Wash and Be Washed
I have chronically dry skin.
Looking back at the Grow Christians pandemic posts for Maundy Thursday about the creative ways families shared this night’s ritual, part of me wonders if our church services can ever approach the intimacy of the footwashing done by family members for one another.
The world is heavy with sorrow right now.This is not a season that requires take much imagination to ponder Jesus’s suffering on the cross.
Do you remember observing Maundy Thursday at home last year? It felt like a quaint, one-time experience to share with our households, then years later share as a story with future generations of the family. Except of course, it wasn’t a one-time experience. We’re here again a year later with another Maundy Thursday at home.
When I worked with youth, one of my favorite events was an agape meal. It started as a Seder and I eventually started calling it “What Would Jesus Eat” which I found hilarious.
As this article is being written, I am on the 20th day being home with my husband, two small children, and my mother.
Palm Sunday will be here in just a few short days and I am not ready for it. I’m not ready for Holy Week as a priest, as a parent, or as an individual person trying to follow Christ. And yet, it’s coming.
Maundy Thursday offers a bookend of touch to Ash Wednesday: a touch on the forehead with ashes juxtaposed with the touch of hands, soap, and water on feet. These are fleeting moments of tenderness, thin spaces of vulnerability, connection.
It can be difficult for our children to the stories of Holy Week. Here are some tips for preparing children for the Passion.
This Holy Week, God will be at work in us in ways we cannot yet ask or imagine.