Stephanie Rische

Blogger and Writer: Capturing Stories of God's Grace

Maundy Thursday Reflections on Toilet Paper

If the grocery store shelves were any indication, you might assume that the best way to treat COVID-19 is with toilet paper and paper towels.

It shouldn’t be a surprise, I suppose: in a time when there’s so little we can control, we can at least have the tangible relief of knowing our cabinets are well stocked.

I confess that I’m a saver by nature, even under non-pandemic circumstances. I like to have backups, and backups for my backups. In this season of unknowns, I’ve been fighting my instinct to hoard everything from supplies to money to time to yes, toilet paper. How long will this last? What if we lose our jobs? What if there’s a global food shortage? What if . . . what if . . . what if?

Then I read the account of Jesus’ feet being anointed with oil during holy week, and it struck me in a new way in this Era of Empty Store Shelves.

A few days before he died, Jesus went to the home of his friends Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. And there, Mary enacted a gesture of extreme love and generosity.

Mary took a twelve-ounce jar of expensive perfume made from essence of nard, and she anointed Jesus’ feet with it, wiping his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance.

John 12:3

According to some scholars, this jar of perfume was likely Mary’s dowry—what would have been given to a suitor to pay the bride price. The perfume was essentially her past and her future . . . and she lavished it on Jesus in a single extravagant outpouring.

She didn’t hoard her gift. She didn’t measure it out, a little at a time. She didn’t cling to it as her security. She wasn’t consumed by a scarcity mindset.

She embraced the present moment and seized the sacred now. She poured out what she had—all of it.

And I wonder, what would it look like to pour out extravagant love and generosity in this season?

I want to keep my eyes and my hands and my heart open.
I want to love and give extravagantly.
I want to pour out what I’ve been given.

I’d like to think that if Jesus wanted my last roll of toilet paper, I’d give it to him.

Go peaceful
in gentleness
through the violence of these days.
Give freely.
Show tenderness
in all your ways.

God hold you,
enfold you,
and keep you wrapped around His heart.
May you be known by love.

Northumbria Community meditation

New Thursday

Perhaps no other week in the year is as full of dramatic turnarounds as this one.

Good Friday turns into Easter.
Winter melts into spring.
Sadness turns to joy.
Despair is trumped by hope.
Death is trounced by life.

Christianity is marked by those defining moments when everything changes: Creation. Exodus. Incarnation. And so it is with Maundy Thursday. On that night, the whole tilt of the earth shifted. On that night, Jesus made a proclamation that reframed all that was and all that will be:

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
—John 13:34

The English word Maundy comes from the Latin word mandatum (mandate or command), the first word of the phrase “Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos” (“A new command I give you . . .”).

The Old Testament records some 600 laws and rules. Yet in that seismic shift the night before his death, Jesus installed just one new law that covered all the old ones. Love, he said. Love, love, and more love.

But before new could replace old, before life could replace death, before Easter morning could dawn in all its glory, there had to be that long, dark night between Good Friday and resurrection.

According to Watchman Nee, the same is true for us:

God must bring us to a point—I cannot tell you how it will be, but he will do it—where, through a deep and dark experience, our natural power is touched, and fundamentally weakened, so that we no longer dare trust ourselves. . . .

We would like to have death and resurrection put together within one hour of each other. We cannot face the thought that God will keep us aside for so long a time; we cannot bear to wait. . . . All is in darkness, but it is only for a night. It must indeed be a full night, but that is all. Afterwards you will find that everything is given back to you in glorious resurrection; and nothing can measure the difference between what was before and what now is!

—Watchman Nee

Do not fear that dark night. It must come to make space for new life. For Easter. For resurrection.

Sweet Sundays, Part 3

sweet_sundays_artworkFor the first time this Easter, it struck me just how many key events of the Christian faith are crammed in the span of a single week.

Holy Week starts with a bang on Palm Sunday, replete with a triumphal entry and jubilant hosannas. The next few days are filled with action—tables are turned, miracles are witnessed, final teachings are delivered.

Then comes Maundy Thursday in all its drama…a foot washing, a supper steeped in meaning, a wrenching betrayal, prayers of agony in a garden.

Close on its heels is Good Friday, with the dark march toward Golgotha, nails pounded into flesh, the rending of a curtain.

Then, after a whirlwind of a week, Saturday comes. And with it…silence.

At the close of Salvation Week, as with Creation Week, God rested.

It is finished.

No more striving.

No more scurrying.

No more trying.

It is finished.

Even in the busiest week of the church calendar, Jesus took a day of rest.

There was nothing more he could do to add to the completed work of grace on that silent Saturday. So I wonder…what kind of audacity leads me to think there’s more I must do?

Let us rest in the completeness of that perfect day of rest.

It is finished.

{For more on my Sabbath musings, see this post and this post.}