This week hasn't been what is was supposed to be. It was supposed to be calm. It was supposed to be planned. Time each day planned with the boys to teach them a part of the Easter story and really act it out in love towards each other and others. But that didn't happen. There were other plans that came crashing down. But honestly...I wouldn't have it any other way. Not.At.All...actually.
I sit here and reflect on the Last Supper. This holiday we, as Christians call Maundy Thursday.
Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once. My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come. A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Jesus came to suffer. His ministry was suffering. He knew this and still responded by breaking the bread and giving thanks. He knew what he was going to have to go through and instead of running away he sat with his disciples calmly and gave them a new commandment the second greatest commandment yet the hardest one... "Love one another".
Fast forward a little. After Jesus has been tortured, spat on, obscenely displayed, reviled, mocked, beaten nearly to death, naked, plagued with insects, covered in dirt and sweat and blood and excrement...he sees his disciple John and his mother Mary. He says, "Woman, behold they son!" and to the disciple he says, "Behold thy mother!". I recently read an opinion on this and I loved it and it made sense to me. It talked about how most scholars think this is saying that Jesus cared deeply for his mother, Jesus was worried about his mothers future and he had love for her and therefore asking John to take care of his mother. Even though these observations are true the author of this book I'm reading goes on to describe that this saying is a picture. It goes into detail about the different ways JEsus addresses his mother. Like at the wedding he calls her "woman" and although in their time it was correct for a man to address a woman like that it was not the way a son addressed his mother. When he was asked where his mother and brothers were Jesus responds, "who is my mother and who are my brothers?" then goes on to say the crowd was his mother and brothers. Here on the cross Jesus again addresses his mother as "woman".
The picture here? The new community that comes into being through the power of Jesus Christ. There are many reason people are against the institutional church...it's full of hypocrites, it's boring, it's full of rules and on and on it goes. But when the Christian community is working the way it is supposed to, people are brought together who have absolutely nothing in common, who may have diametrically different views on things, who may even actively dislike each other. Personal likes and dislikes have nothing to do with the body of Christ.
"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus"
Galations 3:28
When Jesus instructs his disciple to behold his mother he is creating a new relationship that did not exist before. This relationship represents the way that family ties are transcended in the church by the ties of the Spirit. Love one another despite their differences. Love one another despite their background. Love one another despite their history. Love one another. Jesus doesn't pick and choose who he loves. Jesus loves your enemy just as much as he loves you...can we not do the same?
We set the table and bake the bread to remember Christ. We clear our minds and think of only Christ today and the fact that although his road ahead of him was suffering like no one has ever seen before...he choose to break the bread and GIVE THANKS!
For heaven’s sake, do this:
Take your broken heart, your shattered heart, and give thanks for the heart of God who bleeds with yours and this is how your broken, dis-membered heart is re-membered – when you remember to count the ways He loves. Count, like you’re taking your own pulse, like you’re determined to keep breathing.
Remember the one thousand ways the Scarred God loves you, give thanks for Him in the midst of an almost hell, and your dis-membered heart re-members.
Thursday of Holy week, the bloodied and limping, the bruised and the sinners, the self-hating and soul-maiming, the howling and soundless–
– all us broken, we will remember to give thanks for His breaking and pouring out and this giving thanks is what re-members us.
~Ann Voskamp~
and because of His great sacrifice we get to experience God...
We get that experience of God when He stretches open His arms on that Cross and cries,
“For you. For all your regrets and for all your impossibles, for all that will never be and for all that once was, for all that you can’t make right and for all that you got wrong, for your Judas failures and your Peter denials and your Lazarus griefs, I offer to take the nails, the sharp edge of everything, and offer you myself because I want you, to take you, you in your wild grief, you in your anger and your disappointment and your wounds and your not-yet-there, you, just as you are, not some improved version of you, but you – I came for you, to hold you, to carry you, to save you.”
~Ann Voskamp~
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