The Word is Very Near You: Feasts and Festivals. John Pridmore

has ‘entered’ Judas and he does what Satan requires of him. But what Satan requires of Judas is also what Jesus tells him to do. If Judas was angry, that was not the whole story. That story is unfinished and its loose ends remain. Better to live with the loose ends than to try to tie them up too soon.

Maundy Thursday

      Exodus 12.1–4 (5–10), 11–14; 1 Corinthians 11.23–26; John 13.1–17, 31b–35

      GETTING DOWN

      On the 5th July 1941 the troopship HMS Anselm was struck by a torpedo. The torpedo hit the hold on C deck where scores of men were sleeping. The hold swiftly began filling with water. The ship was soon listing. At any moment it might sink. The stairway had been blown away. There was no means of escape for all those trapped. At the entrance above, a man in a dressing gown joined the others looking down into the hold. He asked to be lowered into the hold. They tried to dissuade him, but he insisted. He said that he must be with his men. His name was Herbert Pugh. He was an airforce chaplain. So they lowered him into the hold. Those above saw him praying with the doomed men. Then they fled to the boats. Moments later the ship plunged and sank. Herbert Pugh was awarded, posthumously, the George Cross.

      One image from that story has stayed with me since I first heard it – the image of one who chose to go down into dark waters and to let those waters engulf him. Jesus chose to do that when he was baptized. He sealed that choice on the first Maundy Thursday, when he refused a last chance to save himself, when he consented to go down into the dark waters of our sins and our sorrows and to let those waters close over him.

      In Holy Week we are with Jesus on his journey. That journey began long before Palm Sunday; long before he began his ministry; long before he was born or conceived. The journey of Jesus began in the heart of God before time began. From all eternity, God was in Christ on his way to win us back to himself. ‘Love came down at Christmas’ – yes, but that love was coming down all along. That is what love does. Love comes down. That is love’s trajectory.

      Tonight we watch one moment on the journey that began in the heart of God. Jesus gets down. All along, that has been the direction of his journey; the journey that took him from his father’s side, the journey that brought him to our broken earth, the journey that brought him to birth at Bethlehem, the journey that dragged him down beneath those lethal waters at his baptism, the journey that led him to Jerusalem, the journey that brings him tonight to a dirty floor, where dogs scavenge for scraps, where slaves kneel to wash filthy feet.