Maundy Thursday Meditation

Friends,

As we approach Maundy Thursday —  the evening where Christ took his last meal with his friends and was ultimately betrayed to his death — I want to offer a meditation. 

Before that, a brief plug for our shared Good Friday service our sisters and brothers in Christ from other churches in Cambridge, hosted by Central Square Church, starting at 7:30pm.  We will spend time there contemplating Christ’s sacrifice for us through readings, teaching and song, in the company of other believers in our city.  I will be there.  Please join me!   

Getting back to the meditation, I want you to imagine having been Jesus this week.  

You rode into Jerusalem and were greeted by throngs of religious pilgrims, welcoming you with hope that you would free them from the oppression of being a conquered, marginalized people.    But you knew what they were excited for could not be what you would do for them (though their suffering pained you) and what you were really there to do, they did not really want.  

You saw religious outsiders (gentiles) being kept out of God’s house during the highest point of religious pilgrimages and gatherings (Passover week).  You saw this being done so that people could sell more goods for Passover sacrifices at a marked up price to travelers who were told their sacrifices weren’t good enough to use (essentially making them pay double — once for the gift they brought and couldn’t use and a second time for a gift the sellers said they had to use while charging them an inflated price).  You got rightly angry and put yourself in conflict with powerful people to disrupt the system you knew was keeping people out, cheating people and breaking connection with God.  

You were constantly followed around by people trying to catch you in your words and trip you up so they could use it as an excuse to discredit and reject you.  You had to be mentally sharp all day long.

You taught and talked with people about hard things — things they were not ready to hear, but needed to know.  You said a lot because you knew your time of being able to sit with them  was almost up.  

You warned your closest friends that you were going to be betrayed, beaten and killed, but they didn’t understand what you were saying.  You warned them that your suffering would mean crisis for them, but they wouldn’t listen and just made promises you knew they wouldn’t keep.  You didn’t fight them on it.  You just let them believe it wouldn’t happen, even though you knew it would.  

A woman anointed you with expensive perfume, giving a treasured possession up to bless you before your coming death, but your closest friends and devoted students didn’t understand what she was doing and spoiled some of the beauty of that moment.  

You had your friends make preparations to celebrate the Passover together— that most special of celebrations and remembrances of God’s redemption — knowing it would be the last time you celebrated it with them on earth.  You also knew they would not understand it was the last time.  You were saying good bye to a treasured moment alone.  

It was a week that up to this point had some highs, but which was mixed with many lows.  

Jesus would likely have felt a variety of things this week.  All this would have been enough to process with a therapist for many weeks for any of us, but Jesus hadn’t even gotten to the biggest troubles of the week yet — being betrayed, arrested, beaten, executed and buried.  The most important event of his life was coming and no one understood or was really able to support him as he prepared himself (and them) for it.  

Friends, this is what Jesus took on for you and I.  Not just the cross and the tomb, but everything leading up to it.      

Think on this in your life — that Jesus kept pushing forward toward your redemption, even though it meant preparing for it all alone.  He did it even though it meant doing it as someone who was continually misunderstood by his closest friends, as someone grieving over the depth of the brokenness he saw around him while surrounded by conflict and as having to walk around traps and attacks over and over, knowing that he was just going to let himself fall into an even greater trap in a few days time.  

Imagine the exhaustion of it all and you’re not even at the cross.  

Despite all this, Jesus kept walking down this road to bring you home: pressing on, digging deeper, and going it alone. This is the God you have caring for you.  One who kept pressing on and digging deeper as life was draining away from him, because he would not give up on you. He would not give up on you then.  He will not give up on you now.   

As we approach Maundy Thursday remember the events that led up to it and what those reveal about the commitment of your Savior to you.  He would not give up then.  He will not give up now.  

May the grace and peace of Jesus Christ our Lord be with you this week,

Pastor Travis