Maundy Thursday – 2020
John 13:1-17,31b-35 (1 Cor 11:23-26)
Marian Free
In the name of God, Earth Maker, Pain Bearer, Life Giver. Amen.
Several years ago, I came across an extraordinary video titled Coach Trip to Calvary. The video followed a mixed group of travellers in the Holy Land and their Palestinian driver. As the small tour group visited the sites of some of the biblical stories, they became a part of the story. In other words, there were two parallel narratives – that of the tourists and that of the events of Jesus’ life – but the characters remained the same. The biblical story was transported into the present and the tourists entered into it as themselves which made the story incredibly real, if a little confusing.
The scene that remains with me is that of the last supper. In this scene the Palestinian bus driver takes on the role of Jesus and the tourists the role of Jesus’ disciples. The group are in a cheap café, seated on benches at a trestle table. The lighting is low, and the meal consists of shared plates, pita bread and wine. Without warning, the driver (who has morphed into Jesus), takes the bread and violently tears it. “This is my body which will be given for you”, he says angrily, handing the bread to the surprised disciples. It is a confronting scene – a far cry from the peaceful domesticity depicted by such artists as Leonardo da Vinci. As I watched, I cringed, whether from embarrassment, discomfort or fear I’m not sure, but this was not the Jesus I knew, the Jesus with whom I was comfortable, the Jesus whom the gospels describe as going quietly to his death. The Jesus presented here was an angry, hurting Jesus, an all too human Jesus, Jesus who knew what lay ahead and who was expressing his fear and anguish that it had come to this.
I suspect that my discomfort lay here. I had allowed myself to think that while Jesus did have some qualms he was relatively accepting about his fate, willing to do what was required (or willing to accept the consequences of his actions). The very domestic setting of the last supper in the gospels lulled me into the belief that Jesus’ final meal with his friends was relatively calm. My reading of the text and my experience of the Eucharist had conveniently ignored the sense of foreboding at that meal and the hint of the violent and the gruesome death that would follow. Witnessing Jesus’ angry, violent tearing of the bread shocked me into a recognition of my complacency and of my comfortable, armchair view of Jesus’ trial and persecution.
I was brought up short and I cannot help but wonder why the disciples were not so moved by Jesus’ distress that they were able to stay awake, to stand by him, to be identified as a disciple and if need be to share his death.
Tonight, we remember that night. We are challenged to hear Jesus’ pain, to stay awake, to watch while he prays and, if need be, to walk with him to the cross.
Tags: anger, Coach trip to Calvary, complacency, fear, Last Supper
Swallowsrest 