When Truth Falls Apart
Maundy Thursday and Christ's last night
Preached at the Maundy Thursday service at East Craftsbury Presbyterian Church
Recently, there was a viral sketch of Jesus on a podcast asking the devil what his favorite movie was. The devil said, naturally, The Passion of the Christ.
So it seems strange to say this night is one of my favorite nights in the Christian calendar. And yet it is one of the services where I feel the most acutely that no matter what we are going through, Jesus Christ is with us.
Throughout Lent, I’ve been preaching on the theme of “living in truth.” Tonight, this feels particularly important in a time when truth is fracturing in our society. We are living through a time when things we thought were true are proving to be untrue, lies are as much a currency as anything, and certainties we once knew have vanished. I also know that many of us in Craftsbury have personally experienced the loss of a life and reality they once knew through the loss of loved ones.
In the back of our sanctuary, we have been meeting each Thursday in our new Griefshare program with people dealing with the death of someone they lost, sometimes long ago, sometimes very recently. We took tonight off, yet this night is the church's collective moment of grief sharing. In the Griefshare program, we have talked about “grief ambushes” hitting you out of nowhere, and tonight, the disciples were certainly ambushed by grief. They were unprepared and uncertain of what to do. The truth they had known—the coming triumph of the Lord—was shattered. Their teacher, their Master, the wisest, most compassionate, just, and humble yet strong person they had ever known, a person they saw do miraculous and divine things, was suddenly so, so fragile.
Simone Weil said Christ is truth itself, that before he is “Christ” in our minds, he is above all truth. On this night, the disciples witnessed the collapse of truth. They saw truth itself subjected to injustice, broken down, and ultimately nailed to a cross. On this night, Pilate himself would ask Jesus, "What is truth?"
Pilate’s question was unanswered. Everyone was too busy with their own concerns: how could this be happening? If this is now reality, then the thing we once completely believed, that Jesus is King, is false…then what can we possibly hold as true? What is truth indeed?
In this Passion story, the devil’s favorite movie might make us wonder out loud almost like a curse, “What in the hell is true anyway,” but also, “What truth is in hell?” For what is hell if not the dark truth that humanity could meet God and kill him?
Thank the Lord that we know there is more truth to come on Sunday. That even when our truth is falling apart, whether as a country or in our personal lives, it is not The End. As Paul wrote his Colossian friends, even that which seems to oppose God was made for him (1 Col 1:16). That even when everything is collapsing, we know that Jesus Christ through the presence of his Holy Spirit is not done, that “in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” (1 Col 1:19-20)
Even on a night this dark, Christ makes peace. There is no night too dark for Christ to dwell in. This doesn’t mean Jesus dismisses the grief, the pain, the death, or the sheer blood of the world, but that he spills his blood into it with us. Even when everything we know as true is crumbling, the fullness of God is dwelling with a truth we can’t fully understand.
But even though we know the end of this story, it is crucial that we also pause and dwell with God in this night, and these moments, to feel the weight of the cross which is more than wood and nails. The weight of the cross is humiliation, mockery, betrayal, the tyranny of power, the fear, the cowardice, and the wages of sin in death itself.
Christ was still with them this night. Christ is still with us, even if it’s falling apart. Even when we leave in the silence and step back into the dark.
