April 17, 2003
Maundy Thursday

Last night the feast of Passover began for our Jewish friends. They gather in their homes and restaurants and halls to eat the Passover meal together and celebrate the night the Angel of Death came to earth to strike down the first-born child of all the Egyptian families, a plague so terrible that the Hebrew people who had been held in slavery for 400 years would surely be allowed to leave.

During the Passover meal, the eldest child of a Jewish family—it used to be the eldest boy, but now often girls receive the honor—ask a simple question: “Why is this night different than all others?” The answer, normally given by the father, is that on Passover night God acted in might on behalf of his people. Not only did he visit this terrible curse on their enemies, he showed them how they could protect themselves—daub lamb’s blood on the outer posts of their homes. Houses that were so marked would be passed over by the Angel of Death.

But Jesus gathered with his disciples on the night of his betrayal for a very different kind of Passover meal. He could not be spared the agony that awaited him. He was quite aware that this would be his last meal with his friends, possibly his last meal, period. Rather than being passed over by the angel of death, he knew that his death meant that they would live forever. He wanted so much for them to understand that he had to say goodbye, but only for a while, only until a glorious dawn arrived. Only until the blood of the lamb proclaimed that all of us would be freed of the shackles of death. He had to say goodbye, till morning.

About a month ago I read a story that was so moving and so perfect that I knew I wanted to share it with you on Maundy Thursday. A lady named Elizabeth Sherrill wrote this about her friend Mea. Now Mea had been a friend of Elizabeth’s parents as Elizabeth grew up, and she has the kind of friend who always knew how to make ordinary days happy ones. But her own childhood had been a tragic one.

Mea’s parents had died when she was three, and she was placed in an orphanage in Bristol, England. There she spent her days in a bare, gray-walled room lined with small chests where the orphans kept whatever playthings they had. Mea’s chest was empty. She stayed in the orphanage until she was six, when an aunt and uncle in America learned of her existence and brought her to a strange land called New Jersey. There Mea was as lonely as she had been in England. The couple had no children of their own and lived in an isolated house, windows draped in black because sunlight gave her uncle headaches.

When Mea reached her teenage years, her aunt—quoting the Bible passages about vanity and impurity—banished her to the attic and dressed her in cast-off black dresses. Elizabeth wrote that by the time she knew her, Mea had been through several failed marriages, each one entered, she suspected, at the first hint of affection. She worked as a secretary, a bookkeeper and a store clerk, and she might well have turned into a pathetic, bitter, self-pitying figure. But she didn’t. Just the opposite.

Refusing to feel sorry for herself, she turned her need for something to love into empathy for all needy, injured creatures—wounded birds, stray cats, lonely old people no one else wanted to visit. She created fun where none existed, making a party for the children out of graham crackers and a handful of dandelions. She was 40 years older than Elizabeth, but she was her best friend.

Then at age 84, following a stroke that robbed her of speech, Mea went to live in the county home for the elderly. Elizabeth would still come to visit, and simply sit by her bed, hold her hand and chat for both of them. That went on for three years, and more and more often Mea would be asleep when Elizabeth visited. When she was alert, Elizabeth tried to comfort her with talk of her faith, but Mea would just hold up her hands and shake her head. Maybe she was remembering the cold stern religion her aunt had inflicted on her.

Still, Elizabeth longed to tell her about the God of hope, the God of compassion, the God of mercy. She sat at her bedside and told her that God wanted to me the father and mother she had lost, God wanted to be the husband who would always be faithful. Mea never gave a sign that she understood. Finally, the year was 1978, and Elizabeth and her husband John were about to leave for an extended stay in Europe. They wanted to visit Mea one more time, fearing that she would not be alive when they returned.

When they entered her room Mea was asleep, as usual. It was a while before her eyes opened, and even longer until they focused on her visitors. She looked so thin and frail. Her leg had been amputated the year before to prevent gangrene. She wore the pink nightie Elizabeth had given her for her birthday, and her single leg made a too-narrow ridge under the sheet. As always it was difficult to  make conversation, and finally John asked if they could pray with her, and so they did. An image formed in Elizabeth’s mind of Mea being comforted in Jesus’ lap, the way Mea used to do with injured animals.

Suddenly from the bed there came a wail. Mea was sobbing wildly, noisily explosively. After the years of silence the sudden sound was stunning. On and on went the wordless cries. Just as suddenly they stopped. And over her face spread a glorious smile. Then, abruptly, more sobs. Another ecstatic smile. At last her eyes closed and she seemed to fall asleep. Then they opened again, and she stared straight ahead. At last it was time to go, and John and Elizabeth bent down to kiss her, and said good bye.

At the doorway they turned around and waved, and Mea’s hand stirred, and Elizabeth heard Mea say as clearly as when she was a girl, “Goodbye till morning.” Neither John nor Elizabeth said a word until they reached the parking lot. Then Elizabeth turned to her husband and asked, “What did you hear?” He said, “I heard, ‘goodbye until morning.’ “ Three months later, Mea passed away.

What had happened there? A heavenly dialogue? Jesus coming to claim one of his own. A miracle of reclaimed speech by the power of prayer for a sad and lonely old lady. Elizabeth does not know to this day. She wrote, “No one can know the workings of God in another person’s life…but I have no doubt that God’s love for Mea far exceeded my own.”

Let there be no doubt: God’s love for all of us far exceeds how much we even love ourselves.

On this sacred night we ask “Why is this night different than all others?” The answer is that on this night we contemplate Christ’s death, and our own. Easter is profoundly about life, and especially about new life in Christ, but there can be no understanding of Resurrection without Crucifixion. We cannot appreciate Christ’s return without understanding his need to say goodbye. As we take the bread and cup tonight, we cannot recognize him standing at the table, presiding at this banquet, until we consider how important Christ is in our lives, and the eternity he promised his faithful people. An eternity made possible by the death that destroyed death. Amen.