Attentive and Attending God
1993 (Year A), 8 April (Maundy Thursday
St Peter de Beauvoir Town
And so we come to the central few hours of our religious story. Hours when we remember Jesus’ last meal, betrayal in the garden, questioning and finally crucifixion. And we come in the full recognition that we have left behind homes families, friends, and experiences which all contain elements and reflections, however small, of the great Passion story. The disappointments and unfulfilled relationships. The tragedies, injustices and sadnesses. The let downs and betrayals in our lives are all there, present in the Passion.
And as we come to hear the story once again the same recurring madness begins to enter everything. The triumphal entry into Jerusalem now a distant memory appears almost calm compared to these final few hours. It all begins quietly enough. Jesus sharing an intimate meal with friends yet in less than twenty – four hours he will be dead. The story of the Passion is about to become a story of frenetic activity. Events seem to take on a momentum of their own. They begin to spin out of control. The religious leaders felt it and were particularly fearful. Pilate as he stood with Jesus in front of him was aware that a madness was overtaking things. His wife having had a premonition, was mindful that there was something beyond the normal at work. All kinds of powers are at work tonight and tomorrow. Mob violence. Dreams. Political intrigue. Confusion. Betrayal. Bribery and Corruption and Lies.
And if you were to read just one account of these final hours you would recognise a classical tragedy. Someone who has no Christian history could guess the end of the story before they got there. There’s a kind of inevitability about it all. An appointed ending to which all things lead and which cannot be changed.
Yet for us, with the awful inevitability of it all comes a staleness. The story to some extent loses its impact. The church even from early times recognised this and used the story liturgically. It caused it to be read during services in an attempt to make it more real, to bring it closer. It encouraged us to imagine ourselves as participants in the Passion. We all played our part in the readings on Palm Sunday. We can imagine ourselves there, Peter maybe or Mary even Judas. We can see how we have betrayed Jesus in our lives or kept silent when we should’ve spoken. We retell and recall it all, trying to make it present again year after year. Trying all the time to find a way get ourselves back there, get ourselves into the situation. This determination to relive these hours again year after year has an awful quality as well for we begin to mirror the frenetic behaviour of the original participants.
This understandable busyness. This desire to get alongside, to enter into the drama, is an immense danger for us. It hides from us the God whom we come, in unity, to worship. Of course on one level we are already there. We are already in reality enacting the Passion in our own lives. Everybody is running around like headless chickens concerned with their own well-being, just like Judas, Peter, Pilate and the Chief Priests. But just for once let’s forget ourselves and look at what God was doing when all around was mayhem and confusion.
God was doing what God has been doing from the beginning of time. God was attending and being attentive. Attending to the needs of creation which he loves, and the Son was being attentive to the Father. He was attending to needs. In the beginning he said, ‘I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground – everything that has the breath of life in it – I give for food.’ Now, ‘During supper he took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel round his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet drying them with the towel that was wrapped round him’. He did it to teach them. He did it as an example and as an encouragement. God has always, will always attend the needs of creation. That was the promise he gave to Noah in the rainbow. It’s there in the actions of Jesus at the last and it’s a promise that is constantly being renewed.
And the Son was attentive to the Father. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning ... No-one has seen God but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known. Now even tonight the Son goes into the garden to be attentive to Father. ‘He withdrew from them a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed ... yet not my will, but yours be done’.
Attending and attentive. That’s God. Attending the needs of creation and being attentive to God. On this most Holy of nights, for God’s sake let us go and do likewise. AMEN