Stripped Bare

Maundy Thursday 2022

At the end of this service, we will strip the altar

Taking away all the hangings, all of the ways in which we decorate the space

     to change the mood, to set the scene, to create an impression

             and shift our perspective

We will also take away the things that guide and inform us

     like the hymn numbers and the stacks of prayer books, hymnals, bulletins

We will do it slowly.

     We will do it as quiet words speak of anguish and loss.

             And we will, in the end, do it in silence.

                    With no music to surround us, nothing else to distract us.

             Just the stripping away of everything

                    The church, stripped to bare essentials:

                            stark, beautiful, perhaps a little beaten up

                                   (there are scars on the altar that I never see,

                                           except on this night, when I wash it)

In many ways, that’s what Maundy Thursday is all about.

     We wash feet. And we share a meal.

             And we too are stripped down to our bare essentials

                    We too are invited, unavoidably, to witness the truth of ourselves

                            Without all the trappings and decoration

Because even as we wash each other’s feet,

     And experience that intimacy, dare that vulnerability

             Love one another by performing that simple act of service

                     We are aware of the ways in which we so often hold ourselves apart

     And even as we break the bread and share the meal

             United to Jesus and the disciples all those millennia ago

                    We are aware that we are also united to the betrayer

                            Who sat at table as we do tonight

We find ourselves, this night, to be both beloved and betrayer

     Battered and beautiful

             Our stumbling humanity fully exposed

                    as we look into the face of God

In response, he tenderly washes our feet

     and breaks the bread, offering it to us

             offering HIMSELF to us

And if we’re paying any kind of attention at all,

     We will probably need to swallow it past the lump in our throat

Let’s pay attention anyway.

     Let’s follow the brave, wild path of poets and prophets

             Who are crazy enough to make a study of humanity,

                    And so become experts on God