The second in my short series of monologues for Holy Week, tonight looking at the events in the upper room on the night before Jesus died.
‘Do you understand what I have done for you?’ he asked.
No I do not… the more time I spend with Jesus the less I understand… He
is forever turning things upside down… If it’s not the temple traders’ tables,
it’s the established order of things!
I mean, take tonight for example… We’d all gathered to celebrate the
Passover together… The lamb had been duly prepared and we were all together
remembering the old, old stories of God rescuing his people from the hands of
their oppressors… sharing not only the lamb, but the unleavened bread, the
bitter herbs and wine…
Everything was familiar, then in the middle of it he starts talking about
the bread being his body, broken for us… the wine, his blood poured out for us…
Andrew and John whispered about something Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptiser had
said years ago, before I met Jesus, about him being the Lamb of God given to
take away the sins of the earth…
It was weird… it changed the whole mood… Shattered the sense of the
familiar… traditions broken…
And then in the middle of it all he did it again, he got up from the
table, stripped down to his loincloth and took a basin and water and started to
go around washing the feet of those lounging at the table…
It was demeaning… it was like what Mary had done earlier in the week out
at Bethany, washing Jesus’ feet and anointing them with that expensive perfume…
But here was Jesus doing the same for us… although without the perfume… Yet he
was our leader, not a mere woman… this was the job for a servant or the
youngest in the group… not the one who had been hailed as the one who had come
in the name of the Lord when we had entered Jerusalem.
I said as much… suggested that John should have got up and taken over as
the youngest one there… And I said to Jesus “Master, what do you think you are
doing… You’re not going to wash my feet…”
But he said “You don’t understand now, but later you will...”
I didn’t understand, and I still don’t, so I said “No, you’re not
washing my feet!”
And he said “Unless I wash you, you can have nothing to do with me.”
So I said “Ok then – don’t just wash my feet but… but wash me head to
toe!’
Andrew laughed across the table and said, “Typical! Simon the Rock…
always from one extreme to another…”
I was about to answer him, but then Jesus said something about those who
have had a bath only need to wash their feet…
I haven’t a clue what that’s supposed to mean… But he then said that not
everyone there was clean… And while people were trying to working out what he
meant by that, or who he meant by that, he got dressed again and took his place
at the table.
That’s when he asked “Do you understand what I have done for you?”
None of us had a clue, but he then said he was setting us an example and
that those who were greatest should be ready to serve others… as he had served
us… I think that was because we’d all been arguing earlier about who would be
Jesus’ right hand man when the revolution happened… But instead of being
chastened it started a debate about who was most ready to serve…
And as if that wasn’t enough he also said that not only was not everyone
clean, but that someone who had shared bread with him would betray him… So again
that set everyone wondering what that was about and who he was referring to… So
I said to John, who was lounging beside Jesus, to ask him who he meant… I
didn’t hear exactly what Jesus said but a moment or two later Judas got up and
left in a marked manner…
But by that stage the dinner table had descended into chaos… Some still
talking about who was the greatest or who was most willing to serve, others
saying that they would never betray the master… And I was probably the loudest…
I said that I was ready to go with him
to prison and even to death, if that is what he was getting at when he referred
to his broken body and poured out blood…
But he then said: “I tell you, Simon… my Rock, before the cock crows tomorrow
morning, you will deny three times that you even know me.”
Deny knowing him!? Never! There are
times when I don’t think that HE knows ME… understands me…
But then I really don’t understand
him at times… Indeed, even after 3 years I wonder if I really DO know him…
Selah
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