This Thursday and Friday, we will be following Jesus from the upper room to Golgotha. On Thursday night, we share a meal and follow Jesus into the Garden of Gethsemane where he shares some final instructions to his disciples. For those who can’t be with us in person, below are some of the reflections on this that we will hear on Thursday night.
Coventry Carol
Those of you who know the Coventry Carol might well think it strange to hear it at a Maundy meal but then again many things still feel strange right now and a song which speaks of a Herod raging, lives being threatened, and women trying to keep the young from harm is sadly all too relevant right now. It is also a reminder that the shadow of death had never been far from Jesus. The massacre of the innocents after his birth; the murder of his cousin John; the attempt to kill him when he announced his ministry in a synagogue and the subsequent plots against him…death was always stalking Jesus. Darkness does not always welcome light.
Perhaps, during the events of that week in Jerusalem, these threats came to his mother’s mind. Perhaps, as she saw her son provoke those in power by parading into Jerusalem on a donkey and turning tables in the Temple took her back to those words Simeon spoke to her in that same place years earlier – ‘a sword’, he said to her, ‘will pierce your own soul too’. I can only imagine, as Jesus spoke of broken bodies and spilt blood, that a mother’s anguish could feel like a piercing of the soul.
At that meal in the upper room, knowing that he did not have long with his friends, Jesus shared with them much of his final teaching – in word and deed. It was a plenary session like no other for feet were washed, bread and wine shared; new commandments were spoken and a new advocate promised; talk of betrayal, calls to love, reasons to hope were shared and after all this, they went to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus was to give them more commands…
Matthew 26:36-46
So, after commands to love, serve, remember…Jesus had a few final instructions for his friends. Words for that night…but also for this one.
The first of these was the instruction to simply stay, remain, be.
“I am deeply grieved, even to death’, we hear Jesus say in his agitated state, ‘remain here, and stay awake with me.” Remain; stay awake; be with.
In his time of deepest grief, the God-with-us begged us to be us-with-God. In a display of his full humanity, Jesus sought that which is most human – to be with. The word consolation – that which Jesus sought – comes from the Latin ‘solari’ – ‘to comfort’ and ‘con’ – ‘with’. To find comfort with. It is the act of finding solace in the company of our fellow humans, in times of trial.
If you’ve ever needed to just sit and be with another; if you’ve ever felt compelled to visit the bedside of a friend or a household that is grieving; if you’ve felt the need to simply be held by another who can’t offer an escape from the storm but some company, some solidarity within it – then you will know something of what Jesus sought that night. The disciples didn’t quite manage it. Often, we don’t. And yet, the God who came to be with us – who promised to remain with us til the end of the ages – calls us to show that sacred solidarity with all our sisters and brothers today. To console – find solace with one another in the darkest of times. To stay with the dying, the grieving, the despairing; to be with the refugee, the widow, the orphan. Though those first disciples failed to do it for Jesus that night, they – and we – are given a second, third, four hundredth chance to do it today – for ‘when you do it for the least of these brothers and sisters’, said Jesus, ‘you do it for me’.
Let’s pray…
ONE: Everything can change in a moment.
Disaster can take our certainty,
Our plans for the coming months,
The health we thought would be ours,
And the people that made our lives full.
Lord, have mercy.
All: Christ have mercy.
ONE: Tragedy can shake the firmest foundation
And consume our homes by flood.
Grief can rob our chests of deep breaths
And our minds of every clear thought.
Lord, have mercy.
All: Christ have mercy.
ONE: The darkness can threaten the marginalised,
Who were vulnerable before its coming.
It can bring out the worst in our humanity
And expose the fears that we nurse.
Lord, have mercy.
All: Christ have mercy.
ONE: But here’s what it cannot do:
It cannot stop the sun from rising
Or grace from being free.
Pain will not keep the people from singing
Or the grass from growing again.
For Emmanuel has come.
God is with us.
ONE: Every ounce of chaos couldn’t kill the bravery
We learned was inside of us.
And no new normal can steal the memories
That taught us how to love.
For Emmanuel has come.
God is with us.
ONE: This moment, no matter how dark or how long,
Can’t make us belong to one another less.
And not one single thing in all of creation
Can separate us from God’s love.
For Emmanuel has come.
God is with us.
ONE: Yes, God is indeed with us. And we are called to be with God.
So let us stay, console, be with.
Let us see Christ’s face in every sister and brother.
Let us resolve to stand in sacred solidarity with those facing trials in our community and world today.
For Emmanuel has come.
God is with us.
Amen.
If we’re talking of those facing trials today, perhaps our thoughts go to our Ukrainian siblings. Those staying. Those fleeing. Those fighting. Those dying.
The scenes on our screens and the news in our papers is hard to receive. None of us are strangers to the casual inhumanities that people face on a daily basis worldwide yet none of us can help but by disgusted and despairing of what we have heard in recent weeks. Yet it is important that we do hear and see what is happening. That is not to say that we don’t need to practice self-care, of course, for none of us can listen to all the tragedies of the world all the time – our brains were never meant to deal with such trauma – but nor can we choose, on a permanent basis, to look the other way. To choose to be blind to the suffering of others. To cross the road on our way to Jericho. To avert our eyes from the beggar at the gate.
Jesus was quite clear on this throughout his ministry. Perhaps that’s why, in his hour of need, Jesus asks his friends to stay and keep watch. To have both companionship and witness to one’s circumstances – to truly be seen – is of great importance. The task of those reporting the invasion of Ukraine – the call to observe, to witness to the truth – is key to both those suffering and those seeking to support them both now – through how we respond to the afflicted – and in the future, where only an accurate record of events might lead to some kind of justice. Those of us here tonight might well remember the request of the oppressed Palestinian families we visited in the Tent of Nations. ‘Come and see’, they asked of us, ‘then go and tell’. It would be easy to obscure our vision with comfort and privilege but the God who sees all calls us to watch, to look, to see those who suffer.
With this in mind, on this Maundy evening, let us pray again for God’s mercy as we listen to the Kyrie Eleison to a 15th century Ukrainian Orthodox Chant, sung here by the Kyiv Chamber Choir…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrXISoPuCGg
‘Stay and keep watch’, says Jesus. Sometimes though, we might not have the strength to stay or see the truth. Sometimes we get distracted. Sometimes we just can’t accept the losses that life brings. Sometimes the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Well, when Jesus returned to his slumbering friends, he asked them again to watch and added the instruction to pray. To speak with – to listen to – God in those times when words can fall so short. This is what Jesus did himself. In his time of anguish, with friends asleep and enemies closing in, Jesus fell to the ground and prayed. It wasn’t a long, elaborate prayer with clever words or neatly constructed sentences but a prayer of desperation – ‘My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me…[but] if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done’.
I wonder what you might want to ask, to say, to pray to God this evening. I wonder if there is a burden you carry; a hope you hold; a thanks you want to give to God tonight. Sometimes it’s hard to put into words. Sometimes we might be thankful that the Spirit prays for us. But if there is a person, a place, a situation which you wish to name before God, then I invite you to write it on the paper provided and place it one of the chalices – the Communion cups – that are placed around the table. As you think on this, we listen to the Taize chant ‘O lord, hear my prayer’… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMwAbTevunA
So…stay, watch, pray, and – finally – Jesus tells his friends to ‘rise’:
“Rise! Let us go,” He says to them. “Here comes my betrayer…”
The period of Lent begins with Jesus telling Peter, James & John to rise and travel onward from that Mount of Transfiguration and it nears its end with a similar instruction from Jesus for they could not avoid the reality and hardships of life on mountain tops or lush gardens. Jesus had not come to hide away in comfort or privilege – not to be served but to serve, and that meant teaching in marketplaces, trouble-making in the Temple, healing on the Sabbath; it meant welcoming children, sailing with fishermen, talking with women; it saw him crossing boundaries, dining with outcasts, provoking the powerful; it meant leaving safety, facing arrest, walking to Golgotha, and being nailed to the cross.
This is the way he is calling us to make. This is the kingdom he is inviting us to live. Not to hide in upper rooms, darkened gardens, or church buildings but to share a message of radical love out in the world where it will be welcomed by some and mocked by others; where it will lead us to suppers, and parties, transformations and resurrections…but not without loss and hardship, the cross and death. But we go not on our own. ‘Let US go’, says Jesus. And soon we will. We must. But there is bread to break, wine to drink before that. Nourishment for the body and soul which just might get us through these next few days.
So let us pray…first in stillness…
God-with-us,
On this night, we recall your command to love, your reminder to serve, your call to remember.
On this night, we hear afresh your instructions to stay, watch, pray, and rise.
On this night, we eat and drink with you – one last meal together before we must face the horrors of tomorrow.
And here, and now…we thank you for staying with us, though we have not always stayed with you.
We thank you for reminding us how to love, when so often we choose to hate.
We thank you for breaking bread with the rock and the doubter, the power-hungry and the justice-seeker, the faithful and the fickle. For sharing wine with the betrayer and the beloved, the arrogant and the gracious, the wrong-doer and the wrongly done by – both that night and this one.
May the advocate you promised that night move amongst us here and now, that the Spirit might move amongst us and within us, on the bread, the wine, the family gathered here, so strengthening us for the journey ahead. This and all we’ve prayed tonight, we ask in your name as we say together – though in different languages and versions – the prayer you taught us, saying: Our Father…
Communion
ONE : The body of Christ is broken that we and this world may be made whole.
ALL: Thank you for the bread that you share at your open table.
ONE: The cup of the new covenant, poured out as a promise that anything oppressive, violent, evil, fear-driven, or dead is not yet finished.
ALL: Thank you for the wine that you share at your open table.
One:: The basin of water—the same water that parted for the enslaved, that calmed at Christ’s command , that envelops us in baptism, that sustains us every day.
Let it symbolise God’s invitation to us to love and be loved ;to stay, watch, pray, and rise.
All: Thank you for the water that connects us here at your open table.
We eat, drink and give thanks…
Prayer after Communion
Living God, thank you for people round this table; the food in our stomachs, the hope in our souls.
Thank you for being with us this night, this week, and always.
Thank you for the encouragement to stay, watch, pray, and rise.
May we do so now, so to bless this world as we tonight have been blessed. In your name we pray, Amen.
It is getting late. It is getting dark. And there is more darkness to come.
As we leave this place, may you hear again our commission –
To love as we have been radically loved, though it may mean anguish, even death.
Yet take heart. Because this is not the end. We go in peace.