Holy Week – Thursday

Old City of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives

I have always ‘got’ aspects of Thursdays journey in Holy Week, but my understanding of the significance of the Seder which Jesus celebrated with his friends on that last evening together was sharpened and made more poignant after celebrating a Passover Meal with friends a while back.

Hearing and participating in the Haggadah, the retelling,  breaking the middle piece of Matzo bread as a symbol of the Passover Lamb and hiding it, ready for it to be found later in the meal, broken into pieces and shared as Jesus’ words about body broken echo in the memory and heart.   The poignancy of sipping from the third cup of the Seder, the cup of redemption which marks Gods promises about redeeming us with outstretched arm, the image of Jesus, holding the cup out and pronouncing blood poured out for us and inviting us to share in the journey with Him, vivid in the room.

It is, however, when I ponder the Garden of Gethsemane that my heart breaks wide open and the fullness of Jesus’ wrestling hits me.  I remember sitting a couple of years ago in the church that marks that garden, on the Mount of Olives, just outside the Old City of Jerusalem.  Years of seasons of Holy Week musings about that place, that encounter, those moments, hit me, and I was simply overwhelmed and sat as a friend read the account in scripture of Jesus with his best friends by his side (albeit asleep) as He wrestled with the weight of the world.

‘At some moment during that midnight hour an angel of mercy comes to the weary body of the man in the garden.  As He stands, the anguish is gone from His eyes.  His fist will clench no more.  His heart will fight no more.

The battle is won.  You may have thought it was won on Golgotha.  It wasn’t.  You may have thought the sign of victory is the empty tomb. It isn’t.  The final battle was won in Gethsemane.  And the sign of conquest is Jesus, at peace in the olive trees.

For it was in the garden that He made His decision.  He would rather go through hell for you than to heaven without you.’

Max Lucado – ‘And the angels were silent’

Amen.  The reconciliation of all things.  May your Kingdom come ON EARTH as it is in heaven.