He took the nails for me!

He took the nails for me!

Last night I went to our church’s Maundy Thursday service, it was the first time I’ve ever gone to this service of darkness.  A friend and I walked into the sanctuary, and other than the candles that were lit on the speaking platform, the room was dark.  Upon arrival, each of us was handed a red square of paper, about the size of a post-it note, but without the stickiness.

Through the short service of singing and scripture being read, I finally realized I was grown up enough to pay attention to what really happened that day.  Our minister laid out the time line of the sequence of events and as closely as I can recollect them….

 

Jesus had dinner with his 12 best friends, the guys he could count on.  Hmmm.  The meal was progressing, with easy conversation, when an argument ensued about which one of them was going to have the honor of sitting beside Jesus when he finally would attain that leadership position.  But, these 12 guys still didn’t get it, they were thinking this was going to be an earthly position of power.  At this point, Jesus lovingly does something, no one at that table expected.  He takes off his robes, and grabs a basin of water and proceeds to wash their feet.  The point being, not about how great He was, but how willing He was to lower Himself to serving others!

Ok, here’s the part where I’ve just gotta ask.  Can anyone of us, just walk up to our families or friends and say, how about sitting down and taking off your shoes/socks and let me wash your feet?  Let me tell you, it isn’t an easy proposition, because we are too worried about 1 or 2 things…..either we, as the foot washer are too inhibited to ask because the washee may think we are crazy OR as the washee we are concerned that we haven’t had a pedicure in a while!

Same thing went through the minds of Jesus’ guys…..and these were guys….just in case you think it was hard for a woman to do it!  Back in their day, they wore sandals and didn’t bathe as we do today!  Anyway, this still isn’t the point of my blog today.

After supper, Jesus goes out to the garden to pray.  He knows what is coming, He really doesn’t want to do it, but He is willing to proceed if it is His father’s will.  What He doesn't want to do is be separated from His Father's sight and by accepting His Father's will, He knows that He cannot be with Him.  Back to the timeline.  Dinner wraps up and he heads to the Garden to pray.  The garden is symbolic of the downfall of human kind, so He goes to attone in a garden.  About midnight, He is betrayed by one of the 12, and is taken to Pilate.  He is spat on, cursed out, ridiculed, and slapped.  At 1:30 am, He is put into a prison cell.  About 6 am He is taken before Pilate, who thinks He is innocent and also, whose wife has had a dream about Him, which she relates to Pilate furthering his conviction that Jesus is innocent.  Pilate ships Him off to Herod, Herod mocks Him and sends Him back to Pilate.  Pilate has Him whipped by leather belts with glass, metal and stones attached to it hoping that this will satisfy those asking for His death and this is about 7:30 am.   It doesn't.  From there He is asked to drag His cross through the streets to the hill called Golgatha, which is next to the town’s dump.  He is told to lie down on this cross and is nailed through His wrists and ankles (because as it was said last night in our service, if it was through flesh, the flesh would have torn and released Him from the cross).  At 9 am, His cross is planted in the ground, where for the next 6 hours, He literally suffocates.  Each breath causes Him to have to rise up on His pinned feet to be able to breathe, thus taking His raked back over the rough splinters of the wood.  At 3 He is pronounced dead.

At this point of the service, we are asked to write down a sin (or sins) we can’t seem to let go of.  We are then instructed to go to the nearest cross (to where we are sitting) and pound the nail we are given through that sin and to the cross.  After that, we are to walk and receive communion and then go back to our seats.

Let me just tell you.  As I took that hammer and found that unoccupied place on that cross in which to pound my nail, the first thing I thought before hammering, was that I was sorry!  After receiving communion, we went back to our seats and listened, to the sounds of those nails being pounded in.  Never have I experienced what I did last night.  The sounds of those hammers hitting those nails, made it all the more personal to me!  Just before leaving, our minister then said to us, each of you have nailed your sin(s) to the cross, he then instructs us that we are to leave them there and not pick them back up, because to pick them back up means that what Jesus did for each of us was pointless!    He took the nails for me!

I always close with “looking up” today, I do so with tears in my eyes!

Barb