The Sunday Project
A Night in a Garden
Holy Thursday Evening – Mass of the Lord’s Supper |
By Nadia Busekrus
The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, "This month shall be for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month they shall take every man a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household; and if the household is too small for a lamb, then a man and his neighbor next to his house shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old; you shall take it from the sheep or from the goats; and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs in the evening. Then they shall take some of the blood, and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat them. They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. In this manner you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste. It is the LORD's passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will smite all the first-born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD. The blood shall be a sign for you, upon the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt. "This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations you shall observe it as an ordinance for ever.
For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. And during supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper, laid aside his garments, and girded himself with a towel. Then he poured water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded. He came to Simon Peter; and Peter said to him, "Lord, do you wash my feet?" Jesus answered him, "What I am doing you do not know now, but afterward you will understand." Peter said to him, "You shall never wash my feet." Jesus answered him, "If I do not wash you, you have no part in me." Simon Peter said to him, "Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!" Jesus said to him, "He who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but he is clean all over; and you are clean, but not every one of you." For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, "You are not all clean." When he had washed their feet, and taken his garments, and resumed his place, he said to them, "Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.
As the last minutes slipped away of the night that we now commemorate as Holy Thursday, was Jesus wondering ‘how the hell did I end up here?’ I’ve often wondered to what extent Jesus knew what he was getting into. Like have you ever stopped to remember that what we call the “New Testament” wasn’t written until decades after Jesus walked the earth? Jesus didn’t get to read the gospel stories growing up and soothe himself with the reminder that his pain and death would end up inspiring centuries of people to seek love and justice. How clear was his picture of what the heavenly Parent intended? Maybe the divine spirit in Jesus did know what was ahead, but I think maybe Jesus’ humanity meant that he embraced our human limitations and didn’t exactly know what was ahead. I picture Jesus that night, and I see the garden where he would hang out with his friends become the site of his betrayal. I see him in a wrestling match with fear and despair that leaves him dripping blood-tinted sweat.
That night, as he prayed in the garden, I wonder if Jesus’ heart ached at the familiar scent of damp, rich soil and ripe olives. Or maybe it was the dry season and he instead felt the coarse dust coating his hands and feet and heard wind rustling the trees around him. Were the feelings of uncertainty and maybe even terror mingled in a complicated, bittersweet way with the memories of nights spent laughing and sharing bread with his best friends? And then they left him. The twelve guys that he had shared meals, stories, lessons and life with, the same ones who swore they would go with him even to death, ran away when danger got too real.
I don’t want to shame the disciples. As much as I want to think that I would have stayed by Jesus’ side, I probably would have run away too. Their response is so human… so like us. Jesus’ experience of being abandoned is so human, so relatable, too. And even though we know that God is with us even when we come face to face with our worst selves, or when we are left by the people we love in the middle of our darkest night, both experiences are still so incredibly painful. I think God is okay with us acknowledging the realness of that pain even as we acknowledge that God is with, knowing and loving us, in the midst of it.
One key figure in the Holy Thursday story has a particularly glaring spotlight shone on his “shadow side” in our liturgies about this night. Judas has gone down in history as “the betrayer” - a man who sold his friend and teacher to a group of people that he knew was out for blood. I wonder if Judas thought he was doing the right thing. Jesus’ teachings about raising up the lowly and the marginalized were revolutionary, but Jesus wasn’t leading the political revolution that the Messianic prophecies foretold. Maybe Judas wasn’t ready for the overthrow of hierarchy that Jesus proposed. And how many of us who are privileged because of our skin color, socioeconomic status, nation of origin, gender, or religion hesitate when we are given the opportunity to sacrifice the perks of our privilege, or dismantle the systems of oppression that uphold it? I constantly have to work to uproot this hesitancy and complacency in myself. Maybe I am not so unlike Judas.
I see in all of us those friends who let their teacher and brother down on one of the hardest nights of his life. Like Jesus’ disciples, we are not always our best selves. And Jesus still loves us without any room in there for shame or beating ourselves up. A few hours before all of his friends abandoned him to face an angry mob alone, Jesus washed the disciples’ feet. His love was so deep, humble, radical that it embarrassed his disciples. That is the love that wins - not only on Easter but even on the very night that darkness seems to shatter relationships, blot out truth, and smother goodness. And the mercy Jesus had for his friends - the ones who he reunited with breakfast on the beach just a few days later, when he came back from death? That is the mercy and love the world needs embodied right now. That is the mercy and love we can emulate.