A Vehicle for Faith

I call today Holy Thursday because most of us do not know Latin. To say the very traditional Maundy Thursday, even for a Priest, sounds odd.

 Maundy comes from the Latin Word Mandatum meaning commandment, as in, “I give you a new commandment; you are to love one another.”

That’s worth knowing.

Also worth knowing,

The story of Jesus for the religious and spiritual is life.

And love.

The story of Jesus for liberals and the downtrodden is mercy.

And love.

The story of Jesus for the heartbroken and sick and formerly addicted is healing.

And love.

The story of Jesus for the passed over and abused and maybe even ideological conservatives is justice.

And love.

The story of Jesus for the maligned and perhaps libertarians is dignity.

And love.

The story of Jesus for the needy and born again is blessing.

And…love

Whatever else people want to make Jesus; and love must be part of the description. Did you hear that? The Holy, in Holy Thursday is love. The commandment in Maundy Thursday is Love. 

Got it?

Good.

In order to get to love…this Biblical Thursday story is a story within a story.

Or perhaps it’s a story—the church’s teaching about the last supper and the commandment of Jesus…

within a story—Jesus celebrating the religious tradition of Passover with fellow religious observers—

within a story; the Passover meal remembers the exodus from Egypt—

within a story the promise of God to Abraham is that his descendants would be more than the stars in the sky…and they would have the promised land.

Within the story of Noah, who’s rainbow promised, God would be with us…inside a story…

Going all the way back to a garden, and before that nothing.

Nothing in which God speaks into existence light and land and sky and water—and the idea we are to take care of one another…Cain and Able; Adam and Eve…

Or is Jesus commandment of Love even bigger than all this?

Whatever is happening within your life—sickness, being broke, being lonely…being happy that you’re not sick right now; being grateful that no one you know is sick….

That’s what I’m going with.

That’s where the story in a story starts.

With heartache before a prayer.

I don’t think you get Jesus—understanding who he is or even to experience Jesus and his spiritual presence without first encountering Christ. And here’s something really bold; encountering Christ is not a mystical thing to do—at least according to his own teaching, you encounter God by doing what Jesus says, love one another.

It’s hard. So hard.

Or it’s not.

I found Jesus recently in Jersey City…and, Bayonne, and Manhattan. This is the way that story begins according to journalist, Lisa Miller in New York Magazine.

“For a brief period in his life, starting when he was 12, Jordan had a home. It was on the first floor of a small yellow two-family house in Bayonne, New Jersey, where he lived with his mother, Christie, and her boyfriend...

Before moving to Bayonne, Jordan and Christie had stayed in several shelters in New York;

Jordan’s 10th birthday passed at the Regent Family Residence, a transitional shelter on the Upper West Side where people go to right themselves as they find work or try to obtain affordable housing. While in the shelter, Christie had enrolled in classes to become a paralegal, and that’s how she met her boyfriend, who sat one seat over. When Christie rented the house in New Jersey, he moved in…

Then, one morning early in April 2007, when Jordan was 14, Christie didn’t wake him for school…Jordan got on his bike and cycled to his aunt Carol’s house in Jersey City. Carol was not a blood relative but Christie’s best friend, and Jordan sometimes stayed with her

Carol called Jordan “my baby.” She would arrange a mattress on the floor and get him chicken and fried rice from a Chinese restaurant. But upon arriving in Jersey City, Jordan found that aunt Carol was out. Upset and not knowing what to do, he ditched his bike and hopped the turnstile at Journal Square, where he got on a path train to 33rd Street, then took the D to the A to 175th Street in Washington Heights to his grandmother’s house.

You know this story…probably not how it begins; but you do know this story—how it ends.

30 year old Jordan Neeley lies on the floor of a subway in Manhattan with the life choked out of him on May 1, 2023 by a former Marine who believed Jordan was not hungry, and sad, and mad, and confused; but an imminent threat.

You know the Jesus story; how it ends, Jesus triumphantly rising from the dead…

We are going to hear the oldest Jesus Gospel this year, Mark’s Gospel version on Easter; its final lines, “nobody said anything to anybody because they were afraid.”

And that’s why we listened to Fast Car and Talking About a Revolution and Stand by Me; songs sung by Tracy Chapman on Palm Sunday.

We listened to hear how the story of Jesus and Jordan Neeley—and by extension you—began. With heartache and a prayer that God would hear us praying and send us something anything.

This week I went to a clergy gathering and I said, to a Yale graduate, “hey I’ve got a Holy Week story with an Episcopal and Connecticut connection.”

Oh, tell me.

“There’s a an Episcopal boarding school in Danbury, Connecticut. A student from Cleveland went there and worked in the Chapel and composed a song during Holy Week—the Chaplain heard the song and bought her a guitar because she was playing on a Ukele. That student was, Tracy Chapman.

Wait, said my Yale colleague, I feel like I should know who that is…

Friend, what year were you born?

 1996.

Ah, that explains it. Tracy Chapman was a popular recording artist of the late 1980’s early 1990’s before she got famous again when Luke Combs remade Fast Car and it went to #1 on the country charts this summer.”

Maybe you were born before 1996 but still don’t know who Tracy Chapman is or why we sang her songs but not All Glory Laud and Honor on Sunday…

Let me tell you:

The desperation of the lyrics; of poverty; of family; of the hope of something better is part of the human condition.

I think Mary and Joseph and Jesus knew something about what Tracy sings about. I also think another Mary and Martha and Peter and even Judas knew about the dream of a Fast Car.

Jordan Neeley.

Wait. I feel like I should know who that is.

Jesus.

Wait. I feel like I should know who that is.

These are stories within stories…so maybe if you know your story intimately the struggle, the joy, the hope, the miracles…you’ll know it’s a story within a much bigger story—your mother’s; your grandmother’s; your aunts. You’ll know it’s bigger than that too.

Even if you say, “Nothing.”

“My story is nothing…” it is into nothing in which God speaks into existence light and land and sky and water—And according to scripture the Creator says, “it’s good.” Into this goodness is the idea we are to take care of one another…

And even if you don’t read Latin and don’t know what Maundy is; that Mandatum means Commandment, and if you call today Holy Thursday, know this; love is what we are supposed to do. Take care of one another.

We are not meant to have the life squeezed out of us.

Jordan’s mother died that way. Her boyfriend killed her in Bayonne.

Jordan died that way too; he was killed on the subway.

Jesus died that way. He asphyxiated on his own weight.

But before he died Jesus asked God to forgive people; because we don’t know what we’re doing.

We really don’t.

We’ve been given a good lead, “love one another.” That’s hard for most of us…so we look for another way: prayer, penance, fasting. Those usually don’t involve anyone but us. The vehicle of Jesus; is never about just us; it’s always way bigger. May he take us to where we’re trying to go. Amen.