Maundy Thursday sermon (channeling the Rev. Mister Rogers for my intergenerational - young- congregation)

Preached to an intergenerational congregation, about ¼ of whom were under the age of 8. We all sat around the communion table in the chancel. You know they're listening when they interrupt and the interruption is on point =) 

Have you ever played inside a tree?

Now I don’t mean the big trees like the redwoods where you can get all the way inside the trunk. And I don’t mean climbing a tree.
I mean playing inside a small tree, that makes a circle, like a dome, and where once you find your way in through the branches you can’t see out, and people out there can’t see you. There was a tree like this in my neighborhood when I was a kid and I loved playing there. Me and my sisters and sometimes our friends would play inside this tree - there was room for four or five kids - and the grownups would be outside and they would know we were safe there, but they couldn’t see us and so we felt like we were in our own beautiful world. We loved that tree.

So you can probably imagine how we felt one day when we walked over to play in the tree, and when we got there we found...

Yellow construction tape. A pile of bricks. Somebody mixing cement. And no tree.

You see, the tree we loved was growing on land that belong to Columbia University, and they had plans for something more “important” there. So they cut it down.

And you can probably imagine how we felt as my sisters and I walked home through the city streets. We were looking for our favorite place, our safe and beautiful place, but we couldn’t go there anymore.

I wonder if this is how the people of Paris feel right now. Imagine if you are looking forward to Easter, which is coming on Sunday, and you want to celebrate Easter in a safe and beautiful place, your favorite place, at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, which burned in a fire this week. Can you imagine walking through the streets of the city and thinking “We can’t go there any more.”

And I wonder if maybe this is how the Twelve Disciples were feeling as they walked through the streets of Jerusalem. They wanted to find a safe and beautiful place to celebrate the Passover holiday, to remember how God led the people through the water from slavery to freedom. But they couldn’t find a place.

Now the Temple of God in Jerusalem was supposed to be a safe and beautiful place to celebrate the holiday, but it wasn’t. Do you remember how Jesus went there and found people selling things? He turned over the tables and shouted that it was supposed to be a house of prayer, not a den of thieves.

So where — where could they find a safe and beautiful place to worship God?

The places we love - even our sacred and holy places - can be destroyed. Sometimes they are destroyed in fire, earthquakes, or floods; sometimes they are destroyed by accident or by neglect. No place is totally safe.

Even the people we love - our special and favorite people - can be hurt and destroyed. Sometimes they even die if they are sick, or in a very bad accident. It is sad and hard to think about, but it’s true. We don’t always have the power to keep people safe.

Jesus didn’t die by accident, though, like the accident that started the fire in Notre Dame. Jesus was killed because powerful people didn’t mind using violence against him - more like the churches that were burned in St Landry Parish in Louisiana just two weeks ago. 

Jesus died because he was speaking the truth in love, and the people who had the power hated hearing the truth.

So if our sacred places can crumble in ashes and stones, and if even very important people can be killed, by sickness or by violence, then what can we hold onto? We are lucky to have this safe and beautiful place around us tonight and we are lucky to have these wonderful people sitting here with us, but we know that they are not forever and they are not for always.

Jesus gave us a very important gift on that night. As he and the twelve gathered in a borrowed room, he gave us words to say and things to do. He gave us his example; he showed us how he could give his love, and even his life, just as generously as he shared the bread and the cup.

Jesus said “whenever you share this meal, I will be with you.” It doesn’t matter if we gather in a cathedral, or here in this church, or somewhere under a tree. It doesn’t even matter if some of us die, like Jesus died; we are still part of the same story, and we will be together, in some great and mysterious way, whenever we share this meal in remembrance together.

This meal can’t be destroyed. I could crumble the bread and feed it to the birds, and I could pour the cup down the drain, but that wouldn’t matter, because this meal gets created again and again. As long as there are people who will remember Jesus and his truth and his love, and this meal cannot be destroyed.

--> As we celebrate this meal we hold onto what is good, in the midst of an ever-changing world. Amen