Maundy Thursday, April 17, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Supper
At supper that Thursday night Jesus said,
Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me.
In January 1979, at a Kogudus Lutheran renewal retreat on a blizzardy weekend at a beautiful state park in northern Illinois, I joined 25 other guys for music, talks and prayers. We read letters our friends had written for us, sharing their love. We sang and sang.
But we were snowed in and couldn’t leave on Sunday like we planned. Monday was cold, skies were clear, and snowplows were out, but they hadn’t got to us yet. After lunch I took a walk in the woods, wearing my five buckle black rubber farmer boots. Something was on my mind.
Soon after leaving the Moonies, I began spending a few hours each week with Margaret and my parents, along with two of their friends, studying the book of Hebrews. I disagreed with them every week. Jesus was NOT God. The author of Hebrews was wrong. Rev. Moon’s theology, which makes Jesus entirely human, made more sense to me.
My certainty put a barrier between me and the Lutheran guys on that retreat, although I kept it mostly to myself. I didn’t expect to have a reflection time afterward in the snowy woods. But there it was, there I was, plunging into 12 inches of snow, walking through the pines, alone with God. Asking the question.
Who are you, Jesus?
I walked for an hour. When I entered the woods I didn’t believe Jesus was God. When I walked out, my mind had been transformed. I believed. There’s no moment I remember in that walk when the clouds in my mind cleared. I just know it happened. And I’ve never looked back.
Gird your loins, put sandals on your feet and hold your staff in hand. Be ready, and eat like those in flight. This is the Passover of the Lord.
Jesus surely felt the power of this remembrance, sheep’s blood above and beside the doors marking houses of the Hebrews. No longer slaves, but saved men and women. Jesus will finish the job with his own blood. He spends much of the evening consoling and encouraging his disciples, because he also makes it clear to them that he will be leaving.
The cup of salvation I will take up, and I will call upon the name of the Lord. Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones. My vows to Yahweh I will pay in the presence of all his people.
In 1983, along with other Kogudus graduates I became part of prison retreat teams in Illinois. We traveled to Menard in southern Illinois, where several men were housed on death row for years and years. After supper on the second night of our retreat, the men who attended formed a circle. The leader turned to the man next to him, who knelt. The leader put his hand on the second man’s head and said, “David, all your sins are forgiven.” Then David stood, often crying, and turned to the next guy, who knelt, and said those same words. “All your sins are forgiven.”
In this way, and in others, we proclaimed to each other “the death of the Lord until he comes.”
Love one another, says the Lord, as I have loved you.
(Exodus 12, Psalm 116, 1 Corinthians 11, John 13)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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