Our church has a Maundy Thursday service every year. We start with a meal, communion and then begin reading the narratives surrounding Christ’s crucifixion. We sing, we walk to the columbarium, read and sing some more, then make the way to the sanctuary.
Once seated, the rest of the narrative of the betrayal and death of Christ unfolds as candles are extinguished and the lighting dims. A couple of hymns break up the readings and when Christ has breathed his last, the moveable elements of the worship space are walked solemnly down the aisle and the lights go off – except the ones shining on the cross in the chancel which create the second and third crosses by shadow.
“Were You There?” rings from a solitary voice near the narthex. A moment of silence occurs after the solo. The lights come back on and the participants leave in relative silence.
The service provides gravity and focus on the events I imagine many would wish to skip over to get to Easter – either the religious “Christ is Risen!” or the secular bunnies and baskets. With the movement of the service, the mood shifts from the friendly banter around a dinner table to the solitary pondering of a horrific act.
Depending on your theology, the pondering could lead to a focus on one’s unworthiness and sinfulness (“How could I have done that to Jesus?”), to gratefulness for all Christ suffered on one’s account, to awe for a God who would go to such lengths to be with and for humanity, or possibly to disgust that some deity would have to engage in bloody sacrifice at all. I’m sure there are other possibilities as well.
The point is more of how the service, by unintended design?, leads to individual reflection in relative silence.
The narrative itself is anything but silent and is instead filled with people in community, arguments, crowds, jeers, taunts. The “chief priest and whole Sanhedrin” hurl questions and accusations at Jesus in the purported trial. Guards stand close enough for Peter to wiggle in between them to listen to the proceedings. Servant girls call out Peter as a disciple; another person recognizes his accent “You are one of them.” The rooster crows.
Then it’s off to Pilate’s place with more questions, more accusations by the chief priests, a crowd calling for crucifixion and a disturbing dream warning Pilate to clean his hands of the whole mess. Then it’s the guards mocking and injuring Jesus. An innocent bystander pulled into the drama, getting his own robe soaked with blood while hoisting the weighty cross.
Next, the crowds jeer at Jesus, insulting him as he hangs there. The guards, the chief priests and elders do the same. The two “rebels” crucified next to him also scorn him. The scene is anything but softly reflective, quiet and still. Even the tormented words of Christ, “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” are “cried out in a loud voice.” Then again, another loud crying out.
Even after Christ died, catastrophic events occurred: the tearing of the Temple curtain, an earthquake with splitting rocks, resurrected bodies emerging from graves and then terrified Roman guards exclaiming, “Surely he was the Son of God!”
The event recorded happens right on the heels of the busiest time in the Jewish calendar and along a public road immediately outside the city limits of Jerusalem. This event was meant to be seen, heard and remembered as people from all over the Middle East (and beyond!) journeyed back home regardless their reason for being in Jerusalem.
I don’t know what to do with the juxtaposition of the service and the narrative, but I wonder how do we recapture the public impact of the event? Feel it in our communities? Hold it collectively in a way which unifies us and shapes our action in the world?
Yes, I am grateful for the love of Christ for me – but God so loved the world.
4/2/26
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