Sermon: Betrayal and Communion

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Betrayal and Communion

By Charles Rush

April 1, 2001

hammed Ali had an ego and a mouth to match his athletic skill. One time he was on an airline and the stewardess came around and asked the passengers to buckle their seatbelts for take off. Muhammed said to her ‘superman don't need no seat belt.' A wizened New Yorker, she said back ‘yeah, well superman don't need no plane either.' Humans are wonderful like that, aren't they? I loved the line from Leonia Helmsley, the wife of the famous Hotelier in New York, who was on trial a few years ago for tax evasion. Said she, shortly before her incarceration, “Only little people pay taxes.” And I know exactly what she means. What is the point of being elite if you can't transcend the mores and rules for the hoi polloi.

My brother-in-law lives on a small farm. They raise chickens. He tells me that they instinctively establish a pecking order. Apparently, if you put 10 chickens in a pen that are complete strangers to each other, they will immediately begin to establish a hierarchy, usually through skirmishes over food, deploying a full range of domination and intimidation. Here is what is interesting. Number One Chicken will peck all over number Two Chicken but number Two Chicken will not peck back, once the hierarchy has been established. Instead, number Two Chicken will turn and peck on number Three Chicken, who will in turn peck on number Four Chicken… all the way down the line. Sounds like a day in the life of AT&T doesn't it? Poor number 10 Chicken… all pecked up and no one to peck on. That would be the guy in the mailroom. Sounds like our families after 9 p.m. before bedtime too.

Jesus calls all that pecking order jiveola into question in one simple but profound evening. Washing feet is a pretty intimate act. We are told that it was a regular act of hospitality in the Ancient world, though it was usually a task for slaves and something done in private before the real fellowship took place. There was a stigma attached to it that is lost on the modern reader. Slaves did this but they could not be compelled to do it against their will. It was not something that you just casually did for other people.

Jesus takes this somewhat shame filled act of hospitality and uses it as a teaching with the disciples about the meaning of reconciled community. What would we look like if we were all healed and empowered by the Divine Spirit? How would we relate to each other? We would be slaves to each other, thinking first of the needs of those around us and taking care of them through simple acts of service. No one would lack.

As it turns out, they were sharing their last meal together. There is poignancy to this moment, much the way that we remember the last significant conversation with a loved one before they die. And it is in commemoration of this meal that we still celebrate the Lord's Supper. Here at Christ Church, we celebrate the Supper in a way that brings us together in quite an intimate way. The entire congregation gathers together around the Altar in one great throng. Often children are pressed up to the edge of the table and folks stand shoulder to shoulder to squeeze everyone in. After the blessing of the elements we pass them in all directions at once, people serving each other, and what is left over is returned to the Altar.

Once I looked up to see two members of the congregation on either side of the table with their families. These two men were running for the same political office, one a Republican, the other a Democrat. As I continued to look at the faces of the congregants gathered around the table, I noticed that there were people from competing investment banks- we had Salomon, DLJ, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Merrill Lynch. And we had people in rival corporations -- AT&T and Sprint, Netscape and Microsoft, Merck and Novartis -- folks in rival corporations who did competitive battle with each other all week in the marketplace. Here at the table they all came in mutual need of grace. They came looking to nourish their higher selves. They came to create a spiritual community to anchor them.

Furthermore, each and every week, we have families that come quietly in need of healing. Hurtful words have been exchanged earlier in the week, undue privilege was sought, distance exists that needs to be healed. It seemed to me right that the table is the one place that we come that dissolves the very real differences that separate us in light of a more transcendent unity that comes from God's gracious acceptance of all of us. At the end of the service, I get to go to the back of the church while you all are still standing here, shoulder to shoulder. In a way that I can't really articulate, I am moved by the vision, understanding full well that it only lasts a short while. Community is a good thing and as people are always writing me who have left this community, be grateful for it, such as it is.

Betrayal and community go together. You can't have one without the other. The more intimate we are, the more betrayal hurts. And the touching pathos about this last Supper that Jesus shares with his disciples resides right here. In some ways, they are more together than they have ever been, more intimate. Jesus is teaching them what the Spiritual life of community is all about, what love and service, brotherhood and sisterhood are all about. And we know that in the next seventy two hours, they will all run away from Jesus, claim they never knew him, hand him over to the Roman authorities and when he needs a witness for support, there will be no one to speak a word, no one even to watch him die. They were afraid and they folded like a cheap suitcase.

Jennifer Lowrie was riding an escalator in the World Trade Towers in lower Manhattan. She was on her way back to an appointment after a late lunch at her new job. She had only graduated from college a few months ago and was working long hours in financial services. The escalator was long and gave a panoramic view of atrium entrance. She spied her father across the atrium, waiting at the revolving doors. She thought it was him, she was sure of it. What a pleasant surprise. Maybe they could have a quick coffee? She strode across the long atrium to surprise him and stopped in her tracks. She was mistaken. The man she thought was her father turned and kissed a young woman on the mouth. It wasn't her father. She wanted to hide suddenly and began walking away so she couldn't be seen. But it looked so much like her father, she turned back for just a glimpse. They were walking through the crowd, arm in arm. Jennifer couldn't help herself, she followed at a distance. She kept getting closer, hiding behind the anonymous crowd. They stopped in front of a revolving door. The man turned and looked back at her. Her heart leaped to her throat. It was unmistakably her father. He went through the revolving door, apparently he hadn't seen her.

Was it him or not? Jennifer became dizzy and slumped down near an elevator wall. Her heart was racing with fear and anxiety and her mind filled with a cascade of images that she was trying to decipher. It couldn't be her father. It must be her father. But, it couldn't be.

The next couple weeks she could hardly eat. She was deeply confused emotionally and spiritually. She wasn't sure whether to confront her father or not. She wasn't sure whether she should tell her mother or not. But mostly, she was shaken with spiritual and emotional uncertainty. Her parents had the same relationship they always had. She talked to them on the phone, went for dinner on the weekend from time to time. She watched them with scrutiny now, to see if she could detect some subtle tension that she hadn't noticed before. She couldn't detect it. And now she found herself wondering what was real. Did her father really love her mother? Had he always been like this and she just didn't get it? She felt like a child again in his presence but it was troubling now. Whenever he reached to hug her, and she desperately wanted some reassurance from him, but she was also overcome with revulsion and she couldn't entirely control it. She wanted to take a shower. She wanted to just be alone. She wanted to be free of these images in her mind that kept replaying themselves long after she wanted them to stop.

Betrayal is like that. It is profoundly unnerving. It is deeply lonely. It is numbing and fearful. Suddenly solid ground becomes marsh swamp. You don't know where you stand because you don't know where anyone else stands. You have this crushing realization that 98% of existence is based on trust and without it nothing works.

We are gathered here to lift up the beauty of communion and remember with realism our own faithlessness. Our text is poignant. Jesus tells the disciples that he wants to wash their feet. They are bewildered by this gesture of humility and service that reverses all normal roles of authority. They protest. Peter, the prototypical disciple, exclaims loudly “You will never wash my feet” (v. 8). Jesus explains to them the spiritual importance of what he is about to do. Whereupon, Peter responds in characteristic exaggeration, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head.”

It is a touching rejoinder made poignant by the fact that this will be the same man that will deny that he knew Jesus in the next twenty-four hours. This is the same man that will flee into the darkness when Jesus is brought to trial and crucified. Clearly, with the figure of Peter, the Gospel of John holds up a mirror for us to see ourselves. We so deeply want to be faithful and yet we are so weak. We want communion but we readily run in fear. We want to be empowered by the Spirit but we don't want to have to suffer.

The table, which is set before us for Communion, takes on a deeper meaning in reflection on these realities about ourselves. Remembering our faithlessness and compromised selves, we are aware of our mutual need for God's grace and redemption. We remember that were it not for God who granted us faith through grace, we would be lost in the night, confused, and spiritually numb. Reinhold Niebuhr once said that Christianity is more about starting over than it is about attaining perfection. Deitrich Bonhoffer once said that, at it's best the Church is not so much a collection of righteous saints as it is a collection of forgiven sinners. It is an important reminder.

This day, as we reflect upon the Christ, we glimpse briefly at a realistic portrait of our compromised selves. His whole-hearted devotion to the will of God underscores our half-hearted commitment. We are turned back for the bread of God's restoration and the wine of God's renewal for us. I invite you, my brothers and sisters, despite all of our distance to stand with each other and for each other in strength. I invite you to come, despite our compromise and our hurtfulness, to open ourselves to God's reconciling grace…