All Saints, Dorval
April 9, 2020
On Sunday we thought about reclaiming lament as a response to our Holy Week journey within the current global crisis. Today I want to think about another word: longing.
Longing is something our culture is not very good at. We’re very good at consumer lust and competition, but we’re not so good at the kind of longing that yearns toward what’s really important, that waits patiently for years and lifetimes, that expects something that may not be fully revealed on this side of the grave.
There is so much longing tied up in Maundy Thursday. The Israelites, huddled in their houses, waiting for the plague to pass over, long for survival and freedom – and our Jewish siblings, celebrating the Passover under quarantine, are experiencing their reenactment of this event in a whole new way this year!
The disciples long for Jesus to take charge and show the power of God unmistakably in occupied Jerusalem. Jesus, in the upper room, longs for his followers to love one another as he loves us; and in the garden, longs for the cup to pass from him. And all of us, the faithful in every time and place, as we celebrate this holy night, long for the fulfillment of our faith and for oneness with God.
And specifically, and painfully, on this Maundy Thursday night of all nights, we long for the experience of Communion.
In normal times, that is the centerpiece of the Maundy Thursday service: the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, instituted by Christ on this night as part of the new commandment to his disciples. He gave them the commandment to love one another, and to remember him every time they broke the bread that is his body and drank the wine that is his blood. And difficult as it may have been for us to follow the commandment to love one another, we have always joyfully obeyed the commandment to break bread.
And yet, now, we are fasting from the Eucharist. Although other churches may understand it differently, in the Anglican tradition our leadership has made it clear that for us, doing Communion virtually is not an option. We are in an enforced fast; like the Hebrews who fled from Egypt in such a hurry that there was no time for their bread to rise, we have left behind the familiar so quickly that the familiar food we rely on – spiritually, at least – is not available. Earlier today, if we observed the Maundy Thursday agape meal in our homes, we blessed and shared bread and wine at our tables, but that was not the Eucharist, although we did it in memory of Christ’s action.
And so we are left with longing – with a holy longing that, in its own way, is as powerful as the act of physically receiving the sacrament. There is a long tradition in Christianity, going back at least to St. Augustine in the fifth century, of “spiritual communion” – when someone is too sick or weak to take nourishment of any kind, the desire to receive the consecrated bread and wine is sufficient for all the benefits of reception to be bestowed. All of us, together, are now making our spiritual communion, at a time when the body of Christ throughout the world is prevented, out of concern for the life and health of others, from gathering to celebrate the Sacrament together.
In the readings for the Daily Office this week, the Old Testament scripture has been selected from the book of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, written in the aftermath of the exile of the people of Jerusalem in the sixth century BCE. The first line of the book is, How lonely sits the city that once was full of people!
The exile of the people of Israel and Judah was an agonizing, traumatizing experience. As was slavery in Egypt; as was the first Holy Week, and as is living in a global pandemic.
And yet. The Hebrews longed for freedom, and they came out of Egypt and received the Law, and God made them a nation. The exiles in Babylon longed for return, and while in exile they created some of the greatest spiritual literature of all time and learned to recognize God’s presence wherever they found themselves. The disciples longed for Jesus’ triumph, and lived through Holy Week, and saw that triumph realized out of suffering and death in a way they had never dreamed of.
We are longing for comfort and reassurance, and we are longing for the physical experience of being together and receiving the Eucharist. The grief is real. We must live in the longing, because we do not know when it will end. And yet, what will we discover here?
I don’t know the answer to that question. But I do know that the longing is holy. I know that we are beloved, and we are in community together, even if only through prayer and over the phone and on a screen. I know that God’s presence is real. For now, let that be enough.
Amen.
Leave a Reply