Wednesday, Passover
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Passover begins TODAY, Wednesday April 12, at sunset. Take a moment to reflect on the historical significance of that event. Whenever the Israelites would look back on the power of God, this was the event they saw as the capstone - deliverance from slavery in Egypt. This day was set aside to remember that event. This weekend, we also celebrate another, even more impressive deliverance. But don't forget one for the sake of the other.
Maundy Thursday
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I had no idea what "Maundy" was. I assumed it had some meaning akin to "depressing." Maundy Thursday being the Thursday before Easter, it seemed to fit.
On Dictionary.com, the word has no meaning apart from it's relation to Easter. But instead of being about betrayal, death, sadness, or something like that, it was about the events of the evening. More specifically, it relates to Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.
I suppose I have often noticed, perhaps even considered that the well-known foot washing took place on the night of his betrayal. Today as I thought about it, the events around the table that evening and the events that were to unfold stood in stark contrast in my mind.
"Just before the Passover feast, Jesus knew that his time had come to depart from this world to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now loved them to the very end. The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, that he should betray Jesus. Because Jesus knew that the Father had handed all things over to him, and that he had come from God and was going back to Go, he got up from the meal, removed his outer clothes, took a towel and tied it around himself. He poured water into the washbasin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to dry them with the towel he had wrapped around himself." John 13:1-5
Within the next 24 hours, he will be sold out by a close companion, left to suffer in the garden with his closest friends within visual range fall asleep, be arrested (betrayed by the closest symbol of affection), bounced through the various courts in the land, beaten, beaten some more, beaten again for good measure, spat upon, beaten even more, hear a mob calling for his death, nailed to a cross for 6 hours, and die of a burst heart.
Jesus' final lessons are these:
1) Communion. "This is my body; this is my blood, given for you." Sacrifice.
2) The foot-washing. Degrading service, undertaken as his followers are debating who will be the greatest amongst them. Service.
Sacrifice and Service. "Go and do likewise."
"He came into the world not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."
Good Friday
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Sacrifice. In today's world, the word has but a glimmer of the meaning it once did. It has the vague connotation of inconviniencing yourself in some way for someone else's sake. Like the sacrifice bunt of sacrifice fly in baseball - you get out, but someone on base advances.
Discuss with the Hebrews of 2,000 years ago the meaning of the word, and different images entirely spring to mind. Animals having their throats slit, whole bulls being burnt on the altar in the temple. The passover lamb, like a young puppy in your house for 2 weeks having its throat cut and your doorpost painted with its blood. This is how you appeased God - by killing things. You did wrong unintentionally, you sacrificed animals. You did wrong intentionally? Tough luck. God demanded blood. Over and over, employing a full time temple staff just to handle the steady flow of animals to their deaths.
We don't think of God that way so much anymore. Is that because His character has changed? Because we as a society have evolved beyond that? Or is it because on the cross, the infinite sacrifice was offered. In church we sing happy hymns about the wonderful blood of Jesus. But I fear that as we forget what the taking of the blood took, we lose sight of the true price of sin. We live in a bloodless society, with wounds covered by band-aids, the truly injured whisked away to sterile hospitals, with meat in clear plastic and styrofoam at the grocery store, far from the actual butchering.
Good Friday is not sterile. It is the doctor telling you it is cancer, it is a mother losing her child, a man being left at the altar, a dream collapsing beyond repair. It is a day of utmost pain, when evil triumphs over good, when the powerful throw away the lives of the innocent to further their careers, when mob rule saves murderers and condemns healers. It is the day when you simply let the phone slip from your hands as you curled up into a ball and wept. It is a day of pain, of blood, and of cruel, wrenching death.
Black Saturday
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[Early, I know]
What do you think the disciples thought during the long Friday night, Saturday during the day, and Saturday night. Did they sleep? Did they observe the traditions of the Sabbath? Did they hide for fear of being arrested and crucified, too?
I make no great secret of the fact that I'd much rather trash 2006 and start over. I am the sort to replay things in my head, going back over them, trying to figure out where I went wrong. I wonder if the disciples did this. They knew that there had been false Messiahs for generations before them - the probably even got a laugh at those who were sucked in, believing it could never happen to them.
Did they look at the miracles, and wonder how he had tricked them? Did they feel betrayed by Jesus, like people strung along until everything fell apart? What did they have to say to God during that long, long day?
Everything, everything had fallen to ruin about them. They had left ther lives behind and followed this man for three and a half years, but stretching to the end of their days they had no idea where they would go next.
Did they pass out from exhaustion, only to awake and fervently wish it had all been a dream? They had only to see Mary weeping, and John trying to comfort her to know that it was absolutely real.
I wrote this last year, and I actually was complimented for it, so to stroke my ego I report it here:
I am too easily distracted - too easily lost in the work of the moment. Today is the day that typifies our lives, observing the heartbreak of the cross - the seeming victory of evil, the absence of God's justice, and every pain, every heartbreak screaming that God does not care - with only the faintest idea of what comes after. Which was worse - to watch Christ die on Friday, or to wake up and later fall asleep on Saturday knowing that he was dead - beaten, bloodied, and buried? To fear that this day would set the pattern for all those that followed?
We who know the ending too easily forget that our deepest cries against God were echoed that day by those our Lord had walked with. The cross remained - still crusted with the freshly spilt blood of the new covenant, the grave was full, the Christ was dead. The disciples hid in fear, the women wept. And all of this on the day set aside by God for rest and for worship.
They fell asleep Saturday fitful, frightened that the angry mob from yesterday would find them. Peter was racked with guilt - denying that he even knew Jesus as he watched his master led away to his death.
This was Easter Saturday. This is what we should remember this day - not someone's favorite flavor of chocolate.
Philip Yancey has mentioned (perhaps quoting another) that we all liv ein Easter Saturday. The world can be a dark, scary, unkind place. We have promises from God that seem to be impossible, and no way of knowing if they will be fufilled. We have seen the pain of Good Friday, but not the redemption of that pain on Easter Sunday.
Friday is the shock - the event that shatters everything.
Saturday is the grim reality - life as you know it has changed. It will never again be as it was. Hopes, dreams, plans - all lie as shattered monuments, taunting you for ever believing.
Easter Sunday
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What does Easter Sunday mean?
It means that...
...the sacrifice Jesus offered is sufficient.
...Jesus had the power to raise himself from the dead.
...death does not have the final say.
...the dark moments do not have to go on forever.
...even the worst atrocities can be used by God to incalculable good.
...we have an example who has walked through the worst mankind could throw at him, and emerge victorious.
...the meek really will inherit the earth.
...the power given to earthly leaders to take life holds no comparison to that of God to give it.
...impossible hopes can come true.
...in the darkest times, I have a sympathetic God who can say "I've been there."
...the cross endures as a symbol of love, sacrifice, death, and hope.
...to give your life away is not by definition the utmost foolishness.
...God works in ways that you cannot understand.
We may go through dark valleys where the ground itself seems hidden from view. We may watch our lives shatter, our dreams die, our hope turn to a cruel taunt. We may see evil defeat good, injustice mock justice, and have our worst beliefs about the world confirmed. But that is not the end.
The end is hidden, unexpected, and surprising. You thought you had waited until the last moment, expecting anxiously the miracle you were sure would make it all clear, but what you thought was the last moment came and went. But it was not.
The night was spent in restless agony, the following day in the dazed stupor where even placing one foot in front of the other seemed pointless. Your life was destroyed, without even the pieces to begin rebuilding.
And then insult was added to injury: "they took the body, and I do not know where they have laid him." Do you suppose Mary wanted to curse God? To ask the embittered "What now? Was Friday not bad enough?" Was she shaking with anger as she turned to address the gardener that dared interrupt her mourning?
Easter means that when absolutely everything is stripped away and you can't seem to go on, God is doing things you cannot imagine. The story is still being written.
Why trust God? When all is lost, what basis do we have for belief? With the tangible effects of Friday hanging over us, as we live day-to-day in a seemingly endless Easter Saturday, we know that somewhere there is a Sunday yet to come.
Easter means light in the darkness, joy in the suffering, and hope in the emptiness.
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