Thursday, April 05, 2007
From AscensionNYC
Maundy Thursday
Psalm 78:14-20,23-25
Exodus 12:1-14a
1 Corinthians 11:23-32
John 13:1-15
This day, even more deeply than Palm Sunday, marks the beginning of Jesus' passionate ascent to the cross. The narrative as we have it from John is filled with intense moments and actions, each demonstrating in symbolic form the reality of the almost incomprehensible love that impels him forward, fully conscious that "his hour has come."
The simplicity of his action as he kneels to wash these human feet is deceptive. This is the one who has come from God and will go to God on the floor here in front of us, our Teacher and Lord offering menial service. Repetition dulls us to it, to the sheer amazement that it demands from us. In the same way Jesus' symbolic equation of common food and drink with his own flesh and blood must over and over force us open to the immensity of what his fiery love drives him to do. In contemplating and comprehending these things we are penetrated, transformed, radically changed, no longer freighted by our human struggles and sorrows:
Exodus 12:1-14a
1 Corinthians 11:23-32
John 13:1-15
Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.John13:1b
The simplicity of his action as he kneels to wash these human feet is deceptive. This is the one who has come from God and will go to God on the floor here in front of us, our Teacher and Lord offering menial service. Repetition dulls us to it, to the sheer amazement that it demands from us. In the same way Jesus' symbolic equation of common food and drink with his own flesh and blood must over and over force us open to the immensity of what his fiery love drives him to do. In contemplating and comprehending these things we are penetrated, transformed, radically changed, no longer freighted by our human struggles and sorrows:
Fire penetrates the lump
of myrrh, until the joining
bodies die and rise again
in smoke called incense.Heraclitus
Sister Linda Julian, OSH
