, actively engaged in pastoral ministry in a large suburban church of another mainline denomination, asked me this question: “What’s with it with you Episcopalians?  Why do you observe Lent?  It all seems pretty dismal to me.  Church is supposed to be about joy and hope, not sin and long faces.”

I don’t recall exactly what I said at the time, but it was something along the lines of not being able to appreciate a rainbow without the storm.  As I saw it then, my friend found meaning in what some might call “happy church.”  The kind of place where alleluias and hosannas prevail Sunday after Sunday, regardless of the season.

However, the question has stayed with me over the years.  And looking at it from the viewpoint of an outsider, I can even understand.  We are marked with ashes, we give up or take on Lenten acts of self-denial.  In a sense, we “fast” from the world.   But as my mystified friend inquired, “To what end?”
 
Ash Wednesday begins the Lenten season by challenging us with the most basic of reality checks.  We kneel at the altar rail, heads bare.  As ashes are imposed with the sign of cross, we hear the familiar, inescapable admonition:  “Remember that you are dust, and to dust shall you return.” [BCP, p. 265]  These words provide a clear reminder of the fact that nothing we have accumulated, earned, bargained for, or achieved will save us from the certainty of death.

Just as Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness with earthly power, authority, and wealth [Luke 4:7], we, too, are enticed to measure success by worldly standards — to crave what our materialistic culture offers.  Ash Wednesday draws us up short and calls us to forty days of self-examination.

At the Ash Wednesday service we attended in Tucson, the preacher made an apt comparison.  She suggested Lent calls us to a time of stripping away all that keeps us from God, much as we might peel a Bandaid from a bloody scrape.  We can ease it off slowly, millimeter by painful millimeter, to expose the sore, or we can rip it off in one vigorous yank.  Regardless of the method, what we learn is this.

Not until we strip away those protective Bandaids, do we own our imperfections and thus begin to heal.  We humans are adept at covering ourselves with such Bandaids—those masking our woundedness, those concealing our vulnerabilities, those hiding our baser selves from the harsh light of truth.  Most of us work diligently to construct such a patch-work cover-up for our shortcomings.

And then comes the annual wake-up call: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust shall you return.”
 
During the Lenten journey, Scripture readings and liturgy help us to recognize our humanity and to seek amendment of life.  One has only to pray the Litany of Penitence to understand that we have, on occasion, failed to love our neighbors as ourselves and been guilty, among other things, of pride, hypocrisy, impatience, anger, envy, or “intemperate love of worldly goods and comfort,” [BCP, pp. 267-68].
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As tonight’s Gospel from Luke tells us, Jesus, in that Upper Room so long ago, knew full well the failures, shortcomings, and sins of his so very human disciples.  He understood that they craved status and position, placing greater value on leading than on serving.  He saw into the heart of Judas, poised for betrayal, yet even so, welcomed him at the table.

Knowing all that he did about his disciples, Jesus nevertheless said to them: “I confer on you, just as my Father has conferred on me, a kingdom, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” [Luke 22:29-30]

And no matter our past or our current condition, we, too, are welcome at the table.  We, too, are offered the kingdom. 

Tonight we share in the Eucharistic feast, a sinful people redeemed by the grace of God through the sacrifice of his Son — whatever our weaknesses, whatever our failings.

After our communal meal, we will watch as the comfortable trappings of our faith are stripped away, just as, during Lent, we are stripped bare of self-delusion.  One by one, the symbols will be removed.  The flags, the altar cloths, the Gospel book, the candles, the elements, even the cross, until finally we are left in the darkness with an open aumbry door, revealing, not the nourishing presence of the body and blood of Christ, but emptiness.
 
The stripping of the altar raises a poignant and pregnant question: What if our personal Lenten stripping away—yours and mine—ended tonight—with that yawning void?

Herein lies the crux of the answer to my friend’s question, “Why Lent?”

Maggie Ross, Anglican Solitary writing in the journal Weavings, offers one perspective:

When liturgy devolves from being God-centered to being me-centered, social strictures choke off the full range of emotion.  Every service has to be “uplifting,” encouraging people to flee from their emotions and from intimacy with the unknowability of God or anyone else.  In this milieu there is no dialogue with silence, nor space for it; no comfort for wounds or weeping.  There is no room for the darkness, sin, and death inherent in the human condition, or for the ancient liturgical rites of Holy Week that enable catharsis and the silence of transfiguration.  Without death, she concludes, there can be no resurrection. [Ross, “Liturgy in Truth: Transfiguring the Mind and the Heart.”  Weavings, Vol. XXI, No. 3, p. 38]

We observe a penitential season because until we experience this stripping away of self and the symbolic stripping away of all that represents forgiveness and community, we are not fully prepared to accept and embrace what follows:

The wrenching Good Friday sacrifice,  the gradual coming of light with the discovery of an empty tomb, and the unspeakable gift and blessing of the Resurrection — when healing replaces concealment, when pain is transformed to joy, when new life triumphs over sin and death.  When we who agonize over our sinful selves are forgiven, renewed, and offered the kingdom.

Ours is a stripping away which leaves us not barren and empty, but once again open and free to experience the risen Lord every single day of our lives.

AMEN

Laura Shoffner
April 5, 2007

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