Maundy Thursday celebrations in my tradition consist of two parts: a dual-meaning Passover Seder followed by foot washing. As you can imagine, Maundy Thursday is also not very popular. At my church, less than half the people who came for the Seder stayed for the foot washing. Is it a blast to wash someone else’s feet? No, it is not. But that’s the point. It is an exercise in humility and servanthood, two characteristics that aren’t very popular in our culture. We wash feet because it is what Jesus did at the Last Supper, and he told his disciples to follow his example. As I participated yesterday, I thought about what it must look like to an outside observer. Here was a group of women of varying ages washing each other’s feet, singing hymns, and sharing testimonies of God’s working in their lives. The church isn’t pushy about foot washing. People are encouraged to come watch without feeling pressured to participate. I think that’s great for new believers, but at some point in a person’s faith walk, they need to be participating. It’s superficial and spiritually detrimental to just do the “fun” stuff in Christianity.
If you want to be an American Gallup Poll Christian then you can attend church sporadically and smile and clap when we sing upbeat songs. You can sign up for every potluck and game night. You can come dressed up for Christmas and Easter services and bask in the glow of the warm fuzzies you get for being a “good person” when you throw a twenty into the offering plate those two Sundays a year.
But once you get serious about following Christ, you’ll understand that true discipleship involves the hard stuff, too. You go to church even when you’re tired and you don’t like the songs. You sign up to help with programs or events. You love your neighbor even when you’d rather punch them in the face. You admit that you’re flawed and screw up. And during Holy Week, you observe Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, because you understand that Christianity includes solemnity and lament as well as joy, that the resurrection of Christ is meaningless without the suffering and crucifixion of Christ.
There is nothing wrong with dyed eggs and Easter baskets and ham dinners. But the joy and celebration of Easter is empty if you don’t first meditate on the darkness that came before on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Meditate on the instructions Christ gave his disciples at the Last Supper, instructions about servanthood and communion. Meditate on the fact that he knew full well that Judas would betray him that very evening. Meditate on the loneliness he felt in the Garden of Gethsemane when his disciples kept falling asleep and the anguish he felt when he begged his Father to “let this cup pass.” Meditate on how he must have felt bearing his cross while knowing that most of his friends had abandoned him and his right hand guy, Peter, denied even knowing him. Read about what a person goes through physically when they are executed by crucifixion. Think about what might have been going through Jesus’ mind when, after three short years, his ministry was over and left in the hands of a motley crew who were hiding in fear, what it must have felt like to, in the course of a week, go from having throngs of people cheering for him at the Triumphal Entry to having only a handful of people at his side as he died. What it would have been like to see the pain in his mother’s eyes as she watched him die. And to know that he didn’t deserve to be crucified. And, yet, he forgave all of them: the men who abandoned him and denied knowing him, the men who jeered at him and offered him vinegar to drink, and the men who killed him. That he suffered all of this for us, for you.
It is only when we think on these things that we can truly celebrate Easter for all that it means.