Dearly Beloved,
Blessings to you on this Maundy Thursday. Families, I wanted to send you a link to some Holy Week activities that you can print and do with your children. They're geared especially towards elementary aged children, and you can access those activities HERE.
I have long loved Maundy Thursday -- perhaps because communion is one of the most sacred and meaningful rituals for me in my practice of Christianity. Perhaps because there is often an invitation to a very intimate ritual -- that of washing feet. I don't know about you, but I don't often have people touch my feet. Shoulders, head, hands -- yes. But feet? This evening's worship at Trinity United Methodist Church (7:00 pm) will include both foot washing and communion.
I'll be drawing from the writing of Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney as we journey through Holy Week this year. You can read more about Rev. Dr. Gafney HERE. Of Thursday, she writes:
Thursday: Preparation
Everyone and everything is moving 1000 miles an hour. There is so much to do. Where did the time go? Amid the preparations, infectious contagious joy. Joy in the presence of family and friends and new babies since last year. Laughter in the kitchen but also stress as everyone has an opinion and relatives take liberties that other guests do not. The children are excited and running around and under foot. The men are sitting and talking and smoking and too busy to help. But the joy of the festival is irresistible and irrepressible. But this year seems different. There has been political unrest, more than usual. They always crack down on us at this time of year just to show they can. I’m trying to keep the young men out of the street after dark but they just say, “Aunty, you worry too much.” They don’t know how easily it can all go bad.
Exodus and Easter, Pesach and the Paschal feast overlap literarily, liturgically and temporally. Each is a story of God’s liberating salvation through a horrific act of violence. As a result, many of us have developed theologies in which the violence itself becomes salvific, virtually sacramental. Passing through the waters of the year accompanied by A Women’s Lectionary provides an opportunity to reconsider those theologies rooted in power, hierarchy and, violence. As tonight’s (literary) celebration turns to sorrow, let us remember that God weaves tapestries of redemption out of the broken and bloody pieces of our lives but does not require us or our brother Jesus to be brutalized to save and redeem. There is no such limit on her power or her grace.
