The theme for Maundy Thursday service tonight was that Jesus was not creating a moment of nostalgia for the disciples to look back on when he told them to remember him in the supper. He connected the event to previous times, to his present, and to the future. Remember The Future was the repeated phrase. I wrote something a bit similar last week, inspired by the message at Vespers at a church near Madison Square Garden when we were in New York.
I have tended to treat Lent like Advent, a time of preparation for a big day. I often get frustrated Holy Week, realising that I have squandered this preparation time and am "not ready" for Easter. Yet it is not a time of preparation, it is its own season. At most, it is a preparation for all of Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday. When they first occurred, those events were separate instances, but now they are tied together. Jesus still had the wounds after the Resurrection; we cannot help but connectt Good Friday to the Resurrection now. Indeed, we could not even call it Good Friday without that knowledge. Hoshia Na they cried on Palm Sunday: "Save us, we ask" from the last of the Passover Psalms, 118:25. On Maundy Thursday Jesus declared that this salvation was related to his body and blood. All four events are now tied together, no longer sequential, but joined.
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