Maundy-Thursday

We tried a new thing for Maundy-Thursday of Holy Week this year. Lots of folks helped to get all the moving pieces into place.  We gathered in the Jorgensen Hotel lobby at a banquet table. We sang, I preached, and then we confessed and words of forgiveness were pronounced again and again. This journey, after all, began on Ash Wednesday and those sweet words meant something more after not hearing them for the season of Lent.

We listened to the scripture of the last supper with Jesus and his closest friends where he made things crystal clear: If you will have a share with me, I will wash your feet. This is how you love and serve people.  So then we did that. We did what Jesus modeled for us to do. I dare say for some of us, it was harder to have our feet washed than it was to kneel down and wash foot after stinky foot.

After feet were washed, we began to assemble Personal Care Kits that we collected all throughout the season of Lent. We learned quickly that we’d have to double up our process or we’d be there all night. We did. They got assembled. 236 kits, thanks be to God.

Then the banquet! We broke our communion fast and served one another bread and wine. And then we celebrated. We sat and talked and laughed. Johnny Cash even sang for us.

Then as quickly as it all begun, it was over. The music stopped. Jesus and his disciples would soon head to the garden where they’d begin failing Jesus by falling asleep and then denying him, betraying him. Samantha Tillmann read Psalm 88 as we stripped the altar – the altar was the entire room now, that big, long banquet table. Then, as we left in silence, the only sound was the clanking of coins hitting the bottom of a bucket as we each  threw 30 coins in, knowing we too betray Jesus.  That money (about $100) was given to McLeod Alliance for Victims of Domestic Abuse – people who have been betrayed by a relationship.