WB Skin & Bones
While Christ crucified and resurrected is preached week in and week out, it is only during Holy Week that we dare to slow down the story and hold a worship service that does not end with glory and new life…but dwells in the suffering and the death of our Lord. Triduum marks the three days from last supper to empty tomb. Some churches hold services on each day, while many others truncate the story into one service, either on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday.
Maundy Thursday (most likely called “maundy” as an English variation from the Latin, “mandatum,” or mandate) in many ways serves as a re-enactment of the night Christ was betrayed, often with Holy Communion and departure into darkness and silence. In the Gospel of John, this was the night Jesus washed the feet of all his disciples, including Judas. Judas’ betrayal is not so much the kiss in the garden as it is this moment of departure, when he chooses to separate himself from the relationship and the community of Christ. It is in this moment of departure when Jesus gives the mandate, “I give you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, so you also must love each other. This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples, when you love each other” (John 13:34-35, CEB).
Good Friday services tend to be sparse, with fourteen readings through the Stations of the Cross, pausing at each moment of Christ’s last hours through death. Holy Saturday is a time for the Easter Vigil, an evening service that can go through the night, from darkness to sunrise, with the retelling of salvation’s story. Rather than staying up all night, many churches hold a Sunrise Service on Easter morning to remember the moment the women discovered the empty tomb.
Each of these services are walking us in time through the moments of the story, refusing to rush past the cross to get to the resurrection. This week’s comic is a reflection on the Stripping of the Altar, a ceremony generally falling at the end of Maundy Thursday worship. In silence, the room grows darker and darker, as anonymous figures carefully remove every scrap of life and only the bare bones of the altar remain. I vividly remember as a young man watching this service years ago, when they took down banners off the wall that read, “Jesus saves!” and “He is alive!” I couldn’t help but think…if death was truly the end of Christ, how much more the end of all our hope? Now as a pastor, they take my stole from me during the stripping of the altar, and I get the sense that my with the death of Christ is also the death of my calling, my purpose, my vocation. And then we walk out in silence and darkness. For me, there is no stronger moment that seals how knit together we are as a people to Christ…how profoundly his death becomes our death…how much more profoundly then his life becomes our life.
If you need more to read on this topic, I recommend “Stripped Bare: Holy Week and the Art of Losing,” by Richard Lischer. More than anything, I recommend you find a church to experience a worship service during Triduum, a place to slow down and reflect on the death of Christ, before the joy and rush of Easter this Sunday.
When not drawing the Wesley Bros cartoon, the Rev. Charlie Baber, a United Methodist deacon, serves as minister of discipleship for youth and families at Highland United Methodist Church in Raleigh, N.C. His cartoon appears on United Methodist Insight by special arrangement.