Maundy Thursday 2019
I wrote this record of my impressions after I attended my first ever Maundy Thursday service at a local Anglican Church. The service was a holy reverential remembrance.
The following excerpt is from my book
The Meeting Place: Moments with God at Lookout Point.
-2009-
LAST NIGHT I WENT to a Maundy Thursday church service. It was my first time attending this type of service. The focus was a commemoration, a memorial in a sense, of Jesus’ final hours before his death. Scripture concerning the events of the Upper Room, the Last Supper, were read, the humble act of the foot-washing of the disciples’ feet by Jesus, and the celebration and sharing of the bread and cup, the Holy Eucharist, was observed. Gethsemane, with its garden scene, Christ’s last hours in prayer alone with his heavenly Father, was collectively remembered.
The service focused on Christ’s impending death, highlighting moments that led to the Lord’s death on Calvary’s tree. The first thing I noticed, rather, I felt, was the holy hush, the reverence that filled the room. I listened and felt each transition, worshipping in silence as the sacraments were presented, absorbing the words of the congregants as they spoke in one voice or knelt in worshipful prayer. Toward the beginning of the service, a quiet invitation to participate in “foot-washing” was given, the humble act following the Lord’s example, the priest and deacon washed the feet of the people when they came to the front, one by one. It has been many years since I have witnessed foot-washing in a church, the last time at a one-hundred-year anniversary at my maternal grandmother’s brethren church.
My thoughts took me back to the church of my childhood, in which there was foot-washing as part of a whole day communion service twice a year, the women with women in one room, and men with men in another. I remembered when in my high school years, I participated in a foot-washing service at my paternal grandparents’ brethren church, washing my grandmother’s feet and she washing mine.
Warm memories and quietness centered in me as I watched and listened to the liturgical worship service, an observer on the outside but active spiritually on the inside. The focus now came to the end of Christ’s journey on earth, the crucifixion of his innocent life, the shedding of Christ’s blood. In the form of questions, my thoughts took an interesting turn, random, unbidden in layer upon layer. How can a leader be a servant as Christ was? How can a servant be a leader as Christ was? What did the eyewitnesses experience when they saw Christ die? How fully did they feel the impact of his death? How should we as his people respond to his death?
I reflected on the emptiness—the shroud of darkness when hope grew dim for the world of men, as the mood of the service, with its sadness settled in around us. I thought of Christ and his words to his closest followers; even though Christ had prepared them for his death, their ears were not fully hearing, their eyes unseeing as to its true meaning. As the gloom descended, in complete silence, icons of meaning were gathered and removed from the house of worship, the sanctuary becoming bare of its ornamentation, the cross with its crucifix masked with white linen, the room where we gathered barren of its light. The service concluded with the house lights dimmed, people remaining in their seats, praying and worshipping.
Then, one by one in complete silence, the worshippers departed the church, more fully aware of the stark contrast of happiness departed, the emptiness in a small way like the world with its true Light gone, a cold dank feeling of lost hope. The quiet stripping of the sanctuary serving to heighten an awareness in us of a world without Christ, a dead Christ not yet risen to redeem lost souls. I couldn’t help but think, when hope appeared to be at its weakest state, in reality, hope was being transfigured—through Christ’s sinless death, humble burial, and then, his life transformed into the miracle of resurrected life: death into life. In the end, hope was unleashed, set on fire—the fire of redemption, the fulfilling of Christ’s mission to redeem a fallen people, the purchasing of hope for eternity and for us.
I have been told that if I should visit this same church on an Easter Sunday, I would see it full of light, foliage, and Easter lilies, in glorious celebration of the risen and living Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, in holy adoration for his gift of redemption and atonement. This brings us to the miracle of Christ’s life. What is redemption? It is the redeeming of our lives through Christ’s sinless death, burial, and resurrection. Redemption: Christ’s perfect, sinless, holy life for ours, the purchasing of pardon for all of humankind, all encompassing—past, present, and future generations.
