Entering Easter through Maundy Thursday

If you come from a more informal background, or you grew up celebrating Easter only on Sunday with an egg hunt and basket of candy, you might not know that this is Holy Week, which began on Palm Sunday, the celebration of Jesus’ final entry into Jerusalem–his last week of ministry. Today is Holy Thursday, or Maundy Thursday, the gateway to the Easter triduum of Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Resurrection Sunday, as the church has historically referred to it.

Maundy is the Latin word for “command,” so we might think of this as “Command Thursday.” When Jesus met with his disciples to celebrate the Passover meal, he gave some commands. First, he commanded them to eat bread and drink wine, “in remembrance of me,” (1 Cor. 11:24) an act that continues to reseal the New Covenant between God and his children. Second, he commanded them to “love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34). And then he washed their feet, the King taking the role of a servant to demonstrate what he really meant: caring for our most basic needs with loving service.

Just a short time later, Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane and taken before the chief priests.

Maundy Thursday was the beginning of the end. Or, if you prefer, the beginning of the beginning.

I don’t know about you, but even after forty days of Lent spent contemplating the work and sacrifice of Jesus, I still need Maundy Thursday to usher me into Easter.

I need to think about the Passover dinner, when he sat and ate with his betrayer and with those who would shortly deny him, then disappear from view for the rest of his trials.

I need to think about his last words to them, about what he commanded them to do after he was gone.

I need to think about how they didn’t get it.

I need to think about how he sweated blood in the garden as he wrestled with himself–he was, after all, both fully God and fully man, and the man must have struggled at the thought of death.

I need to think about how love won that inner battle, and he accepted my cup of suffering in my place.

I need to think about the great lengths to which the chief priests and Pharisees went to destroy him, and how he refused to defend himself because he had committed to the path before him.

It must have been the longest night.

As we enter Easter this year, we come to it from a place of long trial ourselves. No one will deny that 2020 was a doozy, and we entered 2021 at a slow, uphill crawl toward resuming “normal” life. Maybe, this Easter weekend, we would do well to think about that “normal” life in the context of Christ’s sacrifice. How does our loss of normal measure up? Can our year of struggle even begin to compare to his twenty-four hours of suffering?

On this Maundy Thursday, how can we prepare for Christ’s death and resurrection? How can we ready our hearts to take in the magnitude of what these days are asking us to recall?

We could wash some feet.

We could speak words of love as he did.

We could eat the bread and drink the wine as he asked us to.

We could pray for his sacrifice to be honored with the saving of souls.

We could ask for the ability to empathize with his suffering in the garden.

We could read the Gospel accounts of that Passover and ponder the scenes therein.

Whatever you do this Maundy Thursday, don’t allow it to be just another Thursday. Take steps to prepare your heart. In three days, we can say to one another, “He is risen!” Will you be ready?

Harmony Harkema has loved the written word for as long as she can remember. A former English teacher turned editor, she has spent the past twelve years in the publishing industry. A writer herself in the fringe hours of her working-and-homeschooling mom life, Harmony has a heart for leading and coaching aspiring writers. She is the owner of The Glorious Table and cohost and producer at The Relatable Homeschoolers podcast. Harmony lives in Memphis with her husband and two daughters. You can find her at HarmonyHarkema.com and on Instagram @harmonyharkema.