We are now at Maundy Thursday,
the first of the three liturgies referred to as the Triduum, the Three Days:
Maundy Thursday,
Good Friday
and the Easter Vigil of Holy Saturday.
I invited you to participate deeply in each of these three liturgies,
to let your hearts be open to the full scope of meaning
for the events of the week,
to follow Jesus as faithful disciples,
as you have responded.
The importance of the narration of the events of Holy Week
is reflected in the Gospels very clearly.
It is thought that when the Gospels were written down,
they started with the Passion narrative
and worked backward from there.
Two full chapters in all four Gospels
are devoted just to Good Friday alone.
Compare that with mere paragraphs for each other event.
So much is crammed into this one liturgy this evening:
There are 3 distinct themes, each so rich and full
that desire all the attention we can give them.
The first is what Jesus did by taking the role of the lowest household slave
to do the most menial task of service as an example to all of us
of how we are to serve one another.
Go to the Nativity Facebook page and view the video of the Wicks family.
They have beautifully and simply played out this part of the liturgy for us.
They are a living parable speaking to us; watch and learn from them.
The second of the three themes
is what Jesus did with the bread and wine of their table fellowship,
how he transformed that forever
and released through those common elements
the grace of his abiding presence in a very material way.
And the third is what happened next, what happened in Gethsemane.
I will speak now briefly about the second and the third.
After the washing up before coming to the table, the bread and the wine --
Through sheer familiarity we lose the impact
of the radical action Jesus took in the midst of the meal.
He took the familiar bread and wine, part of most all their meals,
bread and wine, which symbolized hospitality, nourishment,
bread to strengthen
and wine to gladden the heart.
He gave them the bread, and then when they had eaten it, he said,
“This is my body.”
I can almost see the puzzlement come over their faces.
But then he gave them the cup, and when they had each drunk from it,
he said, “This is my blood.”
Now they would have been aghast.
The Jewish dietary laws were quite clear.
The life of the animal sacrificed and then eaten was in the blood.
The life was sacred, precious, created by God, and the life was in the blood,
and so the blood must be thoroughly drained
from the slaughtered animal
and given back to the Creator of life,
before the flesh could be prepared and eaten.
Jesus shocked their sensibilities most thoroughly
so that they could profoundly realize
that they were taking within themselves his very life.
From this time forward there would be no mere remembering about Jesus
whenever they would get together around the table again in the future.
This was about taking Jesus very literally, both physically and spiritually,
taking Jesus literally into themselves.
You become what you eat, you know.
Then after this last supper that Jesus would have with his disciples
before his death,
the scene now shifts to Gethsemane.
Here is where the Passion account in all 4 Gospels begins.
Having been in the Middle East and the Holy Land on a number of occasions,
I cannot enter Holy Week without vivid recollection
of physically walking the same path.
One time when I was there, we took the Palm Sunday walk in Jerusalem
down the Mt. of Olives from Bethany to Gethsemane
two miles from top of the hill called the Mount of Olives
down the hill to Kidron Wadi (essentially a gulch)
and up the other side into Jerusalem proper - Old City
at the Golden Gate
which led into the Temple area.
Maundy Thursday - after Jesus ate his last meal with his disciples
they came back to this area.
From where they had the Passover dinner
it probably would have been about a four mile walk.
At that time of night, after a full meal,
and probably a long day prior to that,
it's a good guess that they were all tired.
And it was there that Jesus asked his disciples to stay awake one hour.
From Gethsemane one could look across the gulch
and up at the Golden Gate to the Temple Mount.
The irony and significance of this place becomes clear.
Here Jesus would come to the decisive moment.
In full view of the Temple lit by the full moon of the Passover
Jesus prays.
Would he go through with what he had set in motion here Sunday?
Or… as he prayed …
"My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me;
yet not what I want but what you want."
Today there is a church there to mark the place of this prayer.
a beautiful church, dimly lit by light filtering
through blue and violet stained glass.
It is built to speak to the pilgrim:
"Come kneel here and keep watch with Jesus,
stay awake and pray with him his own prayer, if you dare,
'not my will, but thine be done.'"
This time of prayer is actually the climax point in the Passion;
everything from here on follows as a consequence of this moment.
We are invited to watch with Jesus during these liturgies of Holy Week,
watching for just an hour at a time,
the usual length of a Sunday service.
Or we can draw even nearer to Jesus
as we follow the events,
and offer our worship, our profound sense of awe and wonder,
the gratitude of our hearts.
Leave here in silence tonight to watch with Jesus in your own homes.
Remember this: the events of this week
are the whole reason for Christ's coming.
THE one major purpose of Jesus' life
was to lay it down, to die.
All the events prior to Holy Week -
- all the miracles, all the parables, all the Sermon on the Mount
- all were only preliminaries, setting the stage for what was to occur now.
Each of us is faced with Jesus' death in a very personal way.
- what that means to me.
The audacity of one human being
intentionally dying as a way to bring me into life.
This week is a love song from God to us,
a hard love song, but the ultimate love song of deepest, fullest love.
How can we turn our backs on such love?
How can we also express our love in return?
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