Christian congregations and groups around the world today commemorate the Last Supper with worship services that include communion, prayers, hymns, varying degrees of light and darkness, and, in some cases, foot-washing. The services focus on the night Jesus met with his disciples in the upper room, presumably to share in a Passover Seder. The meal turned into something else, however, as Jesus told them to remember him when they gathered to eat and drink.
This alone might have been confusing enough to the disciples, but scripture tells us that Jesus also asserted that one of them would betray him, and that Peter, perhaps the most dominant and vocal disciple, would deny numerous times even knowing Jesus. This meal occurred just hours before Jesus spent time in the Garden of Gethsemane agonizing over the inevitability of his arrest and execution.
So, many of this evening's worship services will strike a somber chord among those who attend, and will conclude with everyone encouraged to depart in silence.
Fine. Do that.
But, it all will wear off soon enough, even if some go through the somewhat traditional Good Friday exercise of three-hour services the next day.
One of the things about the season of Lent that bothers me is the remarkably small impact it has on people who even take the time to observe it. For instance, the notion of "giving up something for Lent" often is trivialized. Some give up dessert or chocolate. Maybe it's caffeine. Or they don't engage in some activity or avocation they find enjoyable. But what happens when Lent concludes? Everything returns to "normal," and the "fasting" is over. So, nothing changes.
Easter is a celebratory time but, like with Christmas, cultural intrusions refocus many of us on irrelevancies. In my days as a pastor I tried not to be a spoilsport, but I either found ways to avoid participating in activities like Easter egg hunts and going through contortions to assign "Christian" meanings to secular traditions, or simply did not offer encouragement or enthusiasm for such things. My hope always was that deeper significance would be discovered or recovered.
Something that occupies a bit of my time these days seems to relate to Maundy Thursday. As a volunteer worker at a food bank that serves 16 counties, a lot of food passes through my hands. My work involves receiving pallets of donated food as it is unloaded off the trucks that bring it to the food bank from grocery stores and other sources. Usually, the pallets have 30 or so boxes of food on them, and with other volunteers, I sort through the boxes, separating items, and restacking them on other pallets. Our categories of items are produce, bread, bakery, frozen salvage, refrigerated salvage, dry salvage, and meat. It's impossible for me to imagine how many tons of food show up at the loading docks each month. It's also unfathomable for me to think that if the food bank or some similar organization did not exist, most of that food would be wasted in the face of so many people who are lacking adequate resources to have enough to eat.
The food bank where I volunteer recently marked the distribution of the one millionth food pack created for children in need to take home from school on Fridays because otherwise they would have little or no food until they returned to school on Monday. Summers are especially difficult for many families with children. Seniors on limited incomes, as well as those who are unemployed or underemployed, also benefit from food banks that help distribute food to soup kitchens and local food pantries in churches and other places.
For me, the connection of all of this with Maundy Thursday is that Jesus chose a meal as the means by which he told his followers to remember him. I believe that God's will is life abundant for all people, and the most basic aspect of that is adequate food.
So often it appears that people are worried there isn't enough (I always heard that in the church, of all places!). Yet, the witness of scripture and the evidence of the world is that there is abundance. We are just too self-absorbed to realize it. Our culture teaches us to compete and get ahead and accumulate, with little to no regard for the well-being of others. If someone else has less they are stupid or uneducated or lazy. Society is made up of winners and losers, and we want to do anything we can to be winners, as defined by our culture.
Jesus took a piece of bread and said, "Remember me when you eat bread together." He poured wine into a cup and said, "This is a covenant of my blood, poured out for the forgiveness of sins." As I understand it, sin is separation from God, so the covenant of which Jesus spoke is a coming together with God and, consequently, with our sisters and brothers.
Maundy Thursday reminds us that yes, Jesus sacrificed a lot. He suffered a lot. And it says to us, I believe, there were reasons for that sacrifice and suffering that are wrapped up in the deepest of human needs and realities.
If we remember Jesus around meals, in handling and making use of food, we cannot help but to think beyond ourselves. We cannot help but to realize abundant life is God's desire. We cannot help but to understand changes in our attitudes, outlook, and actions are in order, not just for a few weeks in the springtime, but moving forward.
Maundy Thursday is a sobering observance on so many levels, but it holds the promise of great joy, for life and the world do not have to remain as we experience them now. Inch by inch, moment by moment, day by day, awareness by awareness, spiritual step by spiritual step, we can live into a fuller embrace of the truth of God's abundance.
Not only for ourselves, but for all whose lives we, as people transformed, might touch.
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