Holy Thursday I Passover in Place
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Holy Thursday marks the day during Holy Week when Jesus is said to have gathered with his disciples for the Passover meal, meal made all the more poignant with his prescient knowing that this supper would be his last. Undoubtedly, Jesus would have experienced anxiety and fear and his disciples confusion and foreboding loss. As we move through Holy Week in sanctuary-in-place, we can resonate with the emotional response to our times as we collectively wonder if this is “our last” way of being together in ways we understand and know.
This is how Luke’s gospel tells the story: “Then he took some bread, and when he had given thanks, broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body which will be given for you; do this as a memorial of me.’ He did the same with the cup after supper, and said, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood which will be poured out for you.’” (Lk. 22:19)
Spiritual theologian Matthew Fox shares that Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh observes that “Not many people want to become priests in our day, but everyone is hungry. So many people are hungry for spiritual food; there are so many hungry souls.” He underscores the archetypal nature of this event which he recognizes as cosmic food sacred for all peoples. He addresses the Last Supper that is reenacted in Christian worship this way: ‘Take, my friends, this is my flesh, this is my blood’—Can there be any more drastic language in order to wake you up? What could Jesus have said that is better than that?…This piece of bread is the body of the whole cosmos. If Christ is the body of God, which he is, then the bread he offers is also the body of the cosmos.”
Christ is indeed in the incarnation of God; however, it is understood that he is the secondary incarnation. The first, or primary, incarnation is the world, nature, all of creation. Eco theologian Sallie McFague speaks of Earth as the Body of God. This shift in perspective changes how we view and interact with the more-than-human world. The bread truly is sacrament as it has grown up and through the sacred Earth, the Body of God.
You can create your own Last Supper ritual in your own wild sanctuary that becomes especially poignant because of both the archetypal significance of this holy day and the reframing of the Earth as the Body of God.
Materials: bioregionally sourced wine, local artisan (un)leavened bread; OR hand crafted forest tea and a (un)leavened bread/scone made with forest elements like dandelion leaf, nettle, fir tips, or other woodland edibles.
Take your elements into the wild—your stoop, your backyard, your local park, or greenspace. Place the elements on the ground and sit on the Earth if that is available to you. Take time to ground into your place. Uses your senses to attune to all the life that is around you. Invite your imagination to recognize all of the wild others as presences who are joining you in this last supper. Perhaps you even count 12 others who surround you; invite them to partake of this symbolic meal with you.
I prefer a forest tea and homemade biscuit or scone that I have made with local wild ingredients for this kind of ceremony. It underscores the sacramentality of the land and our local bioregions. Prepare the meal by pouring the tea and breaking off a piece of the scone/biscuit/bread. Perhaps you read verses from the Christian Gospel story in Luke 22. Or perhaps you read a poem that helps delineate this ceremonial moment.
Thich Nhat Hanh invites us to “Look deeply and you notice the sunshine in the bread, the blue sky in the bread, and the clouds and the great earth in the bread. Can you tell me what is not in a piece of bread? The whole cosmos has come together in order to bring to you this piece of bread. You eat it in such a way that you come alive, truly alive.”
Partake of your sacred elements.
Breath deeply into your place.
Close your ceremony with a softly sung song or chant. “The Earth, the Wind, the Fire, the Water, return, return, return, return. (repeat) Ayay ayay ayay ayay ayo ayo ayo ayo”
Amen.
