The old, old story, part 2

There was a kind of cool moment at the Maundy Thursday service at Trinity last night. Kathy talked a little about how we usually think of the Last Supper--something very somber--compared to what it probably was, a family laughing and enjoying each other's company before things changed completely. And also, she said, they probably weren't all on one side of the table, a la da Vinci.

For communion, usually we go up to the altar in shifts, but the service was small enough that everyone could just squeeze around the altar rail at once. It's a mostly straight altar rail that spans the front of the sanctuary, rather than one that goes around a sort of island like at home at Epiphany. And I looked down the row from one end and saw a wave of people tearing bread, dipping, chewing, and standing, one after another, and I thought, we're all on the same side of the table.

There's nothing profoundly theological about that. As Kathy said, that da Vinci depiction is hardly the way the Last Supper actually went down. But at the same time, since that is such a dominant image, it seemed for just an instant like we were making up that image. Like we were writing ourselves into the story.

Like I said last time, I think that's a big part of what Holy Week is all about. That's why we wave palms and march down Washington Street, it's why we have communion, it's why we wash feet (for those who unlike me don't intentionally skip chapel on the day that's scheduled), why we strip the church and watch it fall into shadows as candles are extinguished one by one. We act out this story because it makes us who we are.

After church a group of us met for dinner at Taco Mac, and people just kept coming, and we had to smush tables together and there were long rows of people on either side. And we laughed and enjoyed each other's company. And we all know that the time for this is winding down. So in a less intentional, less liturgical way, we acted out the story again. Because it's our story. It makes us who we are--inside church and out.