In a sense, I’m picking up where I left off with my reflections on Ash Wednesday, in what has become something of a “Lenten journey.” And yet, when I started thinking and working on this, well over a month ago, perhaps I should have seen coming what we are now experiencing in the midst of this unfolding pandemic, but I didn’t.  My intent was to explore the significance and, hopefully, some possible implications of this event for both those who would participate tomorrow in a Maundy Thursday service and those who, for various reasons, would choose not do so. Attendance now, however, is likely a moot point since our churches will almost surely be shut down in the face of this insidious virus, although in some sanctuaries—as in the Episcopal church where my wife is organist—there will be a “virtual” online celebration and offering of the elements of the “supper.”

In any case, perhaps we can reflect from memory or from “familiarity at a distance” on something of the historical import and meaningful takeaways from this central celebration of the church.  Under its variety of names—the Eucharist, communion, the Lord’s Supper, the Mass—common to virtually all Christian groups, it is so rich and textured in its significance that there is no possibility of plumbing its depths and no danger of exhausting its meaning in these few comments. 

That said, I choose to lift just one nugget from the lush possibilities of a relevant passage of scripture, to hold it up like a gem to the light, and see what images we can set our eyes upon.  And it is the first phrase from the epistle of 1 Corinthians 11, that introduces the apostle Paul’s instructions regarding this common ritual:  “I received from the Lord the teaching that I passed on to you.”  It is the words “received” and “passed on” that I want to lift out for our reflection. 

The literal meaning of the phrase is itself important.  Biblical scholarship has taught us for a very long time that the vast majority of scripture—both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian scriptures, especially the Gospels—came to us by a long process of oral tradition, the chief mechanism by which virtually all ancient literature was preserved and carefully passed on by word of mouth from generation to generation, long before written documents became accessible enough to be trusted for such important conservation.  Paul uses here the exact technical words for “receiving” and “delivering” an oral tradition—in this case, the very words of Jesus, transmitted to him, no doubt, by the Jerusalem church and which he is faithfully “passing on.”  Since the first epistle to Corinth was written earlier than even Mark, the first written gospel, we have in this passage arguably the first words of Jesus ever to appear in a written record.

And they are words from his last meal with his apostles.  A Passover meal?  Matthew and Luke, with Mark, say that it was; the Fourth Gospel seems equally sure that Jesus’ death occurred prior to Passover.  Never mind—perhaps there is strength in numbers, but the Christian tradition has firmly identified the last supper with a Passover meal.  And what is true of Passover is true of communion, by whatever name—both are feasts, filled with grateful memories of past deliverances. 

Participants are called to remembrance—

• that they have a past, filled with mercies undeserved;
• that they owe much that is most precious in life to the sacrifices of others;
• that the flavor of life is always in the mingling of the bitter and the sweet (J. Edgar Park, “Exposition of Exodus,” The Interpreters’ Bible, I, p. 917).

It would be difficult to find any reminders more appropriate to the challenges we face—and the gratitude which we should not forget—in this coronavirus pandemic!

And so, to turn this phrase so that it catches the light a little differently, Maundy Thursday is about “receiving” and “passing on.”  For if we merely accept the gifts that are given, then we cling to what was meant to be shared.  So it is a fair question to ask, “what do we receive?”  And having accepted those gifts, “what are we obligated to pass on?”  Once again, I am intimidated by the questions, because there are so many more answers than we have the time to explore.  And so, again, I choose just one and leave you to answer the questions in ways more personal and more profound.

Few would disagree that in the experience of a communion service—or in meditation, in an encounter with beauty in nature, art, or music, in the nurture of a loving relationship—we receive, in whatever forms we may describe it, inner resources of spiritual strength.  In the company of whatever gathering of like-minded and soul-hungry persons, we are accepted and affirmed so that we understand, at least a little, what Paul meant by “being strengthened with might . . . in the inner person.”  And that, too, is something we all need in these uncertain times.

Sometimes it’s tempting to hoard that—to put all the emphasis on retreat from this turbulent world, to create an unrealistic “happy place” where we can hide from inconvenient questions and from the cries of human suffering.  And what more tempting time to do that than when we are “sheltered in place.”  But in our best moments, even then, we know better.  Our worship—or from whatever experiences we receive the inner resources of the strength necessary to navigate a troubled world—in all their dimensions, are staging grounds from which we go out there to “pass on” what we have “received” in here.  Indeed, they are two sides of the same coin and we can find ways to do so, even in this “shuttered” world—in “virtual” presence, in staying in touch, in giving from whatever resources we have.

The practical, behavioral side of our faith, or whatever sustains our moral compass—the part that feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, opposes repression, and works for reform in human life—the religion of the Good Samaritan, depends finally on this other side, the side of worship, of meditation, of whatever provides sustenance for the spirit.   To turn to energetic service without interior resources of strength is to run on empty—trying to “pass on” what we have not “received.” 

And what is true of religious experience is true of every realm of living.  As I pointed out in a previous blog, and a different context, a year or so ago, choose any part of your life you wish and there are two aspects: nourishment and activity, relaxation and tension, receiving and giving, resting back and working hard.  Neither is much good without the other.  Harry Emerson Fosdick often used the metaphor of roots and branches.  Without branches, the tree casts no shade and bears no fruit.  A tree that does not transform its nourishment into branches is useless.  But a tree receives its nourishment from its roots, and without roots it cannot stand.  So every spring one sees trees blown down by the ravaging winds of winter–too many branches, not enough roots.  And one sees other trees that have died because their roots, failing to pass on their nutrients, have rotted.  Remember, please, that branches without roots are headed for a fall.  One who cannot rest, cannot work; one who cannot let go cannot hold on; one who cannot find footing, cannot move forward–not ever! Roots are crucial.

And remember as well that roots without branches are of no use at all.  And so, in those areas of our lives where it is called for, we do well spread our branches—to be aggressive, energetic, strenuous, to put our backs into it.  But if we try that without drawing from our roots a rich spirit that will put meaning into our lives, undergirded by high purposes, then we will be like a tree in a high wind with roots too shallow to hold us up.  Roots nourish and sustain the branches so they can pass on—through their fruit, their flora, their shade—what they have received. We can only pass on what we have received; and we receive so that we can pass it on. 

It is hard to imagine living in a time when the roots that “ground” us and the branches that “reach out” to others could possibly be more relevant, more important, than now!

Maundy Thursday reminds us that each of us has received gifts that are important to us and have the potential to be useful in our service to others.  We would not all describe them in the same way—your way may be different from mine—and often we receive nourishment and spiritual strength outside the church as well as within it.  But for all of us, there has been a “place” or “places”—even if not physical or geographical—that have become sacred for us because we recognize them as “sanctuaries” that have fostered the gifts with which we have been graced.  And we keep returning to them—sometimes literally, sometimes along the corridors of our minds—because they are our “here” where the gifts have sanction; “here” is where they are celebrated, and “here” is where many of us first learned to recognize them.  And it is where we are challenged to take the gifts we have received “in here” and to pass them on “out there.” 

May it ever be so.