Maundy Thursday

During the week before Easter, the small Methodist church in my hometown marks each day of Holy Week. They meet together each morning to read Scripture and sing songs and set their minds to thinking about what happened in Jesus’ life that day and why it’s so important 2000 years later. My family always attended, and I always thought there was something special about those early morning services.

But one of the more significant Holy Week services I attended wasn’t one of those morning meetings. Instead, it was the Maundy Thursday service, which generally happened at night. The service detailed the Last Supper Christ took with His disciples, inaugurating our Communion or Eucharist, and focused on His anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane and the betrayal of a supposed friend and follower. It was a solemn service, void of all the pomp and pageantry of Palm Sunday. It’s a service of sorrows, which is appropriate, since without Christ’s extreme sorrow and suffering, Easter would be meaningless and our lives would be hopeless. For this service, the decorations of Easter—the royal purple, the pretty flowers—would all be removed. In their places would be black cloths and a stark crown of thorns. We’d read the Scripture accounts of those final moments with His friends, the truths He still desired to impart, the stupid arguments of the disciples about who was the greatest. And we’d sing a few somber songs and leave in silence. It was hard to go in peace knowing that the next day marked both the most terrible and most hopeful day in all history. As we left those Maundy Thursday services, we knew that Good Friday marked Jesus’ death on a rough hewn, heavy, cruel cross. These are dark days.

But they are important days and days I wouldn’t do without. And I hope this year as I muddle through my work and busyness that I take a moment tonight to remember that Passover supper with the Lamb and consider what it means to me. I hope I ponder His anguish in the Garden and take to heart His prayer. I hope above all, that I don’t forget that this suffering is the means to my hope—that without these dark days when evil thought it had won—I wouldn’t know the depth of my Father’s love or the power of Christ’s resurrection.