May 6, 2007 At Saint Mark in Norman, OK
Acts 14:21-27 + Revelation 21: 1-5 + John 13:31-35
He has just made it around the table washing their feet. As he began, he silenced the quick talking Peter who objected at first, and after that they all kept quiet and watched as he went from one to another. It has been a lesson that salvation is a gift from God, and it must be accepted on God’s terms. Judas has gone, and now he settles down to make sure they understand that what is about to happen is about glory, not defeat, and about God, not just about him.
He gives a commandment, not as though it was an “order”, but a commandment in the covenant sense: a “rule” or way of life in which they will find their identity and by which they will be recognized. It is a commandment that is both old and new. It repeats a verse of the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus which directs that they should love one’s neighbor as one’s self. Yet it is new because now this love will be proof of one’s love for God.
This love forsakes violence and is modeled on the self-offering of Jesus on the cross. This love goes far beyond feeling or passion, because this love is based on mutual communication between persons and it is manifest in deeds, not in words Dorothy Day speaks of this love and calls it a “harsh and dreadful thing”. She sees this love as a relationship tried and tested by fire. It is the fire of perseverance that she refers to: the fire of fidelity. It has nothing to do with feeling good. It has everything to do with doing good.
What Jesus reveals to those who would gather at table with him is that we cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love each other, we must know each other. This truth, this theme weaves its way in and out of his expression and his experience. He speaks again and again of knowing the Father and of knowing each other. For only in that “knowing” can His love be found. And so, we know him in the breaking of the bread, and we know each other in the breaking of the bread.
With the insight that only a lover could have, a poet of our time captures the challenge of this love: “Love does not just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.” Think of that image for a moment. It takes work to be and stay in love. Just like bread which must be kneaded and worked which must rest and rise, our love cannot simply be left like a stone. Perhaps what we are called to be in this age and in this culture of fast-food and instant pleasure is bread bakers: people willing to work, to knead, to mix, to wait, to watch, to warm, and ultimately savor what can happen when love like yeast is worked into the dough of this world. Jesus must have thought of that when he left himself with us and lifted a piece of bread and said: This is my Body.