Maundy Thursday Hope

by

Practicing Faith

Special to United Methodist Insight | April 2, 2025

It happened that night they were all together for the last time. It was Passover and somebody had rented a room and hired a caterer, Seders to Go or Matzas R Us, one of those. Jesus and the boys were celebrating their arrival in the big city with the traditional meal. And it was probably nothing like that team pic Leonardo posted in the art world years later.

If this had been a victory celebration after the grand entrance into the city, the culmination of their three-year road tour, there might have been back slapping and raucous laughter: 

“Did you hear all the cheering when they saw him riding on that donkey? There’s never been anything like it. Old Herod himself never had a parade like that! “

“And when the Master chased the money grubbers out of the temple, I thought the High Priest was gonna have a stroke.”

“Did you see the looks on the faces of the scribes and the Pharisees? Man, if looks could kill?”

But this was not a victory celebration. This was preparation for the final engagement with evil. Think zero-dark-thirty, going after Osama Bin Laden, or storming the beaches at Normandy.

There was no witty repartee, no exaggerated stories of adventures past. (Do you remember that time the Master healed those ten lepers and we all thought…) There was none of that. The mood was subdued. Something big was about to happen. Jesus was about to say something no one saw coming, something none of them would ever forget.”

“One of you here will betray me!”

“What? No, Master, none of us would ever betray you? Are you serious, after all we have been through together?”

“The one who has dipped his hand in the bowl with me will betray me.”

Judas said, “Surely not I, teacher.”  He replied, “You have said so.”

Later on, in the garden, they were all shocked again when he said, “Every one of you will desert me.”

And they all did. Every one of them, in that band of brothers, ran away in the end. Even Peter the Rock who said, “Lord, I would never run out on you.” Jesus said, “You say that now, but before the night is over you will deny me three times.” And he did as, we all have at various times in our lives.

The most piercing pain Jesus suffered was not when the nails were driven into his flesh; it was the betrayal and desertion of his friends. Almost every one of them ran for their lives when he was giving up his. Only the women were there at the end. They were there when he died and on the morning that he rose. The men were nowhere to be seen and Judas was dead.

What if Judas had waited? What if he hadn’t gone out and offed himself? What if he had been there at the foot of the cross? Would Jesus have forgiven him, too?

“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Did that include Judas? Did it include all of us betrayers? Are we really forgiven all of our betrayals?

In his book, “Good Goats: Healing Our Image of God,” Christian counselor Dennis Linn tells the story about a woman named Hilda, who came to see him because her son had tried to commit suicide for the fourth time. She said her son was involved in prostitution, drug dealing and murder, but that what bothered her most was that he wanted nothing to do with God. She asked, “What will happen to my son if he commits suicide without repenting, and wanting nothing to do with God?”

Linn asked her, “What do you think?”

Hilda replied, “I think that when you die, you appear before the judgment seat of God. If you have lived a good life, God will send you to heaven. If you have lived a bad life God will send you to hell.”

Linn said to the woman, “Close your eyes. Imagine that you are sitting next to the judgment seat of God. Your son has just arrived…” Then Linn asked her, “Hilda, how does your son feel? “ Hilda answered, “My son feels so lonely and empty.” He asked Hilda what she would do. She said, “I want to throw my arms around my son.” She lifted her arms and began to cry as she imagined herself holding her son tightly.

Finally, when she had stopped crying, Dennis Linn asked her to look into God’s eyes and watch what God wanted to do. In her imagination Hilda saw God step down from the throne, and, just as Hilda had done, embrace her son. And the three of them, Hilda her son and God, cried together and held one another.

Linn said “What Hilda taught me in those few minutes is the bottom line of healthy Christian spirituality: God loves us at least as much as the person who loves us most.”

Is it possible that Jesus forgave Judas’s betrayal like this? Is it possible that Jesus forgives my betrayals and your betrayals like this? I HOPE so.

It is this slim hope that brings us together on our Maundy Thursdays, and hangs heavy on our hearts as we break bread together in the reenactment of this story. We have all been betrayers, often of our nearest and dearest, and we all know it – and it is too much to bear.

It is this fragile hope that brings us to kneel before the cross in our safe sanctuaries. It is the one place we can come when we have nowhere else to go.

John Sumwalt is a retired Wisconsin Conference UMC pastor and the author of “How to Preach the Miracles: Why People Don’t Believe Them and What You Can Do About It” (CSS Publishing Company).