Maundy Thursday 2024
Texts: Exodus 12:1-14; John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Tonight is the beginning of The Passion of Christ. From about 9:00 tonight—the approximate time the Last Supper concluded, to tomorrow afternoon at 3—when we believe Jesus died on the cross, we relive what happened to Jesus.
This is how we relive what happened. In many churches parishioners are keeping a prayer vigil of 18 hours within the church, usually at a side altar set up with the reserved sacrament. People come to pray for an hour at a time so that the reserved sacrament is never left alone during the time of Christ’s Passion. After doing this many years, I can tell you it is very difficult to stay awake one hour in the late night or early morning when you are sleepy.
At 3:00 tomorrow, the Stations of the Cross may be held, or the Good Friday Liturgy itself. The Stations of the Cross is a devotion that follows Jesus every moment from being condemned by Pilate to his followers receiving his body. There are 13 stations at which something significant happened, for example, Simon of Cyrene taking Jesus’ cross, and Jesus being taunted by the soldiers.
We will pray the Good Friday Liturgy tomorrow night at 7:00. The focus will be the reading of the whole Passion of Christ according to John. In many places a life-sized cross will be brought in and venerated. Choirs will sing many lovely anthems focusing on the cross of Christ.
These three days before Easter are considered to be the most holy days of the Christian calendar—Maundy Thursday with the giving of the Great Commandment and Jesus washing the disciple’s feet, the reading of the Passion narrative on Good Friday, to the Great Vigil of Easter, waiting in the dark early on the Day of Resurrection for the sun to rise. These three days are called The Triduum.
The Passover meal eaten with his disciples in Jerusalem would be Jesus’ last meal. The Passover celebrated God saving his people by having them mark the doors of their homes in Egypt with the blood of an unblemished lamb as described in the lesson from Exodus.
Just as the Hebrews in Exodus were not where they were supposed to be, neither are we. God had a place for the Hebrews, The Promised Land, and He would lead them there. We have a place in the kingdom of God, and Jesus will lead us there.
Immediately after the meal Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane. The word Gethsemane most likely means ‘oil press’, a place where olives were crushed to make oil. It could have been a small, walled enclosure on the Mount of Olives which was named so because it was covered with olive trees. Jesus often sought to pray in such out of the way, private places.
For approximately 1,991 years people have asked why did God let his Son go to the cross to die to save us. Why did God choose to redeem sin-sick humanity in this way? St. Gregory of Nyssa concluded, “What Christ has not assumed, He has not healed.” St. Athanasius of Alexandria reasoned, “God cannot redeem what he does not know.”
I once found a nice sermon about this written by The Rev. Sarah Puryear when she was at St. George’s Episcopal Church in Nashville from 2012. She wrote, “Jesus had to take upon himself the full range of human experience in order to redeem it. He chooses to ‘assume’ what needs healing, to take it upon himself, to vanquish it from the inside out…In Christ’s passion we see the literal meaning of the word ‘compassion’ acted out for us—it literally means to suffer with someone.”
Jesus was suffering with us, as all of the accumulated sin of humanity was received into his body on the cross. Just imagine, how much pain could you endure to save someone you love? Isaiah wrote of the accomplishment to come, of the suffering servant who would be Jesus, “Surely, he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows.”
Puryear asks, “What does it really mean for us today that such a story—one of betrayal and heartbreak and injustice and suffering and death—is at the center of our faith?”
And the answer comes, “It means that there is no problem or trial or suffering or failure that falls outside the scope of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It means that wherever you are or whatever you are going through, God has already been there. He has been there before you. He knows what it is to be rejected, to be scorned, to be subjected to injustice, to violence. He knows what it is like to have his heart broken. And because he has been there, he knows how to lead you through it, beyond it, to the life that is on the other side of that suffering.”
God understands where we are. Through Christ’s suffering on our behalf, we find healing, freedom, and peace.
This is the night Jesus gave us the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. The bread and the wine mysteriously do become his precious broken body and poured out blood. These are now signs of his suffering love for us. These are now the means by which we are strengthened in this world to continue to love despite our problems, and trials, and sufferings, and failures. God’s grace is literally given and poured into us. This is the way to that life on the other side of suffering. Amen.
Photo Credit: Cindy Purnell