April 1, 2021. Here’s a short spoken meditation on the ways an ancient tradition can serve as a vital contemporary practice. The sermon is based on the Maundy Thursday (Holy Week) scripture reading from John 13 in which Jesus washes the disciples’ feet. Each year when we practice the Great Three Days we are remapping the journey of life; we are practicing what it means to grow into the fullness of life, to transform over the course of our lives. And it means that a death experience: the ending of a job or career or dream, the ending of a relationship, financial collapse, the loss of a loved one, a health diagnosis you don’t want—none of this is the end of you, or doesn’t have to be. And the larger crises of our times—political transitions, environmental crises, war, violence, prejudice—don’t need to render us cynical and passive.
Tonight begins the Great Triduum (Tri’-joo-um). Triduum is an uncommon word, nearly completely forgotten in American Christianity. Its neglect goes along with the neglect of the spiritual practice of dwelling in the Great Triduum. The neglect is unfortunate. To practice the Triduum could really help us in our journey to be more fully alive as human beings.
The Triduum is the traditional term for the spiritual practice of the Great Three Days:
—The first day: Maundy Thursday evening through Good Friday
—The second day: Good Friday through Holy Saturday evening, the Easter Vigil
—And the third day: the Saturday Vigil through Easter morning, culminating with the prayers at dusk on Easter Sunday
The Three Days, the Great Triduum, is a single service spread over these three days. More than that, it’s a three day spiritual practice that not only rehearses the great themes of Christ’s Passion, Death, burial, and Resurrection, but a practice that also maps for us the great themes or cycles of life itself.
A few paragraphs prior to the reading we’ve heard tonight about the foot washing, Jesus alludes to this cycle. In John, chapter 12, Jesus says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who cling to their life lose it, and those who are free from clutching at their life experience eternal life.”
There’s nothing supernatural in this. Jesus interprets his life according to the natural cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth that rules all living things, including us. None of us is exempt from it. In fact, when we participate in it consciously, with awareness and gratitude and cooperation—without, as Jesus puts it, “clinging to our lives,” greedily, fearfully, protectively, but rather, “free from clutching” at what we can never fully control and can never keep—if we cooperate, we just might live into the full and abundant life that can be ours if we’re not constantly grasping at what we can’t possess.
I like what psychologist Marion Woodman says about our journey into wholeness. She says, “A life truly lived constantly burns away veils of illusion, burns away what is no longer relevant, gradually reveals our essence, until, at last, we are strong enough to stand in our naked truth.”
That process of burning away what’s false, revealing what’s true, and standing whole in our authentic selves is what the Triduum intends to do for us.
Likewise, Jesus says, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
The spiritual journey, the human journey, has a pattern. And this pattern is what the Great Triduum does for us if we will practice it. The Great Three Days maps the soul’s journey, the human journey:
—life, death, new life
—ending, loss, new beginning
Life is an unfolding, an evolution, and it requires this pattern of life, death, new life.
Couples’ therapist, Esther Perel, says that most couples will have two to three marriages; perhaps even with the same person. I think our lives are like that too.
The journey into wholeness, the journey of our minds, bodies, and souls into the fullness God dreams that each of us will find, is never static, it’s not linear.
I’m reminded of this in every funeral or memorial service I lead. I see the twists and turns of a person’s life and I see so much that they didn’t design and couldn’t control. And I can also see the degree to which they cooperated with the divine mischief in it all or they didn’t.
I think of my own long and winding road through life. I’ve undergone this cycle, this pattern, in many forms: the shift from child to adult, from student to professional, from salesperson to marketing executive to grad student to pastor, and there will be another ending and beginning when I retire; the same has been true in my relationships, and even with the seasons of my body and bouts with disease and wellness:
—life, death, new life
—ending, loss, new beginning
Each year when we practice the Great Three Days we are remapping the journey of life; we are practicing what it means to grow into the fullness of life, to transform over the course of our lives. And it means that a death experience, the ending of a job or career or dream, the ending of a relationship, financial collapse, the loss of a loved one, a health diagnosis you don’t want—none of this is the end of you, or doesn’t have to be. And the larger crises of our times—political transitions, environmental crises, war, violence, prejudice—don’t need to render us cynical and passive.
If we’ll take the Great Three Days as a life-map, we’ll know that every passionate struggle, every threat, every ending, can be the birthing of something new. As Christians we are never captives for long and never need to allow pessimism, fear, and paralysis to define our lives. We are, just like the earth itself, resilient. Life, death, and new life means is a pattern or map for durable hopefulness. It can save us from the deadly grip of cynicism, fear, and the grasping at life, the greed, that leads to violence and tyranny.
The Triduum begins here, tonight, in the story of Jesus washing the feet of his friends. The foot washing is a revelation of the reason for the journey: to be loved into the fullness of life. It also shows us that we can often resist what we need most. Peter protested, “No, don’t wash me; don’t love me that deeply.” We don’t know why he resisted. Just as we don’t often know why we resist love. It could have been pride: “I don’t need to be loved.” It could have been shame: “I’m not worthy of being loved.” It could have been a trauma response: “I can’t risk being loved because loving hurts.” It doesn’t matter the reason. What matters is that the journey we’re on requires love, and that loving can be intensely hard.
But love, the first day of the Triduum practice teaches us, is not only the point of life, it sustains life, it guides the journey. There is nothing more important than love.
Receiving love.
Giving love.
Being love.
Risking all for love.
So, come. Sit. Rest. Open up again in the places you’ve become closed. Warm the parts of you that have grown cold.
Be here now. Begin the journey to wholeness all over again.
Tonight, let God serve you.
Let God wash you.
Let God love you.
Then walk with God the way of love.