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(This post is being sent early for those of you who might want to see it before heading off to work early in the morning. Truth be told, I have no idea if any such readers actually exist, but just in case.)

Today is Maundy Thursday, the celebration of the Christian Lord’s Supper. “Maundy” comes from the Latin word for “commandment.”

This year it falls on the second night of the Jewish celebration of Passover, a weeklong observance that begins with the Seder meal as Jews remember the deliverance of their ancestors from Egypt.

Years ago my good friend, Rabbi Morris Shapiro, invited me to attend the Seder at Temple Agudath Sholom in my hometown of Lynchburg, Virginia. It forever
changed my understanding of Maundy Thursday.

Passover is not a somber experience. Quite the opposite. It is the joyous observance of the Hebrew slaves being freed from Egyptian bondage. Bitter herbs are part of the meal as a reminder of the suffering endured, but the focus is on liberation.

For some reason Christians have turned the Seder Jesus shared in the Upper Room into a somber communion more in keeping with a funeral dirge than a meal celebrating freedom.

Perhaps Jesus didn’t observe the Seder with his disciples. The first three gospels suggest he did, but John’s gospel says it was the night before Passover began, and Paul’s account in 1st Corinthians doesn’t say either way.

I have always accepted that he did, mainly because for me that gives the meal a different tone than it would otherwise have.

It means that Jesus wanted to experience one last Seder with his disciples, eating foods that symbolized the night of all nights in their history, drinking the four cups of wine symbolizing sanctification, deliverance, redemption, and restoration, and ending that special night by singing a traditional Passover song.

In that context I can imagine Jesus at some point taking the matzo, breaking it, and telling his disciples to remember breaking that special bread with him whenever they shared bread in the future…

And then taking one of the cups they had been sharing and telling them that the Seder wine can be a reminder that blood is often spilled before liberation comes…

And then I can imagine him pausing, looking at each of them, and finally saying, “In our tradition blood symbolizes covenant, and so when you drink the wine together again you will remember my blood was also spilled, and it, too, shall speak of sanctification, deliverance, redemption, and restoration.”

I don’t imagine that in the midst of that Seder, a meal with which they were all familiar, that at the time they could have understood what he was saying. Only later did his words come to mind, and in the moment they did the “last supper” was transformed into the “Lord’s Supper.”

As tragic as the death of Jesus was, and I never want to understate that fact, innocent as he was of the charges against him, we should also remember that the transformation from “last” to “Lord’s” was born of the light of the resurrection.

Maundy Thursday exists not because Jesus was crucified, but because his death was not the final word.

In the mystery of divine love, Maundy Thursday has meaning because it points beyond itself to a light that forever shines in darkness and shall never be quenched.

That is why I believe it is acceptable, even essential, that we remember Easter comes three days after Maundy Thursday.