Reflection for Maundy Thursday - 6th April 2023

This evening we enter into the Three Great Days when we journey with Jesus through his Passion and his descent into death, through to the joy of his Resurrection on Sunday morning.

Our special supper this evening followed by the Eucharist with washing of feet recalls Jesus’ last supper with his disciples. At the end of the liturgy we go with them to the garden of Gethsemane as we sing our Gethsemane respond. I have always been perplexed by the way it weaves together two paradoxical strands – that of Jesus’ human anguish as portrayed in the synoptic gospels and his calm, divine knowing and deep trust in his Father’s will from the gospel of John. They always seemed to jar against each other. But I am coming to see how this goes to the heart of seeking to follow God’s will – we may have a deep knowing of what it is that we must do, a trust that all is held in God’s hands, and yet we also struggle with grief and anguish as we face the implications of God’s call.

The refrain is from the gospel of John, chapter 12:

Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say, Father, save me from this hour? No, for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.

John does not place this in the garden of Gethsemane but shortly after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. But like Jesus’ anguish in the garden as described in the synoptic gospels it touches on the cost of embracing God’s will and so is rightly entwined with those texts. Throughout John’s gospel Jesus has spoken of the way he is working his Father’s will and he has had a constant orientation to fulfilling this will when he comes to ‘this hour’. What comes forward strongly to me at this point is the sense of Jesus’ deep knowing of his call, his unity with the purposes of God the Father, which gives him the strength to go forward without in the end asking God to ‘save me from this hour’.

The verses are from the gospel of Matthew, chapter 26, centring around Jesus’ anguish in the garden where he does utter the question, but then followed by submission to God’s will:

Abba, Father, all things are possible to you; remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what you will.

When I went back to the text in the New English Bible I was very struck by something omitted from our respond:

[Jesus] said to them, ‘My heart is ready to break with grief. Stop here, and stay awake with me.’

I had not before picked up that note of grief but rather had been thinking this was about Jesus confronting his fear as he faced the ordeal ahead. What I now find here is a deep grief that all is unravelling into darkness – he knows one of his disciples has already gone to betray him and that the rest of them will before long have deserted him. Indeed, their sleeping in the garden as he prays prefigures this, they are not able to stay present with him as the darkness closes in. He faces his journey to death alone and in deep grief at his betrayal and abandonment by his friends. But yet he still embraces God’s will for him in the midst of that pain and finally goes forward to meet his betrayer with the words ‘the hour has come’.

These two different portrayals of Jesus’ struggle with his calling bring together the reality that he had a deep trust in God’s will for him, coming from his unity with his Father but that he also suffered grief and pain as he faced what was going to happen. Both are true portrayals of the one event which holds together the opposing feelings of anguished despair and calm trust at one and the same time.

Through Jesus’ death and resurrection we too can live in that unity with the Father and share in that trust in God’s will even whilst we still live with our human griefs and fears. Going forward into God’s call for us does not mean we won’t face pain and suffering but that we can go through the suffering knowing that all is held in God’s hands. Sometimes we have to let go something that is precious to us, even life itself, in order to open the way to a greater blessing that God has waiting for us. It’s never easy but that way lies the fulness of life to which Jesus calls us.

From John chapter 12:

Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

Amen

(with thanks to Cynthia Bourgeault for the key to our Gethsemane respond: “Holy Wednesday: A Journey Through Holy Week”)

Mother Anne - 6th April 2023