Description
All you need for a Maundy Thursday Service. Gather some friends and prepare and serve a simple Passover meal to those gathered to worship on Maundy Thursday. Recreate the washing of the Disciples' feet, the first communion. Then, as the church is reduced from candlelight to darkness, these four meditations, spoken aloud, tell the story of those hours through the eyes of Peter, Judas, Mary, and, finally, Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane. The congregation should then leave the church in silence.
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Extract:
MAUNDY THURSDAY - THE MEDITATIONS
An ideal format for a Maundy Thursday Service which begins with the sharing of the Passover meal and then proceeds to a time of worship.
There follow the texts of four meditations, three by witnesses to the events of the Last Supper (Peter, Judas, Mary), and then Jesus' own thoughts in the Prayer at Gethsemane. These words can be spoken as the church is silently reduced to darkness, the last candle extinguished with the last word of Christ's prayer
PETER:
So it has come to this. After three years of following this extraordinary man, I am sitting with him now, in an upper room of a house somewhere in the City of Jerusalem. It is dark outside, and the City is quieter now. It is time for our evening meal, but the table is set for the remembrance of the Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, so we will share in the Seger meal together. We will be thirteen in number: myself, of course, John, James son of Zebedee, Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot, Judas, and Our Lord.
I hope it will be a peaceful meal. My Lord is troubled. He has been so changed since we entered the City, often speaking of death, his death, as though it were something he expected to encounter at any moment, waiting for him, like a stranger lurking at a street corner. When Mary poured that expensive oil over him at Bethany, he said that she was preparing his body for burial. He cannot mean it. I hope he does not mean it.
But he has angered so many people since we came to Jerusalem. The Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law, they all resent him. They feel threatened by him, because he tells the truth. But it is not always wise to tell the truth so bluntly to such people. They will look for a way to pay him back: if they think he is a danger, they will find a way to deal with him. He is only one man.
He is only a man.
Yet was he just a man when he appeared on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and called to Andrew and me to follow him? I didn't hesitate, not for a moment. And I have seen such things in the company of this extraordinary man: I have seen sick people healed; blind men enabled to see again; lame men helped to walk again. I have seen people rescued from possession, and, you may doubt
what I say, but I have seen the dead brought back to life at this man's command. His name was Lazarus and he walked from his tomb, I swear it. I have seen many hundreds of people fed with a few scraps of bread and two small fishes that a boy had about him.
I have seen the winds and the waves stilled by his word of command. I have seen him walk upon the waters. I have seen miracles that I will never forget.
But is he not just a man? I once saw him on a mountain top speaking with Moses and Elijah, and he asked me who I thought he was. I told him that I thought he was the Christ, the Messiah? But is that true? After so many centuries of waiting, do you suppose that the Messiah would come to me, a blunt spoken fisherman, and choose me as a companion, instead of the warriors of a great army of liberation?
Well I wonder. Truly, I wonder. There is never a day when I do not look at him and wonder who and what he is.
Why follow him, you ask?
That, at least, I can tell you. I follow him because I love him, because, since that first meeting with him, I have always loved him. I am filled with his peace. I am changed by him. He is everything to me: my father, my brother, my friend, and my Lord. There is nothing that I would not do for him.. I would give my life for him.
Truly.
I would lay down my life for him. I would never leave him, never disown him. You have my word on that. He called me his Rock, and I am unshakeable. I will never let him down.
Ah! It is the hour. I heard a cock crow.
JUDAS:
So it has come to this. I knew it would. I told him so. He just wouldn't listen....
I am sitting with him now, in an upper room of a house somewhere in the City of Jerusalem, and the whole place is in uproar.