Maundy Thursday: Hope Springs Eternal

 This was my message for Maundy Thursday:

Today, in addition to being Maundy Thursday, is also opening day for Major League Baseball. Normally I take the day off to watch baseball, which I could only do partially today. And I normally go to opening day for the Albuquerque Isotopes, but that’s tomorrow, and so that’s not happening either. I know your hearts cry out for me. I’ve always thought that opening day should be a national holiday, for many reasons besides just my fandom. And one of those reasons is that it represents the sort of official beginning of spring, they even call the preparation for opening day, spring training. Training for spring, or maybe waiting for spring. Now it doesn’t mean that spring will necessarily be here for those first games. Just as the last few weeks have shown us with continual snow storms, we may be done with winter, but it is not done with us. And there have been plenty of opening day games played in the snow. I even remember one Easter when I was in college getting up to go to church and looking out the window to see blizzard like conditions, and so I went back to sleep, but that was in Minnesota, so not totally unexpected. 

And yet we know that spring is right around the corner; the promise is there. And so, it is with opening day, it is the day that hope springs eternal because on this day every team is currently tied for first place. Every team has a winning record, or at least they don’t have a losing record. Every team, and every fan base, can say “this is our year,” even if they know it’s not true. For many, they know that their seasons will end more in ignominy than in victory, and perhaps its too many fanbases for which that is true, although that’s a different message for a different space. But regardless, hope spring eternal on this day; and the promise of spring springs eternal as well. New life, new possibilities, new realities, not being cooped up in the house, being able to open the windows, being able to take those long hikes without freezing, doing all those things that make where we live so spectacular, and I can say all of that as someone whose favorite season is winter. But even with that, the change to spring is still a lovely and wonderful surprise and time. And yet, perhaps none of those ideas really match the reality of today.

When we gathered at the beginning of this Lenten journey on Ash Wednesday, it fell on Valentine’s Day, February 14. And I said at the time that it didn’t seem like lent and Valentine’s Day really go together. That one is about love and reds and pinks, and the other is about repentance and purple and ashes. They seem diametrically opposed, and yet, as it turns out, they aren’t because we go through this Lenten journey because of God’s love for the world. Although it turns out that the Greek word that gets translated as world in John’s famous passage is kosmos, and you can then easily guess what word in English comes from that. So perhaps it might be better translated as God so loved all of the creation that God sent us Jesus. And so Lent and love go hand and hand, and the fact that we end Lent with the celebration of Easter, a celebration of the victory of love and life, over hate and death, only culminates that reality. And so perhaps hope also needs to be included on a night like this, that this is when we indeed need to have hope spring eternal. That even though it may be raining, we know that there are rainbows above us.

And yet I strongly suspect that the disciples weren’t holding out hope on this night. I can imagine that some of them suspected that what Jesus had said was going to happen, including his betrayal and denial, wasn’t actually going to happen. And maybe even hoping it to be true, although that sense of hope is a little bit different. But especially after his arrest, and then his death the next day their hope was shattered. Everything that had thought they believed and hoped for in Jesus lay in tatters. They certainly didn’t see their suffering and grief as being something that would lead to glory, even though Jesus had told them that. The truth is they didn’t believe it. We might not see it because we know how the story ends. We know about resurrection, but that was yet to come for them. And so, I have to imagine that their hope was destroyed in the events we remember on this night. And it wasn’t just hope that might be seen, it was especially hope that cannot be seen, Just as it was said of Shoeless Joe Jackson that his glove is where triples went to die, to return to my baseball metaphor, the disciples hope died on this night.

And yet, perhaps they should have had hope springing eternal, even on this darkest night in their lives because of what happens on this night. In John’s gospel, as we heard, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet, an act not found in the other gospels, and I should also note that John has the last night happening earlier than the synoptic gospels do. But Jesus takes the role of the servant and serves all of them. And then we hear the account of the institution of communion in the synoptic gospels, an act that happens much earlier in John’s gospel, and once again Jesus serves all of them; he calls out that one will betray and one will deny and all the rest will flee, but there he is with them. This is one of those times where it is quite easy to say that Jesus is a much better person than I am, because if I was surrounded by the disciples knowing what was to happen my response might be a little less generous, to say the least. And so perhaps that’s the reason that I always point this simple fact out every single Maundy Thursday, and probably will continue to do so every year, because it so amazes me.

It is the example of Jesus’ love for the disciples, and it is the moment of hope that they needed, even if they probably didn’t realize it until after the resurrection. But we know the end, and so it should also be that glimmer of hope for us, even in the darkest moments of our lives, in the worst moments of our lives, to remember that we are saved in hope, as Paul says. Not the hope that can be seen, because who hopes for what is seen, but we hold onto that hope for what is not seen, but what is expected, and we wait for it with patience. Sometimes the hope comes quickly, sometimes it takes several days, and sometimes it seems like it might never come, like the baseball season in the midst of December. And yet it is still there. The promises are still there. The love of God is still there because we know that Christ wins. That love wins. That darkness and despair are realities, that grief and pain and suffering are realities, but as the psalmist tells us, while grief may last for the night, joy always comes in the morning. The light of Christ is that joy, and of course resurrection is that hope.

And so, on this night let us not just jump to the end thinking we know what will happen, instead let us be present in this moment waiting with patience and with the expectation of hope, the expectation of joy, the expectation of promises fulfilled. Because today is a day in which hope ever springs eternal, not the hope of what is seen, but the hope yet to be fulfilled, resting in the assurance that we are saved in hope. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.