Maundy Thursday - what does it all mean?

Dear Friends,

As we prepare to walk through Holy Week together, I thought it might be helpful to share with you some of the rich symbolism embedded in our Maundy Thursday worship.  Because we do this liturgy only once per year, it’s easy to lose sight of the many layers of meaning it contains.

Holy Eucharist

We celebrate Holy Eucharist in almost every worship service, but this is where it started:  on the night before he died, Jesus gathered his disciples together for a meal and “instituted” Communion, identifying the bread as his body and the wine as his blood of the new covenant, and asking the disciples to continue the practice in remembrance of him.

Footwashing

In John’s gospel, there is no mention of bread and wine at the Last Supper.  Instead, Jesus washes his disciples’ feet and tells them to serve one another in the same manner.  Maundy Thursday draws its name from John’s account—“Maundy” comes from the Latin Mandatum, which means “commandment.”  Jesus gives his disciples a new commandment:  to love one another. 

The Stripping of the Altar

This ritual does not appear in the Book of Common Prayer but is practiced in many churches, including St. Andrew’s.  It symbolizes what happened to Jesus:  being stripped bare and left naked and vulnerable.  During the stripping of the altar we remove all of the usual adornments, and we also empty the aumbry, the storage space behind the altar which normally contains consecrated bread and wine.  In essence, we remove Jesus from our midst, just as the crucifixion removed him.  I wash the stripped altar in remembrance of those who washed Jesus’ body once it was taken down from the cross. The stripping of the altar can be done in silence or can be accompanied by Psalm 22, which this year Sarah Charlock will chant for us.

I pray that our worship together on Maundy Thursday will be a blessing to you and to us all.

Faithfully,

Anne