Maundy Thursday and Good Friday

Maundy Thursday

There’s a lot that can be said tonight. First, Maundy Thursday is about communion. This has been the subject of angst without end in the pastoring world these days, as we struggle to figure out how we can possibly call ourselves “ministers of word and sacrament” when we aren’t able to physically offer the sacraments. For our part here, we aren’t practicing any kind of virtual communion tonight. However, we do have a liturgy for home communion linked in the description of this video. If you are feeling the desire to have communion, you can lead it yourself as the pastor of your household. It isn’t perfect, but not perfect is kind of the reality we are working with here.

            Next, there is the matter of Jesus’ betrayal. A lot can be said about Judas, about the disciples stumbling in their faith, and Peter failing to stay awake. The disciples’ failures have been the story of the Gospel of Mark if you have been listening along these past few months. The disciples fail again and again.

            But tonight, instead of betrayal or the last supper, I want to use this opportunity to talk about the way that Jesus prayed on that fateful night. Specifically, I want to focus on Mark 11, verses 33-36, which offer a rare glimpse into what Jesus was actually feeling in his last full day on earth. It says that Jesus “began to feel despair and was anxious.” “I’m very sad,” he says. “It’s as if I’m dying.” Then he goes off to pray on his own, saying, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible. Take this cup of suffering away from me. However—not what I want but what you want.”

            These four verses paint a picture of Jesus that strikes me as particularly poignant for us today. Jesus feels the way we feel. He felt despair and found himself anxious about what is coming. Perhaps most remarkably of all, he turns to God in prayer and asks that he be freed from this burden of dying. It’s maybe the most astonishing and wonderful verse in all of scripture, because we are so accustomed to Jesus having all his ducks in a row. One of the central tenets of the Christian faith is that Jesus is without sin, yet he feels emotions that we so often consider to be negative. Despair and anxiety are one thing, but praying to be relieved of a burden is the kind of thing we so often equate with a lack of faith, and that lack of faith we view as a byproduct of sin, but here we have Jesus praying exactly for this! It could not be clearer: To pray to God to be saved from a terrible fate does not show a lack of faith. To feel despair and anxiety is not about sin. Jesus felt these things!

            These four verses paint a picture of a world where God weeps and mourns alongside us. We spend so much time rightfully praising the Jesus who is above us that it’s easy to forget that Jesus became one of us. He became fully human and experienced it all. We know he suffered, but today’s passage reminds us that he also felt anxious and doubtful and even afraid. Jesus felt all this, but he channeled it in a very particular direction, and I think that is the lesson for us to take from this.


            When he felt overwhelmed, Jesus went to God and prayed, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible. Take this cup of suffering away from me. However—not what I want but what you want.”

            Jesus’ prayer began first by acknowledging that he doesn’t see the whole picture. Jesus is the son of God, mind you, but still in his humanity he cannot comprehend the vastness of the universe any more than we can. Sure, he is also fully God, but let’s not jump ahead! Of all days, Maundy Thursday is the day to linger on Jesus’ humanity for a moment. When Jesus prays, he prays for a miracle. He doesn’t assume he understands the ends, even though he’s been telling everybody who will listen (who is pretty much nobody) that this was how it was going to have to go. He would have to die, so that three days later he would rise again. Jesus knows all this in his head, but it could not be clearer that in his heart he feels the weight of the moment.

            In that moment, Jesus is just like all of us right now. In our heads we know some things. We know that most of us are relatively safe; we know that our community will pull through; we know that there will be a tomorrow for the world and that the next generation will be stronger for it; we know that challenges with business and economies are not the end of the world; we know that God is holding it all together, and even if we were to die, it is only to live better on the other side. We know all this in our heads, but our hearts feel differently! Our hearts bear the weight of the burden. All that anxiety makes it hard to breathe, which in turn makes us worry, “Am I getting sick?!” Our heads and our hearts are disconnected by trauma.

            If that resonates with you, know that Jesus felt the exact same way! Jesus, the Savior of the world, knew things that he did not feel and felt things that were beyond what he could control. If Jesus Christ felt this way, you are free to feel the same. It is not your sin, your unworthiness, or anything wrong with you that is making you feel that way. You are not a broken person because you are anxious. In fact, I want to suggest the opposite. On that last full day of Jesus’ life on earth, he showed us what it means to be fully and absolutely human. It is to cry. It is to feel the weight of loss. It is to be afraid. But, above all, it is to turn to God in our moment of despair and cry, “Take this cup from me! However—not what I want but what you want.” This is the most essential prayer for our lives—thy will be done.

“God,” we say, “This the thing on my heart. This is the thing I want most desperately. This is what I feel called to do and to be. This is my everything. Please, I’m begging you, help me to achieve it, help me to earn it, help me to be the person I want to be. However—not what I want but what you want.”

            That prayer is every prayer we pray. We ask God for what is on our hearts honestly and openly. We can even argue before God that this is the most important thing—that nothing could possibly be better for me. But that prayer is not enough. It requires the second part—the part that reminds us we are to come before God humbly—the part that says, “Not what I want but what you want.” After all, God knows us better than we know ourselves. God, the Father, even knew Jesus more than Jesus knew himself. It’s an astounding thing, this prayer.

            On this Maundy Thursday, my hope is that you can find peace in not knowing the answers, and that you feel that whatever weight you carry is not yours alone. After all, Jesus has been there. He is there with you. In the night in which he was betrayed, he was one of us. And that is an amazing thing.

Good Friday

“People walking by insulted him, shaking their heads and saying, “Ha! So you were going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, were you? Save yourself and come down from that cross!”

            I want to focus on that verse tonight. I could include the taunts of the chief priests and the legal experts as well. Certainly, they were just as derisive and even haughtier in their raspberry-blowing assurance that they had been right all long. But let’s focus on the common people, the normal people—the same people who cheered and shouted “Hosanna!” when Jesus rode into town on Palm Sunday five days earlier.

            What is it about us that makes us give up our humanity so willingly? When we have a reasonable assumption of anonymity, whether in a crowd or behind some kind of screen, why does our behavior change? Why does that so often bring out the worst in us?

            When it comes down to it, anonymity shows us who we really are. After all, Jesus once explained that we are to pray to our Father in secret and that we are not to be like those preachers on street corners offering lengthy prayers for appearances’ sake. God knows us. God knows when we are acting a part and what we are like when nobody is watching.

Crowds have a way of bringing out our worst, because not only do they offer anonymity, they also sweep us away in their energy. The whole crowd is chanting for Jesus to be crucified. You would think there would be some division between the Christ-followers and those that were not, but it doesn’t seem like it happened that way at all. These crowds were the same people. They didn’t care about Jesus; they just wanted to follow the strongest person they could find. Jesus—Pilate—it made no difference.

            We may scoff at that, believing that we are better, but before we give ourselves too much of a pat on the back, it’s worth considering whether we are. Do we know for certain that we would not have crucified Jesus? I don’t think we can. You see, to follow after Jesus is both incredibly simple and incredibly complicated. It’s simple in that God calls us through the sacraments; we are chosen people of God, regardless of our failures. That’s simple. But living in response to that grace we have been given is incredibly challenging. The questions that it raises about our lives and our activities are life-long, persistent, tricky questions. And you won’t necessarily have been given a study guide for what is coming.

            Take our current situation with the COVID-19 pandemic. There are some churches in this country that are meeting tonight, defying stay-at-home recommendations or even orders to have Holy Week services. Are they being courageous in their faith as they are professing, or is their worship itself a kind of idolatry? Might it actually be about pastors who want to show off their power—not the power of God?

            As challenging as these questions are, on this Good Friday I want to suggest there is a simple lens through which we can view the right way to act as Christians. The lens is this: Wherever people are most vulnerable, wherever tyrants are using their power to destroy human life, wherever the cross is most evident in suffering and pain, Jesus Christ is there. Therefore, to be a Christian is to serve the vulnerable and the lost and the dying and the dead. To be a Christian is to defy the crowds that chant “Crucify him!” obviously, but it’s also occasionally to defy the crowd that shouts “Hosanna!” because the crowds can’t see the difference between a king and a savior.

             Churches are as guilty of this as anybody. The things we worship are often the next most important things. We worship a God glorified, neglecting the source of that glory, which is found at the cross. The Christian church finds its purpose in Good Friday. We are called to be church for the most vulnerable, so how could we possibly meet to worship God together if it means endangering those who we are called first and foremost to serve?

            No, today, we are apart because we are a church. Today, we remember the death of Jesus apart but not out of fear. No, we remember the cross with hope, because hope is born from loss. Hope looks at something that the world views as ultimate and says, “Not quite.” Hope longs for something better, something bigger, something that will persist in and through death.

            Today, we look to the cross in hope, hoping—yes—that we will be together again soon enough, hoping that our loved ones will be safe, hoping against hope for that three days later it will all be made new again. Hope. That’s what we have today. And it’s not realized yet. It’s not over yet. Good Friday is not Easter, and we shouldn’t jump the gun, because it is worthwhile on occasion to dwell in hope.

            So, may you realize the joy of not having it yet. That is the power of hope that we live into tonight. May it fill you in unexpected ways. May it bring you to the cross where Jesus will meet you in whatever burdens you bring. And, at last, may it bring you back on Sunday to see what comes next.