Today’s Maundy Thursday communion services and tomorrow’s Good Friday services enable us to follow in the footsteps of Jesus to the end as the gospel enacts God’s raw, brutal entry into human suffering. Then, come Easter morning, the Alleluias will peal from heaven and from within our hearts at the incomprehensible wonder of resurrection. Worshipping together, in word and deed, in song and silence, in ways beyond mere thought, we embrace the most confounding mystery to which we Christians cling – that in the midst of death God bestows life.
The theologian Jurgen Moltman captured our joyful reception of this good news by saying, “With the resurrection the dance of the liberated and the laughter of the redeemed begins.” May these poignant, latter days of Holy Week deepen our trust in God’s suffering love for the world and lead us into a season of dancing and great laughter for the new life Christ brings.
