God matters

Maundy Thursday Apr. 9, 2009
Exodus 12:1-14a; Psalm 78:14-20, 23-25
1 Cor. 11:23-26; John 13:1-15

Jews all over the world tonight are sitting down to seder dinners, to recall how God acted mightily in history, how God saved the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt, how God intervened against an oppressive human leader and set the people he loved free.

Jews all over the world tonight are reminding us that God matters.
And it is definitely a time to remember that God matters.

The news reports are full of stories of people beginning to crack under the strain of this economic depression. I heard today of a young woman, straight, and off drugs for 10 years, who fell into a relapse. Oh, it was the stress of worrying about finances, oh, it was an old back injury acting up, oh, just a little percoset, oh, just a little heroin.

There is a sense that people everywhere feel like we have been hit by a truck. Everything we had counted on seems to have slipped away – retirement accounts, housing values, steady paychecks. My brother works for Chrysler Corporation, and my mother is the widow of a retiree: will the assets they built over a lifetime be there for them when they need them?
Nonetheless, Jews all over the world tonight are sitting down to seder dinners, to recall how God acts mightily in history – thousands of years ago, and even today. This very day, God is acting.

On Maundy Thursday, it is hard to see how God is acting. Is tonight a beginning, or the end? It is the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, of his teaching, his miraculous healings, his easy friendships, his confrontations with the people who didn’t get it.

If tonight is an ending, then we indeed have been hit by a truck. Why not despair, give up, hunker down, turn on, drop out? If tonight is an ending, then everything we had hoped and planned for is coming crashing down on top of us.

But if tonight is a beginning, and the Jews are right, then God does act in history, in our history, mightily in our history. God is here, among us, and the world around us is about to be made new.