Maundy Thursday always begins at the table and never stays there
Last year I remember Pastor Emillie gave us a poem by a favorite poet of hers, Jan Richardson. It is called Circle of Grace and captures a very particular, special piece of communion that often eludes us, and it is worth talking about on this day when we commemorate that first table.
Blessing the Bread, the Cup
Let us bless the bread that gives itself to us
with its terrible weight, its infinite grace.
with a love that makes us anew.
Let us gather around these gifts
simply given and deeply blessed.
And let us go bearing the bread, carrying the cup,
laying the table within a hungering world.
Jan Richardson’s blessing names what we are almost afraid to say aloud: the bread comes to us with a terrible weight and an infinite grace. It is not light, sentimental fellowship. It is a costly presence. This is a table already leaning toward the cross.
And yet, year after year in your reflections, what emerges most powerfully is how the table keeps reappearing as more than a ritual of remembering, but as a living, contested space.
At Creator, that space is reclaimed in small, embodied ways: hands offering bread to one another, water poured over tired feet, scripture spoken in many voices instead of one. These are not just liturgical choices; they are theological claims. They say that the commandment, mandatum novum, is not an idea to be admired but an action to be practiced. Love must take on weight. It must kneel. It must touch.
And perhaps nowhere is that clearer than in the question that keeps echoing through all the Maundy Thrusdays I have experienced. Did Jesus wash Judas’ feet?
Scholars can debate the textual history of John’s Gospel, but the deeper question is not historical. For me this question is spiritual. If the love revealed at the table excludes the betrayer, then it is no longer the love that goes to the cross. The logic of Maundy Thursday collapses unless it includes the one who will walk out into the night.
Add to this the basin and towel, which become more than symbols. They become a crisis of recognition. Who is still at the table that I might prefer to exclude?
Whose feet would I quietly pass over?
Because there are other tables being built; louder, more public ones, where the language of faith is fused with power, identity, and exclusion. Bibles wrapped in flags. Accusations hurled in the name of righteousness. Claims of persecution that echo the story of Jesus while bypassing its substance.
Here Maundy Thursday becomes clarifying.
Jesus does not seize power. He does not weaponize scripture or call down judgment; he kneels in service. Most strikingly, he offers no promise of retribution to his followers. Pastor Steve reminded us that victory over enemies comes in renewed fellowship. The risen Christ is recognized not in domination, but in the breaking of bread.
That is the quiet revolution of this night.
It exposes how easily the table can be distorted into a boundary marker, who is in, who is out, who is pure, who is condemned. And it calls the church back to something far more demanding: a table that is carried into a hungering world, not guarded against it.
This is why the stripping of the altar remains such a powerful counterpoint. Everything is taken away, ornament, certainty, even the sense of presence. What remains is absence, vulnerability, and a question: What, of all we have built, truly belongs to the love Jesus commanded?
We are living that question in real time, especially in this season of transition, of calling new leadership, of discerning what to keep and what to release. In that sense, Maundy Thursday is not just a remembrance. It is a diagnosis revealing what is essential.
And perhaps that is where Richardson’s blessing lands most deeply:
Let us go bearing the bread, carrying the cup,
laying the table within a hungering world.
Not defending it. Not branding it, but bearing it as something fragile, costly, and alive. Because the truest sign that we have understood Maundy Thursday is not what happens at the altar. It is whether, when we rise from the table, we are willing to kneel.
Tonight's Maundy Thursday service reminded me of how much Creator worship has changed our worship over the years and what we still bring to services we feel is important. Susan provided beautiful banners behind the altar. Steve and Claudia brought a pitcher and basin as a visual aid to remember foot washing. Pastor Emillie put together a liturgy meaningful to her and the congregation. Bill added to the reverence of the night with his inspired playing.
This is a reflection of the love Jesus commanded.
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