OK, so yes, I just put a Bible verse in here. But it's a really good one, this story in the Book of John is really down to earth and beautiful, and I enjoyed thinking about it while working on the service for Holy Thursday.
I was very excited when I got asked to be on the committee to plan the service, and in the end it was a pretty standard production meeting, only instead of "aesthetically" we said "liturgically." This is a fun new adverb. Example sentence: "Liturgically, it makes sense to use mason jars."
The Maundy Thursday service was beautiful, not least because it was the first time for me to be in the sanctuary at Broad Street when the sun was up in the sky, and coming through the stained glass windows and shining on the hardscrabble floor, it was a picture of grace.
We forewent the traditional foot washing for hand washing, allowing the divine awkwardness of ritual. The water was cold, our paint covered hands (from fingerpainting!) wouldn't get clean. There's a special transcendence in the giggling solemnity of ritual practiced. A certain number of required actions, like pouring water out from a pitcher, breaking bread, tilting a cup, and everything else, however graceless, is absorbed by the intention of the task.
The water turned a brilliant, luminous purple, somehow, instead of brown.
We read the words and sang the songs and ate the bread and dwelled on the story of Jesus' last meal with his sadsack bunch of friends, who were socially awkward and ridiculous and whom he loved anyway. It's good to live out old stories in real time, to stop and think. It's good to be strange and lost with other people, and it's good to have a reason to.
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