pull up a chair

last night, from my wooden pew in the great stone nave that is the church where i pray, i listened to the words spoken from the pulpit, and i imagined back in time to the night in a garden when the man and God wept. i imagined his betrayal. i imagined how he was tried on charges trumped, convicted by the roar of a deafened and deafening crowd, then stripped, and flogged, and soon told to carry the cross upon which he would breathe his last and die.

i thought of who this man-God was: how he’d upturned the tax-collectors’ tables, and the moneychangers’ too. i thought of how profoundly he lived and breathed the words of Torah, how he prayed the sh’ma; the v’ahavta, too. (“you shall love Adonai your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.”) and i listened to the priest who, in his sermon, said that the man, named Jesus, had on this holy night gathered his disciples, the ones who’d turned over their lives to him and his teachings, and how just before the grueling hours in the garden, he’d shared the Seder, the Passover meal, and one last time taught his truest, lasting lessons.

before he did, though, he broke rank, broke tradition, this soul who lived not by worldly rule. he rose amid the telling of the exodus from egypt, took off his outer robe, poured water in a basin, tied a towel around his waist, and began to wash the dusty feet of those who’d gathered one last time. this man soon to be accused of claiming to be king took on the servant’s role: he bent, pressed his knees to the floor, and one by one, he washed away the grime.

and then he spoke his one last teaching:

“I give you a new commandment,” he began in the hours before betrayal, “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

as i wrapped myself in the whole of those words, spoken by the Jesus who would soon be crowned with thorns, the priest called us to come forward, to bare our bumpy calloused feet, the ones with toes oddly angled, and nails often yellowed or purpled or however one’s toes age. and then we knelt. and washed each other’s feet, a posture of utter and bottomless humility. “thou shalt love as you are loved.” we poured warm water from a pitcher, and we grabbed a freshly folded towel, and wiped each toe and heel and sole. we washed each other’s feet, an act of reverence in which we’re at once stripped of all pretense, exposed—and yet and yet, we’re met with tender loving kindness, our naked flesh bathed and dried, wiped of earthly dust.

against all of this, a newsreel spooled through my mind. in particular, a single prisoner held behind merciless bars. i was stunned in the contrast: how sacred time, year after year, returns us to the ancient, timeless themes, the ones my parents learned and lived, and their parents too. and theirs, and theirs.

i thought of how starkly this year the sacred story stands against the backdrop of the worldly news. how trumped up charges are once again in play. how there are those who’ve been stripped and shorn. made to sit in ungodly postures, crammed like urchins in a tin can. locked behind bars. held by merciless guards.

that newsreel cracked open in my mind a way of seeing the night of betrayal, the trial and the dusty road to golgotha in dimension i’d not seen quite so viscerally before.

as we knelt and washed each other’s feet, i would later read, a senator who would not be refused, who would not leave the prison gate, had persisted. had finally sat beside the man who’d all but disappeared. gave him but a simple glass of water. “love as you would be loved.”

this year, as the world stands gasping, as cruelties beyond our imaginations play out, i found myself wrapped in the timelessness of sacred time. how its truths have not been quashed. how all the cruelties of humankind have still not stilled, nor silenced, the one command of every sacred text: “love as you would be loved.” stand up to evil. kneel and wash the feet of the stranger just beside you. gnarly toes and crusty heels and all.

sacred time is dauntless. worldly time will crumble in our hands.

the rhythms of the church, of sacred time, again and again, point our attention to the timeless. this year, more than ever, i am on my knees and crying out for mercy.

i am cradled in the nautilus of sacred, sacred time where the cruelties of humankind crumble in the face of Holy Breath.

as the altar last night was stripped of every cloth, as every candle snuffed, and we filed out in silence, so too i leave this table unadorned today. and i ask no question. i leave you in silence, in whatever prayers you pray.

may you be blessed in this holy time.

a p.s.: this good friday is especially deep for me this year, as two years ago today i was wheeled into surgery, and came out minus half a lung, and with a worldview forever changed. i see through a clearer lens now, the lens that cancer brings. and i embrace each holy hour like never before. i am, for the first time in at least a decade, home with all my boys this weekend: the law professor, the line cook, the critic, all gathered for the easter-pesach weekend. it gets no holier than this. dear God, for this blessing, i am eternally, eternally grateful.