Thursday, April 15 - Strollers

 This sermon was preached for Maundy Thursday, April 14, 2022 at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church. 

Francesco Malavolta, Associated Press, March 8, 2022, Przemysl, Poland.

One image from the early days of the Ukrainian war has stuck in my mind lately, a photo by Associated Press photographer, Francesco Malavolta. It’s a shot of strollers lined up on an empty train station platform in Poland. The photograph captured a moment of the kind of compassion that is at once both ordinary and extraordinary – and precisely the kind of love to which Jesus calls us tonight.

Here is the simple story of the strollers: As Ukrainian families began to flee their country in droves, streaming toward the safety of the Polish border, strollers like these began appearing at Polish train stations. They were left by Polish mothers and fathers who had heard of the plight of the mostly woman and child refugees.

In her poignant piece for the Washington Post entitled, “What mothers know about war,” Monica Hesse reported that some of the strollers are old and worn, others barely used, some fancy models, some simple and plain. Many strollers overflowed with blankets, baby goods, and other necessities. Their previous owners had thought carefully – what would I need if I had left in a hurry, clutching my child to me in fear? What would I have left behind and what would I struggle without? These strollers spoke of empathy born from experience. They spoke of knowing what it is like to drag young children through crowded trains and buses, how one’s arms ache from exhaustion, how a baby sleeps so much better tucked safe and warm into a stroller. The strollers said, I cannot know for certain what you feel and what you have suffered, but I can guess. But I can do something, here and now, with what I have.

As Monica writes in her article, it can be so easy for us to be caught up in the calculations and machinations of war – weaponry and battles and territory lost and won. But the strollers, the strollers mean that someone somewhere is “thinking about the mothers of Ukraine. The fact that they have traveled so far, and their children are so heavy, and their arms so tired.” Each stroller is a prayer.

God, our God, the God of the Christian faith, is defined by the ultimate incarnational act. God became human, lived and died as one of us. This week of all weeks, we revel in the mystery of Jesus’ intimacy with the human experience. We marvel that he endured all the exquisite varieties of human pain, betrayal, rage, grief, humiliation, agony, exhaustion, dread. We mark Jesus’ deliberate, intentional walk into that pain, into our pain. Jesus chose this kind of love for a reason, to give us a commandment both new and as old as time. “Love one another, just as I have loved you.”

Our Maundy Thursday liturgy draws our attention to the act of service Jesus chose to symbolize that kind of love – the washing of his disciples’ feet. It reminds us that the love that Jesus asks of us is neither distant or vague or sentimental. It is deeply intimate, humble, even a bit uncomfortable. It is rooted in profound empathy.

Tonight is not about putting on someone else’s shoes and walking away. It’s about kneeling down to their bare feet, it is witnessing what their body has known and endured, it is taking soreness, exhaustion, dust of everyday living it into our hands and relieving it.

It is the same kind of love that inspires a Polish parent to leave a stroller full of wipes and stuffies and formula on a train station platform. It is the love that takes Jesus all the way to the cross.

In a couple of weeks, a couple dozen St. Andrew’s teens and adult volunteers will embark on a two-day, hybrid CityReach experience. On Friday night, we’ll be guided by the staff of CityReach, all of whom are currently or formerly homeless. They will lead us on an intentional walk and reflection to step into the experience of homelessness. We’ll confront the inconvenience, humiliation, and daily struggles the unhoused endure, begin to really think through everything a person might long for or need to get through. We’ll sit and talk with those who have experienced this, with them as our teachers. And then, only then, we will be ready for Saturday, ready to distribute food and clothing, ready to serve the way Jesus asks us to serve: intimately, humbly and in solidarity.

Whether you take part in the foot-washing or not, whether you are watching online or sitting in the pews, let this be a moment to reflect on Jesus’ greatest commandment. Take this time to listen for where your own experience of pain, joy, exhaustion, grief may be transformed into empathy and service for your fellow human beings.