Maundy Thursday

--Photo borrowed from Sabbathcog.org

I attended a church in Chicagoland for a couple of years that always had great Maundy Thursday announcements in the weeks leading up to Holy Week.

"Monday Thursday?" they'd say. "What on earth is THAT?!"

I grew up in an evangelical tradition that didn't do much with the Holy Week schedule, aside from celebrating Easter. When I went to college I stumbled into an Anglican tradition that was all about Holy Week, from an actual honest-to-goodness parade up a hill for Palm Sunday to a daily Eucharist to real foot washing (with water! and soap!) on Maundy Thursday. At first, it kind of freaked me out. Then, I began to love it.

One problem I have both with the evangelical world and with mainline Presbyterianism, is they tend to be very cerebral. The services center around the sermon. Preaching is central. Scripture is central. Thinking through our faith is central.

And these things are very, very good. We are a faith of reason because we serve a God of order and insight and life.

I went to a Christian college that prided itself both on its integration of "faith and learning" and on its top academic ranking. We had mandatory chapel services three times per week, and once during the opening week of school someone snuck in and pasted over our college hymn with made-up lyrics. We all stood to sing, and instead of singing about Christ and his kingdom, we ended up singing the following lyrics:

"Brain, brain, brain, brain, brain, brain, brain, brain, BRAIN!!!"

Everyone chuckled and giggled (it was a great prank), but the prankster had a deeper message. "Yes, we're smart," he or she seemed to say, "but that isn't ALL that matters!"

Sometimes, in our churches and Christian colleges, in our effort to follow God with all of our minds, something is lacking. We get so caught up in our minds that we forget about all of the other parts of our bodies. We forget that God has created us with many senses, not just ears to hear and eyes to read. We forget about following God on our knees.

This is why I love celebrating Maundy Thursday.

On Maundy Thursday, we remember Christ's mandate to love one another. On Maundy Thursday, we take communion together and eat and drink our faith together at a common table. On Maundy Thursday, many of our churches do some very bodily things: we wash feet, we kneel in confession, we stand and sing. We clear off the communion table so that it, like Jesus' tomb, looks empty and ready and waiting. Some of us use incense. Some of us use candles. Some of us drape the cross in black.

These small things combine to help us realize that our faith is an embodied faith. Jesus didn't send us a rule book or a list of ideas. He came himself, in the flesh. Jesus didn't come to save us from our bodies--he came to redeem and resurrect them.

I'm trying something a little different in my sermon tonight. Instead of my usual 15 minutes of exposition, biblical background, and storytelling, I'm going to do something a bit more physical. It involves a wheelbarrow and some bricks. It's going to involve a loud crash. It's going to involve lots of Scripture, but not read at the pulpit in my usual style. It's a version of a sermon I saw many years ago that moved and convicted me so much that I still remember it vividly today.

It's also way out of my comfort zone (I'm a preach-from-the-pulpit-with-a-manuscript type), but God's been leading me this way for awhile, so I'm giving it a go. After all, Maundy Thursday is all about getting out of our comfort zones. I mean, who really likes washing feet, right?

I'll let you know how it goes...

What do you do to celebrate Maundy Thursday?