Choices - Meditation for Maundy Thursday

Choices

For my days pass away like smoke,
and my bones burn like a furnace.

In the voice
of the psalms,
I hear the echoes
of genocide,
reverberating
through
the generations.

For I eat ashes like bread,
and mingle tears with my drink.

Hundreds, thousands, millions
of dreams
incinerated
like so much trash;
ash-acrid air
on the lips of the living.

My bones cling to my skin.

God’s chosen
languish, starved
of food,
of love,
of God.

Save me from my persecutors,
for they are too strong for me.

Even the Divine
seems vanquished,
shared supper
no defense.

‘Truly I tell you,
one of you will betray me,
one who is eating with me.’

And yet,
the very ovens of death
may also yield
the bread of life.

‘Take; this is my body.’

Hate-fed furnace,
or love-fueled fire?

One tool,
two roads:
humanity’s choice.

The bread that we break,
is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?
Because there is one bread,
we who are many are one body,
for we all partake of the one bread.

Christ stands
at the cross-road,
hung in a paradox —
wood of death,
tree of life.

Will we accept
the bread,
or taste
only ashes?

The readings for Maundy Thursday are Psalm 102; Lam. 2:10-18; 1 Cor. 10:14-17, 11:27-32; Mark 14:12-25; and can be found at satucket.com/lectionary/2holywk.htm.