How to be passive, how to surrender, with dignity and purpose; there is a way to do this… listen to the audio and/or read the text below.
Sermon Preached at Trinity Church, Newport RI
Maundy Thursday March 24 2016
The Reverend Alan Neale
“The Majesty of Passivity”
This past week I approached with care a friend who was standing stock still, her angst seemed almost palpable. In gentle conversation she told me of feelings of overwhelming agony. The pressures of the world and the sensitivity of her soul were crushing her to the point of temporary paralysis; it seemed to her that in all the demands, confusion of soul – she was helpless, held captive and reduced to total passivity.
This passivity is what the passing observer discerns (though falsely) in Jesus – in the pathos of Maundy Thursday, The Agony of Good Friday and the deadening ennui of Holy Saturday.
And yet though Jesus is prodded, elbowed and nudged by cosmic forces of destruction, by military and ecclesiastical forces of horrible and angry self-interest, by the betrayal and desertion of friends -Jesus stands before us with “The Majesty of Passivity”.
The time will come when he will be stripped of his robes by scorning soldiers, stripped of friends by morbid fear and stripped of his internal and psychic identity as he screams on the Cross “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?.”
When even on Easter Morn, he does not act with independence but depends upon God to raise him. Remember, feel the dynamic, he does not rise – he is raised, maybe the ultimate majesty of passivity?
But now, before all this cosmic altercation, Jesus acts with glorious autonomy and invincible sovereignty.
Friends, remember (Philippians 2:6-8) “though he was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness And being found in human form, he humbled himself”. He emptied himself, He humbled himself. Glorious autonomy and invincible sovereignty.
Friends, remember (John 13:4) “he got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself”. The Message Translation reads, “He put on an apron”. Glorious autonomy and invincible sovereignty.
Friends, remember Jesus gives the royal command to love; he institutes the meal to express perfectly His love and call to love. Glorious autonomy and invincible sovereignty.
In foolish and circumscribed freewill we may ignore, belittle, disparage or withdraw – the command we can choose to disobey, the offer of service we may refuse, the bread and wine we can disparage by either foolish disengagement or careless consumption.
So, what is the mystery of this “majesty of passivity”, whence comes energy for this “stature of waiting” (W.H. Vanstone).
The mystery is revealed in John 13:3 “Jesus knew that he had come from God and was going to God”.
Today and the next three days tell us that we too “have come from God” and that we too “are going to God” – daily and eternally; the passionate love of God for each of us bringing redemption to our past and glory to our future. John 3:16 “For God so loved that he gave… the assurance of eternal life.” To know this is to be converted and to be in process of conversion. The more we grasp and are grasped by this endless love, heaven breaks loose in our lives. AMEN
Reflecting on sacrament of Communion and Foot-Washing, Malcolm Guite (‘gite’) (a poet priest at Cambridge University) writes this…
Here is the source of every sacrament,
The all-transforming presence of the Lord,
Replenishing our every element
Remaking us in his creative Word.
For here the earth herself gives bread and wine,
The air delights to bear his Spirit’s speech,
The fire dances where the candles shine,
The waters cleanse us with His gentle touch.
And here He shows the full extent of love
To us whose love is always incomplete,
In vain we search the heavens high above,
The God of love is kneeling at our feet.
Though we betray Him, though it is the night.
He meets us here and loves us into light.