Maunday Thursday

I realized recently in one of my e-mail correspondences that I've been in a different place every year for Lent, Holy Week and Easter (ah, the love of a student) for much of my recent past.

Three years ago I was a senior in high school celebrating Holy Walk with my family at home in Indianapolis...two years ago I was in Valpo in the beautiful Chapel of the Resurrection for Easter morning complete with balloons...last year I was in DC going to Resurrection Lutheran with dear Karen Kunze...and now I'm in Morocco. It makes for a somewhat jumbled sense of tradition for Lent, as the past four years have brough at lot of different experiences during this season (dealing with senioritis and worrying about college, being a freshman at VU, interning and living in DC) and a lot of different traditions for celebrating Holy Week depending on which community I've been in. However, though sometimes I feel like I haven't really learned to really celebrate Lent as well as I should, there is a sense of beauty of having bits and pieces of all those places, communities, and traditions with me as we enter the weekend of Maunday Thursday, Good Friday, and finally Easter.

This evening, the AUI Christian community gathered for a lovely Seder meal and footwashing service that really brought back into the present in terms of experiencing the end of this Lenten season and moving toward Easter.

There's a real beauty in celebrating a Seder meal on Maunday Thursday because it reinvokes the Jewish tradition of celebrating passover and allows us as Christians to sort of reexperience the Last Supper in a way we usually can't because we've lost the knowledge and traditions of Judaism. But tonight I just found it very powerful to hear the passover story through the tastes and textures of the wine, bitter herbs, matzah, and egg...and powerfully startling to be reminded how shocking Jesus' words and actions would have been that night so long ago...pronouncing the bread of affliction as the bread of life, the last cup of wine as the cup of the new covenant, and then getting down on the floor to wash his disciples feet...

This was an especially powerful moment for me; after our Pastor Karen had just finished talking about how shocking it would have been for the disciples to have their master kneel before them to wash their feet, how it simply was not done (which has special resonance for me here in Morocco because i'm much more aware here than I am at home, of the actions and words that are simply not cultural acceptable or even thought of)...which was a real reminder of how powerful that action was, and how much that simple action has really affected our tradition. So, it was even more beautiful a few moments later when I watched as Amy, a cute 5-year old with bright blonde ringlets, excitedly knelt on the floor to wash her mother's feet, beaming with delight. To her it was most certainly not a faux pas, but a natural and fun thing to do! For Amy, there were no boundaries and certainly no wariness about taking off her shoes and having someone else wash her feet.

That dichotomy was just really cool to think about, how Jesus' washing of his disciples feet was really the highest service and honor and yet showing love in a natural, childlike way. It's like when we wash each other's feet we cannot but realize each other's humanity and vulnerability, we cannot act without some love and compassion...at least I'd like to think so.

The whole evening was just a very hospitable, warm service with the Seder meal in the middle and certainly a beautiful collection of random wanderers amidst Morocco...African students visiting for an intervarsity conference...AUI professors and students and their families...workers at the local Christian orphanages...outside the warm little room few people even know that its Holy Week here (which seems a far cry from growing up as a PK during which it seemed like spring break always seemed to revolved around church and holy week) and few know the tradition of Easter. And certainly, even the traditions of celebrating Holy Week differ a lot within our little ecumenical community (complete with Catholics, non-denominational Christians, Methodists, Mennonites, Baptists, Orthodox..), although luckily for me feels very much like home...a jumble of traditions, songs, and people (just like the past few years) but with the same base of scripture, reverence for God, and an earnest attempt at finding the meaning within our traditions.

God is very much in this place.