Mark your calendars with these fun summer events. Sign up online here. Or, contact the Rev’d Tim Black at tblack@allsaintsatlanta.org or 404-267-4277.

In some ways, meditating on this particular moment in the gospel, the last supper, helps me connect to the drama of my own life. Not that we’re running an intern reality show or anything, but there are the general confusions about life decisions and the hard pains of growing up. Disagreements with my family and friends, fears about the state of the world, fears about my future career and relationships, the pressure that comes with adult responsibility which I’m beginning to realize will never go away; all these things are issues that I bring to my spiritual life and worship routine.

This is why Lent can be such a essentially refreshing season. This year I’m planning to do some full-out, well researched fasting and I’m very much looking forward to what revelations (or hallucinations- just kidding) will result. Ideally, I will discover what is meaningful in the drama of my life and find some guidance. Maundy Thursday, marking the beginning of some of the holiest days in the liturgical year, reflects this personal journey to me.

In the face of betrayal and death Jesus gets down to his priorities: service (the washing of feet), communion (supper), and ultimately love. In, what is in my opinion, our somewhat bizarre religion, we find love and forgiveness through suffering. So depressing! Not just suffering from fasting from chocolate or fatty foods for 40 days excluding Sundays, but suffering from the fears and challenges and even tragedies the come from facing the reality of life. These are the things that we begin to better understand through fasting and prayer. There is no solution that makes these magically disappear, except maybe for Jesus’s mandate: “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” So simple and so difficult to enact.

As I progress through this year of discernment though, I am starting to see how shifting to this perspective of love can drastically change a situation. I close my eyes to the busyness of my life and focus on the heart of whatever situation I’m dealing with and try my best to see it by only considering how it enables or inhibits me or others from exhibiting love and what I need to do to have the love I know I am capable of possessing. Its actually pretty extreme and I don’t know if I’m equipped to completely live out this love-based perceptive reality, but it is a revitalizing experience, especially when I’m coming from a place of fasting and prayer- such as the simple-living of an ASAP intern.

It seems obvious, Jesus’s mandate, but I am advocating for a revisit to this simple and steadfast commandment, especially while we live in a reality that can lead us to lose focus. In my opinion, there should be no pressure of committing to this and no guilt when we inevitably fail, but a new perspective aimed towards love in the face of suffering. This is what I think the gospel is asking of us. I will enjoy this particular Thursday and celebrate it by trying to let go of anything that inhibits my experience of love (grudges, prejudices, sadness, boundaries, anxiety) and feel the love depicted in John’s verses.

Julia Hunter

For a Gospeller like John, this kind of information is not just a commentary on the time of day.

Judas has just left the table, filled with terrible intentions, filled with Satan. And it was night. It was dark out, a fitting time for the underhandedness that Judas deals in. But wasn’t just the end of the day.

It was night for Judas, too. His soul had gone dark, his light blotted out by greed, hunger for power, demons that he struggled with that clouded his relationship with the divine.

But there was even more darkness than that when Judas walked away from that table. The world was suddenly descending into a darkness deeper than any natural night. Turmoil and pain were close at hand, death loomed large.

We are in Holy Week, walking toward the darkness, walking toward the night. Even when we are at our most pious, we already know the end of this story, about the triumph and the new dawn. But Judas didn’’t. The disciples didn’’t. It was night and for a few days it just got darker and darker.

The Rev’d Noelle York-Simmons

We are taught in the Episcopal Church that one of the mysteries of our faith is that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. The passage quoted above has always resonated with me because it seems such a perfect illustration of the “human nature” of our Savior. As a human being, how could he not be “troubled” by the knowledge of what he will have to face in the coming days of Holy Week? Interestingly, this is by no means the only instance in the Bible of Jesus’ expression of concern about his approaching death. On the contrary, there are similar statements in each of the other three Gospels. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus is seen at prayer in the Garden of Gesthemane and expresses the very understandable wish that “if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.” (Mark 14:35) This wish is mentioned once in Luke (Luke 22:41); twice in Mark (the instance noted above and at 14:36); and actually three times in Matthew (Matthew 26:39, 42 and 44).

As we can see from today’s passage from John, though, Jesus’ expression of angst over his approaching crucifixion is only half of the story; it is quickly followed by the recognition that his very human concerns must yield to the will of his Heavenly Father: “No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” And once again, the same acknowledgement of the supremacy of God’s will appears in each of the other three Gospels. In Mark 14:36, Jesus says: “Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee; remove this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what thou wilt.” Virtually identical language is found in Luke’s Gospel (Luke 22:41); and in Matthew, Jesus’ recognition of the fact that he must “drink this cup” immediately follows each expression of hope that God might “let this cup pass from me.”

Fortunately, we now know, just as Jesus must surely have known at the time, that the ‘bitter cup’ of his crucifixion would be followed in three days’ time by his glorious resurrection from the dead. We also know and believe that as a result of Jesus’ supreme sacrifice, we have been given the promise of eternal life, and for that, we can only say “Thanks be to God!’

Rob Boas