Every year, it seems like Holy Week creeps up on me and catches me off guard. I never feel comfortable focusing on the pain and suffering that Jesus went through on my behalf. I went to a Maundy Thursday service last night, and it struck me, as we spent time reflecting on the last night Jesus spent with his disciples before his crucifixion, that I was, once again, not ready for his death. I, as his disciple, have in my own way dropped my net to follow him, to learn from him, to love him, to let the pattern of his life become my own. So although the calendar tells me every year to expect this time of mourning, I imagine I am no different from the Twelve who, after rediscovering life with their close friend and Lord for three years, cocked their heads to the side in confusion and disbelief as Jesus told them his time had come to die.
The past few years for me have been filled with the ache of the absence of God. Like the disciples, I’ve been asking why he would abandon me, and have begged him to return. My spiritual director says such absence makes us aware of our hunger. To which I say, my stomach has certainly growled. But last night I realized that the Jesus who has graciously withheld himself from me to reveal my deep and persistant hunger, is the same Jesus who shared a meal with his friends, became the bread and wine, told them they would never go hungry – and then left.
Can we have our fill, even when he’s gone? Is Christ a new manna? A bread unlike any we have ever had that appears faithfully after the dark of night as God’s perfect provision, he is assuredly “enough,” even when we do not know what he is.
The irony of it all is that though he may disappear, our God does not abandon us. In fact, he could not truly love us if he did not leave. In John 16, Jesus put it this way: “I am going away to the one who sent me, and none of you has asked me where I’m going. Instead, you are very sad. But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” Christ’s death, his absence from our lives, enables a new presence, and reminds us that the way he reigns, the way he conquers, the way he saves, the way he loves, is utterly opposite from anything in this world that we know.
In those last hours that Jesus shared with his closest friends, he stooped down before them and washed their feet. And even when Peter protested at the way Christ was loving him, Jesus answered him, “…later you will understand.” On the eve of his absence, Jesus gave them a new commandment, to love one another, just as he loved them. But how could he love them, and then leave?
At the cross of Christ we are faced with the brutal reality of what “loving us” required. Indeed, he could not truly love us without leaving. His absence is, in fact, the full presence of his love. Still, it’s easier to see Christ loving me in the way he washes my feet than in the way he leaves. Like the disciples in the two days after the cross, I have wrestled with the disillusioning death of God. But as Stanley Hauerwas has said, “God is most revealed when he seems to us the most hidden” (Cross-Shattered Christ, 65). And in the pattern of Easter, Christ has become alive again to me, his presence more powerful now than it was before his death.
Paul, in his instructions to the Corinthian church regarding the way they took the Lord’s supper, reminded them that “…every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” I’m afraid this concept is a bit foreign to me. We share meals and throw parties to celebrate birth, not death. We feast when people are with us, not when they are gone. And yet Paul is saying that until he comes again, proclaim Christ’s absence…remember that he left. Because in his leaving, he truly loved.
“I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my supplications. He has inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live. Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; our God is merciful. The Lord protects the humble; when I was brought low, he saved me. What shall I return to the Lord for all his goodness to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. We will offer to him an offering of thanksgiving and we will call on the name of the Lord.” – Psalm 116
How can I repay my God for the way that he has loved me? Even in the ache of the absence, I will lift up my cup and ask for more.
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