Loss and the Beauty of Holiness: A Sermon for Maundy Thursday

When I was a little girl, I loved to help my mother take the good china and silver out of the sideboard for a dinner party. We would set the table, lovingly arranging each item in its place, as she taught me the family history behind each cup and spoon. There is something about the beauty of lace and white linen, of gleaming silver and delicate porcelain, that still conjures up in my mind the comforting framework of a shared family story. I realized early on in my training as a priest that setting the table for the Eucharist summons similar feelings. The fair linen, the ornate silver chalice, the carefully choreographed movements—they are all preparation for a feast draped in an ordered “beauty of holiness.”

Tonight, however, we emphasize not the setting of this beautiful Table, but the stripping away of it all. On this night when we read in our Gospel that Jesus removed his cloak to kneel down and wash the feet of his disciples, we end our Eucharist by removing our cloak of beauty in a ritual of loss. The Stripping of the Altar is one of the most moving parts of Holy Week for me, as we watch as our familiar symbols--all of the comforting, beautiful signs of Christ’s presence with us—slip quietly away. We are left with the bleak, bare wood of the Table, scrubbed clean, yet devastatingly empty. In tonight’s ritual, instead of carefully building meaning, we are just as carefully defining what it is to lose meaning.

I’ve been thinking a lot about “loss” this week. I spent last weekend down in my hometown of Houston at my 40^th high school reunion. Forty years is a long time, and there were the inevitable losses: My old neighborhood landmarks were torn down long ago to make room for city growth. My beloved school looks so different that I can no longer find my way around campus. My favorite teachers have died or now hobble on a cane. The parts of the city that I do recognize bear the loss-filled scars of hurricane Harvey.

And then on Monday, still pensive over the passing of time, I returned home to learn with horror the news that Notre Dame was in flames. Notre Dame was the first cathedral I ever saw. It was the first place where the “beauty of holiness” took my breath away. I was a 10^th grader in Paris on a school trip, and I came out of Notre Dame in love with the mysterious divine Beauty that I found there. I immediately wrote a poem about it in my travel journal:

“Stretching as if to touch the sky,
reaching to span the universe,
the spire of the cathedral stands,
example of the faith of man.

Within, a moon-like glow creates
a misty rainbow in the dark
from clustered candles, each a prayer
and jeweled stories in stained glass.

The organ sighs, then gasps in joy
and molds the darkness and the light
into a living, swirling mass
to raise the soul and crush the flesh.”

Now, watching the cathedral burn, it was for me more than the loss of a cultural landmark, more than a sad day for my beloved France. The fire conjured in my mind the crashing and burning of the past, the precariousness of the present, and the fires of hatred that so easily consume what is beautiful and good. In my mind, Notre Dame burned with the recently torched churches in Louisiana; it smoldered like old memories; it caved in like the bubble of prosperous Christianity that had nurtured my youthful faith.

More than ever, then, I welcome this Maundy Thursday and our enactment of what Richard Lischer calls, “the art of losing.^[1] Lischer explains that we human beings tend to let our losses shrink our world. When we experience loss, we often lose our ability to think and act beyond ourselves. We tend to pare away our lives “to the exact size of [our] longing.” Frozen with grief, we struggle to love. Jesus, on the other hand, continues to live in love, despite what is ripped away from him in his Passion. On the night before he dies, Jesus removes his cloak to wash the feet of his followers, stripping himself of all power and dignity, making himself like the lowliest of slaves. Then he offers them his very body and blood for food. For Jesus, the art of losing is the art of loving. He sums it up in the new commandment that his disciples love one another, that they love one another even as they grieve the loss of their teacher and Lord.

Jesus strengthens us not just in the way that he lives, you see, but also in the way that he dies. His betrayal, his struggles in Gethsemane, his suffering … They are not designed as opportunities for us to pity him or to blame ourselves for the death that he must die. The point of Holy Week is not for us to wallow in shame and sadness. To live this week with Jesus in his Passion is instead to know how God is present in suffering and loss. It is to experience how a life centered in God can be filled with life-sustaining love even at the grave.

In the midst of our own losses, we can practice the true “art of losing” that Jesus teaches. Every time we break through our anger to forgive a hurtful enemy, we practice Jesus’ kind of losing. Every time we use our lost leisure time to help someone overwhelmed by life, we practice Jesus’ kind of losing. Every time we put aside our own pain to care for someone who is suffering, we practice Jesus’ kind of losing. Every time we heave ourselves from the prison of our own despair to embody hope for someone else, we practice Jesus’ kind of losing. We live in the New Commandment to love one another. We follow the Way of Jesus.

A friend shared an image of an altar in Notre Dame after the worst of the fire had been put out. The floor is rubble; the jeweled windows are no more; and any swirling comes from acrid smoke instead of organ notes … but a large golden cross still shines boldly amidst the ruins. This, too, is a powerful image of divine beauty. The beauty of holiness is not just in the silver and linens and lace. It is also in the lone candle still burning in the darkness when everything else has been stripped away--the lone candle that we leave burning tonight next to Christ’s Body and Blood. It stands vigil over the Love that is given to fill us with life in the face of loss. It glows with the Love that is given to fill our hearts so that we in turn may pour that Love upon a smoldering world.

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^[1] Richard Lischer, “Stripped Bare,” in Christian Century (March 21, 2012), 11-12.