I have never waited longer to share in the Holy Meal. It is April 21, 2011. The last time Maundy Thursday took place this late in the year was April 22, 1943, the latest it is possible for it and surrounding Holy Week events to ever take place. The next year I will wait this long for Maundy Thursday will be 2038 when I will be 83 years old.
We owe this movable observance to the Hebrew lunar calendar by which the date of Passover is determined. Simply put, Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring. So Easter and its connected religious observances are constantly wandering around our calendar. The result is that people younger than 68, along with me, have never waited this long for Maundy Thursday before.
The wait this year focuses my attention to another wait always a part of Holy Communion. In the words of institution found in First Corinthians chapter eleven Paul says, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” The last three words, “until He comes,” make every Lord’s Supper an anticipation of an other event for which we wait.
Deep in the believer’s heart is a yearning for a more complete experience of the presence of God than it seems possible to know in the midst of this world. There is always a dark edging in on the light when we stand before the table of God. Inexplicable tragedy, the fragility of life, injustice unheeded, and many other troubles are over our shoulders, waiting on us to turn and leave the Presence behind. Today I will not be able to hear, “This is my body broken…” without thinking for the thousands of bodies mangled in the debris of Japan’s tsunami.
“Until I come,” is a promise that this will not always be so. As God was present in the incarnation of Jesus, as Christ is present in the church as we gather in communion, so will the presence of God banish all else in the eternal and complete revelation of God’s redemption through the coming of Jesus Christ for which we wait.
We have had to patiently wait the coming of Maundy Thursday this year, the timing determined by the movements of heavenly bodies we do not, nor will not, control. And we will patiently wait, as people of promise, in faith, for the eternal moment whose timing we can not understand when we will be in God’s presence forever.
Quiet Faith 