Maundy Thursday and Good Friday 2021
1 and 2 Apr 2021
When I was young I used to attend Camp Hantesa every sum-mer. It was, and is, a residential summer camp. In the years that I attended it was an all-girls camp with the classical camp activities. Camping was actually camping for the older girls; younger ones stayed in cabins and there was even heat for fall or spring or the rare cold summer day in the cabins for the very youngest. Now days everything is air conditioned it seems.
I loved the activities: from outdoor cooking to drama. Believe or not I was quite the thespian; helping to create a mini play that we performed for the rest of the campers. I wonder if I had kept at it if I would have wound up in Hollywood or Broadway. Probably both the world and I should be thankful that did not hap-pen.
The camp was divided by a large gulley that only became a creek after a major rain. To get from one side to another you crossed a suspension bridge that would swing in the wind or if you tried to go too fast. Even though I had some fear of heights, the bridge, cleverly named The Swinging Bridge, was not far enough above the ground to make my stomach churn or give me the willies. Some girls had to draw on all their courage to cross the bridge.
When my daughter Emily was of an age to go to camp I sent her there; while it was now co-ed much of the charm and ambience of a classical summer camp remained and even a couple of the long time staff had been there years ago when I went.
Emily had no fear of that bridge. She loved it and loved going back and forth over its wooden planks and was the happiest when it swung so much you had to hold on to stay upright. The Swinging Bridge is a bond we share even as adults.
Holy Week is that swinging bridge. We want to go from the Hosannas of Palm Sunday to the light and joy of Easter and not dwell in the in-between. We can not afford to miss the in-between; for it is in the stuff of the in-between that the heart of Christianity dwells and it is there that we can find our-selves and do the lamenting that we must do. This year, more than any year of my life, I find it so tempting to avoid Holy Week, living with the profound reality of a year that was one Good Friday after another. Maybe God would just let us skip that this year and head straight to “He is Risen.”
Yet this year, of all years, those in-between days and liturgies are exactly the ones we did. Tenebrae reminds us of the dark and shadowy side of the Three Days; Jesus is abandoned and dies, and the light goes out. I, for one, acknowledge all the ways people were abandoned and left to fall victim to Covid or continued to live and die under a repressive government or abuse by a domestic partner or by systemic racism or homo-phobia. Maundy Thursday calls us to share with others at a common table and to serve one another. Good Friday is the day we remember how easy it is to abandon someone and leave them to perish.
Nadia Boltz-Weber is a Lutheran pastor who has a brashness that is often off putting to those who seek a more mainstream Jesus, but this year I feel she is right on with her words about Holy Week. She is not afraid to get on that swinging bridge.
Who doesn’t want to go from glory to glory and just skip the messy embarrassing condemning stuff in the middle…..stuff like how Jesus ate his last meal with the people he loved most, all of whom (perhaps like me) would betray abandon or deny him, that these friends (perhaps like me) couldn’t even stay awake while he prayed in the garden, that the crowd (perhaps like me) would strike and taunt him for not living up to their expectations, that the people would (perhaps like me) shout crucify him! And twist him a crown of thorns, the fact that Jesus got himself killed in a totally preventable way never once showing enough self-respect to fight back or get himself off that damned cross…well maybe he had it coming – which is why the passersby would (perhaps like me) shout “for God’s sake, save yourself”. Why? Because we would save ourselves.1
She goes on to say that we tend to make it all about us, whether we came from a background that taught us we are so bad that God had to kill his son in a horrible way to pay an overdue loan or from one that skips right over the theology of the cross and says how wonderful life will be if we follow Jesus. Either way, it puts us at the center of the whole affair and quite frankly it is not at all about us; it is about God and the extreme love that God has for us. That is right: while it is not about us, it is for us. So we need to spend time sharing a meal and our riches with one another. We need to wash feet in whatever form that takes for you. Then we need to go to the garden and try to stay awake with Jesus. One of the most profound experiences of Holy Week is to have an all night vigil from the eve of Good Fri-day to the dawn of Holy Saturday. Once you have experienced all of that, you will know in a way you never knew before the meaning of both “Crucify him” and “He is risen.”
[1] Nadia Bolz-Weber, The Corners 28 Mar 2021
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