Maundy Thursday

In Western tradition, today, March 28, 2024, is Maundy Thursday. A day of solemnity, Maundy Thursday (also called Holy Thursday) is observed worldwide as part of the Christian Holy or Passion week. We know it to commemorate the last Passover meal that Jesus celebrated with his followers which we call the Last Supper. It’s also the night he was betrayed and arrested.

The word “Maundy” originates from the Latin word mandatum, which means “commandment” (think mandate). Therefore Mandatum, Maundy, is connected to Jesus’ commandment to his disciples on that night to love one another…

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (John 13:34-35)

It’s also the night Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. Thus many Christian groups imitate this action by holding a foot-washing rite on Maundy Thursday.

This year I have been traveling through Lent using Walter Wangerin’s Reliving the Passion, an amazing ‘crawl into the story’ treatise of the passion week as recorded in the Gospel of Mark. I have used it off and on over the past 25 years, experiencing new thoughts and emotions each year of its use. This year I was reminded of how Jesus lived out the Lord’s Prayer as he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane on that night in which he was betrayed. 

Wangerin reminds his readers that Jesus often taught the same thing twice – first with words and then reinforced with actions and deeds.  On the same night in which he was betrayed, as we watch Jesus praying alone in the garden, we get a glimpse of the Lord’s Prayer actually lived out. With a deep and desperate desire, Jesus pleaded with his Father, his Abba, to be saved (rescued) and to be spared of what he knew was coming. He was living out, in raw honesty, the sixth petition of the Prayer…

Lead us not into temptation – Save us from this time of trial.

Jesus pleaded not once, not twice, but three times, Remove this cup from me, embodying the plea of the seventh petition of the Prayer…

Deliver us (me!) from evil, from the evil one. 

As Jesus pleaded with his Father, he displayed a posture and attitude of faithful and complete obedience saying, Yet not what I will, but what you will. Jesus, living out before our eyes, the third petition, “which prepares us properly for any answer God may give to all [our] other petitions” (Wangerin)…

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Wangerin continued: “Implicit, hereafter, in his entering into ‘the hour’ of trial after all is his personal conviction that ‘the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.’ Jesus, now more than ever in his ministry, is the living embodiment of the second petition, Thy kingdom come. Right now, his acceptance of the Father’s will is the coming of that kingdom here!”

Thy kingdom come.

Jesus began both prayers addressing God as Father, with the garden prayer showing a deep intimacy – Abba, Father. It’s the expression a child has when her father comes home from work – Daddy! 

On this Maundy Thursday, we find ourselves in the midst of ongoing wars, heightened turmoil in the Middle East, global economic uncertainty, doubts about American leadership, and increased political polarization. We struggle for words to articulate our deep, raw, and maybe even desperate feelings. May the Lord’s Prayer(s) be of comfort – especially in light of Jesus’ deep, raw, and desperate prayers in the garden. Maybe during this Holy Week we, too, can learn to live the Prayer. That would be a good thing! 

Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done;
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from the evil one.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.