Maundy Thursday

In the Western church, Holy Week is not a separate season but a part of Lent. In the Eastern church, Holy Week is a season to itself. Holy Week commemorates the final events that led to the death of Jesus.

The Passion of Christ

The term passion, from the Latin passus, refers to the suffering of Jesus leading up to his crucifixion. This suffering was not only physical but also spiritual in that Jesus was rejected by those unfaithful to the covenant. The Gospels record his agony in prayer in Gethsemane prior to his arrest; Luke writes graphically of his sweat falling to the ground “like drops of blood” (Luke 22:44) as he wrestled in the spirit with the issue of his own death. The “cup” he was asking the Father to remove from him was not simply physical pain but the just and deadly penalty for violation of the covenant—a curse he was to bear on the cross (Gal. 3:10) in order to cancel the sanctions of the old covenant and introduce the life of the new. It is perhaps this struggle in Gethsemane that the author of Hebrews has in mind when he writes, “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission” (Heb. 5:7). The spiritual warfare of the passion was won in the Garden, and the victory was ratified on the cross.

Thus Jesus bore both the physical agony of the cross and the accompanying spiritual agony of misunderstanding and rejection. The Judean crowds cried out, “Crucify him!” and demanded the release of Barabbas the insurrectionist instead of Jesus. They took from the vacillating Pilate the responsibility for Jesus’ death: “Let his blood be on us and on our children!” (Matt. 27:25). Roman soldiers mocked and abused Jesus as “King of the Jews” (Matt. 27:27–31), while the Jewish authorities insisted, “We have no king but Caesar” (John 19:15). In the end, Jesus’ own disciples deserted him at his arrest (Matt. 26:56), and even the intrepid Peter denied knowing him, just as Jesus had said he would (Matt. 26:34).

It was through Jesus’ suffering that the Resurrection and exaltation were to come. On the Emmaus road, the risen Christ would explain to his disciples that his suffering was a necessary preamble to his entrance into glory (Luke 24:26; cf. Heb. 2:10). Peter, also, would explain to the crowd gathered at Pentecost that, because they had crucified Jesus, “therefore God has made this Jesus … both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36). Paul would assure believers that they also would be glorified with Christ, provided they suffer with him (Rom. 8:17–18). The New Testament Epistles in several places refers to the suffering of Christians after the example of Christ (1 Pet. 4:1, 12–13), but this suffering is never physical suffering alone. It is suffering brought about through persecution by those opposed to the gospel, a suffering that is only anticipatory of the greater judgment and suffering to come upon those who persist in their disobedience to the gospel (1 Pet. 4:17).

The drama of the passion has provided a basis for the worship of Christians since the early centuries of the church, giving rise to many traditional observances in both the Eastern and Western churches. The events of Christ’s passion, especially the Crucifixion and entombment, have been the subject of the work of famous painters and sculptors down to modern times (Cimabue, Mantegna, Grünewald, Michelangelo, Tintoretto, Rubens, Rembrandt, James Ensor, Georges Roualt, Graham Sutherland). The faithful have been drawn to dramatic reenactments of the passion (for example, the Oberammergau Passion Play of Bavaria, the Black Hills Passion Play), and composers have created sweeping choral and orchestral settings of the Gospel narratives (Schütz, Bach, Penderecki) African-American spirituals have cast the story in very moving and personal terms.

Palm Sunday

Traditional features of Christian worship associated with Palm Sunday are the procession in commemoration of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and the blessing of palm branches. The special observance of Palm Sunday is known to have occurred in Jerusalem as early as the fourth century and in the Western church by the seventh or eighth century. At different times some symbol of Christ has been carried in procession: the Gospel book, a crucifix, the elements of the Eucharist, or even a carved figure seated on a donkey. Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and his subsequent cleansing of the temple are visual images that have stirred the imagination of Christian worshipers through the centuries as they have taken part in the reenactment of the events joining in procession, waving palm leaves, and singing hosannas.

The story is recorded in all four Gospels (Matt. 21:1–17; Mark 11:1–18; Luke 19:28–48; John 12:12–19), though some details differ from one account to the next. Jesus enters the city riding on a young donkey, which both Matthew and John relate to Zechariah’s prophecy of the king coming in humility (Zech. 9:9); Matthew takes the Hebrew poetic parallelism, donkey and colt or foal, to indicate two animals. Whether one animal or two, the conveyance is covered with the garments of Jesus’ followers, who also spread them in the road before him along with tree branches (John alone calls them “palm branches,” John 12:13).

As Jesus enters the city in this procession, the participants acclaim him by various titles: “the Son of David” (Matt. 21:9), “the King” (Luke 19:38 NASB), and “the King of Israel” (John 12:13). The cry Hosanna! (“Save!” or “Deliver!”) is recorded by Matthew, Mark, and John, whereas Luke records an alternate hymn, “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (Luke 19:38). Notice that “Hosanna” in Hebrew (hoshi‘ah-na’) is related to the name of Jesus (Yeshu‡‘), as both are derived from the Hebrew root denoting deliverance or salvation. Foundational to all the accounts is the cry and acclamation of Psalm 118:

O Lord, save us;
O Lord, grant us success.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
From the house of the Lord we bless you. (Ps. 118:25–26)

It is often said that the people of Jerusalem welcomed Jesus as King and deliverer, only to turn against him later in the week with the cry, “We have no king but Caesar” (John 19:15). However, a close reading of the Gospels discloses that it is Jesus’ disciples, going before and after him, who acclaim him in a royal manner, and not the crowds. Luke records that the Pharisees complain about Jesus’ disciples, to which Jesus replies, “If they keep quiet, the stones will cry out” (Luke 19:40).

According to Matthew and Luke, Jesus proceeds immediately to drive the traders from the temple area, quoting Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11. In Mark’s account, Jesus inspects the temple, returning to cleanse it the next day (Mark 11:15–17); John, in contrast to the synoptic writers, places this event at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry in connection with a Passover feast (John 2:13–22).

In the symbolism of Palm Sunday, we see the coming of the sovereign Lord to his people, together with his judgment on religious institutions that have ceased to serve his purposes. As the Great King of the covenant, the Lord is the deliverer or Savior of his people; when he appears, the worshiper cries, “Come and save us” (Ps. 80:1–3). Several of the psalms celebrate the Lord’s entry into the Holy City and sanctuary to assume his dominion (Pss. 24:7–10; 47:6–9; 50:3). But the Great King comes also to judge (Pss. 96:11–13; 98:8–9). The Davidic rulers of Judah, as the earthly vice-regents of Yahweh, were custodians of Solomon’s temple, and several of them acted with zeal as restorers and reformers of the worship on Zion (Asa, 1 Kings 15:11–15; the younger Joash, 2 Kings 12:2–16; Hezekiah, 2 Kings 18:3–6; 2 Chron. 29–31; Josiah, 2 Kings 22–23). After the Babylonian captivity, the faithful longed for “the messenger of the covenant” who would purify the Jewish worship (Mal. 3:1–3). All this forms the background for Jesus’ action as he enters Jerusalem, acclaimed with a royal title, and proceeds to a symbolic act of judgment on the central religious institution of the Judean community—a judgment to be fulfilled in the temple’s destruction within a generation. The Palm Sunday procession is a proclamation that the King has come to reclaim his dominion and restore the true worship of the covenant. Thus the accolades of Palm Sunday are bound to the accusations that follow in the courtyard of the temple.

There is an additional note, however, in the action that fulfills the prophecy of Zechariah and in the cleansing of the temple. Riding into the city on a humble donkey, Jesus confirms that his kingship is not the overbearing and pompous rule of an earthly monarch. Furthermore, as the agent of the sovereign Lord, the one anointed to “preach good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18) takes on the religious establishment that controls the Judean economy through the commerce associated with temple worship. In the ancient world, temples functioned as banks, being considered safe repositories for funds; the Jerusalem temple drew revenue from all parts of the Jewish Diaspora for the maintenance of its operations. Within the temple precincts were concessions that sold animals for sacrifice, and currency exchanges where worshipers traded their Roman coins (which could not be used to buy sacrifices) for special temple coinage. Both of these businesses were highly profitable to the concessionaires, at the expense of the ordinary worshiper. But economic injustice has no place within the covenant community (Deut. 15:4; Isa. 3:13–15; Amos 2:6–7). It was Jesus who had declared, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20), and his cleansing of the temple further demonstrates his identification with the disadvantaged. As a perceived threat to the economic establishment, this act may have been a significant “political” cause of his later arrest and execution.

The Great Triduum (“Three Great Days”)

In the ancient church Christians observed the Holy Week services of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night (the great “Paschal Vigil”) as one continuous service reenacting the final events of Christ’s life and death preceding the Resurrection. The entries for Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter present the biblical background for these feasts. (For details concerning the worship of the “three great days,” see Volume 5, Resources for Services of One Christian Year.)

Maundy Thursday

The special commemoration of Christ’s institution of the Lord’s Supper, or Eucharist, is attested as early as the fourth century. The English name Maundy Thursday comes from the Latin mandatum novum, “a new commandment,” in Jesus’ words to his disciples as he washed their feet on the night of the Last Supper: “A new command I give you: Love one another” (John 13:34). In the Eastern church, the day is known as “Holy Thursday.” As part of the movement for the renewal of the historic liturgy in the twentieth century, many churches have returned to a fuller reenactment of the events of Maundy Thursday. These ceremonies include the “agapē meal,” or Christian love feast (its practice in the early church is suggested by Paul’s correctives in 1 Cor. 11:20–22); the rite of foot washing, symbolic of the “new commandment” (John 13:1–15); the Lord’s Supper itself; and the reenactment of the journey from the upper room to the Mount of Olives and the Garden (Mark 14:26). Even many nonliturgical churches observe the Lord’s Supper in the evening on Maundy Thursday.

Probably no other act of Christian worship has been known by more terms and understood in more ways than the Lord’s Supper; this is due in large part to the New Testament’s own richness of imagery and terminology surrounding the commemoration of Jesus’ action in the upper room. The Lord’s Supper is an ordinance of Christ; Jesus commanded his followers to repeat his action with the words “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). It is the covenant meal; Jesus’ words, “This is my blood of the covenant” (Mark 14:24), speak of the sacrifice that enacts the restored relationship between the Lord and his people. The Lord’s Supper is a communion or participation (koinōnia) in the life of Christ, as represented by the bread and the cup (1 Cor. 10:16–17), a communion not just of the individual worshiper but of the corporate church. The action of the Lord’s Supper is a proclamation of Christ’s victory over sin, a dramatic re-presentation of the redeeming event of Christ’s death (1 Cor. 11:26). The Lord’s Supper is the Eucharist, the “giving of thanks” to the Lord for his gifts of life and salvation, as Jesus gave thanks over the bread and the cup (Mark 14:22–23). Finally, it is a sacramental act, in the sense of an outward symbol or spiritual window through which a deeper reality may be grasped. Because of the wealth of its testimony to the gospel, the Lord’s Supper became the central and distinctive act of Christian worship.

Good Friday

The English name Good Friday may be derived from the expression “God’s Friday,” designating the day observed as the anniversary of Christ’s crucifixion, the decisive event in the plan of God for the redemption of his people. However, as Massey H. Shepherd has commented, the name Good Friday “helps in some way to remind us of the primitive Christian celebration of this day as one of victorious conquest by Christ over sin and death” (The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary [1950], 156). The Greek church knows the day as “Great Friday.”

Historically, the day has been one of fasting, abstinence, and penance. Customary Latin rites have included the “veneration of the cross,” in which worshipers kiss the crucifix, and the Tenebrae service in the evening, which incorporates the gradual extinction of lights and candles in the church, the service concluding in complete darkness, symbolic of Christ’s death and descent into hades. Another observance associated with the passion of Christ is the “stations of the cross,” a series of devotional acts based on fourteen events from Christ’s condemnation to death and his entombment; the “stations” are represented along the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, which annually attracts pilgrims from the Christian world, and in the naves of many liturgical churches. Traditionally, the elements of the Mass are not consecrated on Good Friday nor on the following Saturday. Protestant churches, however, may observe the Lord’s Supper on this day, and a common practice in North America has been for a group of churches in a community to unite in a three-hour service beginning at noon, devotionally rehearsing the events of the day of Jesus’ crucifixion.

The Gospels narrate in detail the events of Jesus’ trial before the Jewish council, his arraignment before Pilate, his rejection by the multitude, his abuse by the soldiers, the carrying of the cross to Golgotha, his crucifixion between two criminals, his words from the cross, his death, and his entombment. In the Gospel records, the day of Jesus’ death occupies a disproportionate amount of a three-year ministry. Indeed, in Mark, it accounts for almost a tenth of the narrative. The Crucifixion, together with the Resurrection, was central in the proclamation of the early Christian preachers. This is clear from the sermons in Acts (Acts 2:23; 3:14–15; 7:52; 8:32–35; 10:39; 13:27–29); Paul, for one, determined to make it the focus of his message (1 Cor. 2:2).

The Gospels’ stress on the events of Christ’s passion and death reflects their origin in the expansion of the early preaching of the church. But whereas the sermons and correspondence of the apostles interpret Jesus’ death through theological statements, the Gospels do so through narrative and dialogue. Developing the account of the Crucifixion in a fairly straightforward way, they allow the reader and hearer to experience the event through the record of even the smallest details. It is this quality of the Gospel narratives that gives them their value in worship. Listening to their story, the believer becomes a participant in the drama through which the Father brings about the achievement of his purposes: the judgment of sin and the creation of the people of the new covenant.

Certain details of the Crucifixion account merit brief discussion. The cross itself (Greek stauros) may not have been the familiar shape of the Latin cross, but rather a vertical stake without a cross-arm (several references in the New Testament mention Christ’s death on a “tree” [Acts 5:30; Gal. 3:13; 1 Pet. 2:24]). Crucifixion was a method of execution favored by Roman authorities for acts of rebellion. As a warning against other would-be disturbers of the peace, it was a form of public torture, in which the victim usually died a slow and agonizing death, as periods of unconsciousness alternated with periods of intense pain. However, Jesus’ death on the cross occurred more quickly than usual. The Jewish authorities did not want those who had been executed to remain on the cross over the Passover Sabbath, so they requested that their legs be broken; this would hasten their death by suffocation since they would not be able to push themselves up in order to breathe. Coming to Jesus, Pilate’s soldiers were amazed to discover that he had already died (John 19:31–33; Matt. 27:50; Mark 15:37).

Of special note are the utterances of Jesus while on the cross. These have traditionally formed part of the basis for Christian worship on Good Friday, as well as a foundation for choral works on the “seven last words of Christ” (Schütz, Haydn, Dubois, or Stainer’s The Crucifixion). Of these utterances, three are of special importance for the theological understanding of the Crucifixion. Jesus cries out, in Aramaic, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). Interpreters sometimes take these words to mean that the Father has “turned his back” on the Son so that he might bear the divine wrath, the penalty for mankind’s sin, in utter abandonment. The words, however, are the first line of Psalm 22. Since the Scriptures at that time were not divided into chapter and verse numbers (these came much later), a section of the Bible was identified by its first line. The Gospels probably intend to tell us that Jesus recited the entire psalm, which ends on a note of praise and victory (Ps. 22:22–31). In the Christian proclamation the Cross is a defeat, not for Christ, but for the spiritual enemies of the people of God (Col. 2:8–15; cf. 1 Cor. 2:6–8). On the cross, Jesus willingly gave his life “a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45); he “laid down his life” to take it up again (John 10:17). Thus Jesus’ death is seen as his deliberate choice, as he calls out, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46), again a quotation from the Psalms (Ps. 31:5). Jesus died on the cross, but the cross did not kill him. He had already yielded up his life in the spiritual struggle of Gethsemane; the cross put the “It is finished” (John 19:30) to the decision he had already made.

At the moment of Jesus’ death, according to Matthew and Mark, “the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom” (Matt. 27:51; Mark 15:38); Matthew adds that an earthquake occurred, releasing from their tombs “the bodies of many holy people who had died” (Matt. 27:51–53). The Gospels of Luke and John do not record these phenomena, but John in his Revelation tells of a great earthquake when two witnesses are slain and then raised (Rev. 11:11–13) and the dead are judged or rewarded” (Rev. 11:18 ), and the heavenly temple is opened and the ark of God’s covenant revealed (Rev. 11:19). Without prejudicing their historical accuracy, these phenomena in the Gospels are perhaps best taken as word pictures on a par with the symbolic events in the drama of the book of Revelation—images through which the Christian community is expressing its understanding of the meaning of Jesus’ crucifixion. His death “tore the veil” from the sanctuary, revealing the true and “heavenly” presence of the covenant God in the midst of his faithful saints. Earthquake and darkness (Matt. 27:45; Mark 15:33; Luke 23:44) are biblical images of divine judgment (Ps. 97:2–5); judgment occurs at the Cross, or rather the Cross exposes the judgment already made according to whether a person rejects or confesses Jesus as the Son of God (John 3:18–21). Significantly, a Roman centurion standing guard at the cross makes exactly this confession at the moment of Jesus’ death: “Surely he was the Son of God!” (Matt. 27:54; Mark 15:39; cf. Luke 23:47).