"Never to bid good-bye
Or lip me the softest call,
Or utter a wish for a word, while I
Saw morning harden upon the wall,
Unmoved, unknowing
That your great going
Had place that moment, and altered all."
- Thomas Hardy, The Going
Parting is such sweet sorrow, until the tears and terror of knowing a going shall never return.
We are creatures of attachment. When it is severed, is anyone of us ever ready for the moment that a loved one is gone forever?
For one, I cannot even bear the thought of someone dear in life will one day be beyond my reach. However real and inevitable that is as a matter of fact, the mere possibility that someone like that will be gone from the daily existence that assumes his or her very presence within it is simply beyond what my heart can hold. I will never be ready for that. I will be shattered like a mess in reliance on God for the healing I know I cannot begin. How can anyone ever be ready for something like that?
The farewell discourse given by Jesus to his disciples immediately after the conclusion of the Last Supper in Jerusalem, the night before his crucifixion, spans across four chapters in the book of John.
In the first discourse (John 14:1-31), Jesus states that he will be going to the Father and will come back so do not let your hearts be troubled. He commanded love, comforted the disciples, promised to send the Holy Spirit and bestowed God's peace of true shalom at a time of Pax Romana under short lived worldly peace founded on bloodshed and military might.
The second discourse (John 15:1-17) reveals the true vine that emerges from the people of Israel. Against the Old Testament background of Israel as a vine (Psalm 80:8-16, Isaiah 5:1-7, Jeremiah 2:21, Ezekiel 15:1-8, 17:5-10 and 19:10-14, Hosea 10:1), Jesus was the reality of which Israel was but the type. He is the fulfilment of what Israel as a nation could not. The Messianic kingdom prophesied by Isaiah is born out of the stem of Jesse which in contrast to the razed forest of Assyria, shall live on in the remnant, the house of David and one man as its growing point (Isaiah 11).
By the third discourse (John 15:18-16:33), Jesus has prepared his disciples for the hate and hostility of this world. It deals with the moral order or spiritual disorder that's apart from God. There is also assurance that even though "in a little while, you will see me no more...you will weep and mourn when the world rejoices" but the "grief will turn to joy" (John 16:19-20). The passion and resurrection will dawn with their full implication on the disciples to reveal a time when they would gain peace in a hostile world through Christ's victory over it (John 16:33).
Hence the farewell prayer in the fourth discourse (John 17:1-26) is by far the longest prayer in any of the gospels. Jesus, at the end of his final goodbye to his disciples and at the start of his passion, gave account to his ministry and petition for the work to come as he prayed for himself, his disciples and all believers in the world. The prayer in glory is such that faith leads to unity which leads to others in faith. This circle of unity must be a completed cycle and must be shown to the world for it to complete so that all will see Christ's glory, the glory that the Father has given Him because God loved Him before the creation of this world and yet, God so loved the world that He gave his only Son (John 3:16).
The Holy Week commemorates a messiah and messenger sent forth in search of his people who turned away. Taking on the form of a servant and being found in human form, Christ emptied himself and humbled himself unto death (Philippians 2:7-8) in order to share our human existence and bear its ultimate burden so that through the crushing weight of death, we may be saved. It is estimated that the cross, as we know it, weighs about 136 kilograms. The crossbar alone is estimated to be around 32-41 kilograms. So as Oliver O'Donovans puts it, the Holy Week is a challenge for our imaginations. The tortured Son of Man, bleeding and dying on the cross, attracts to himself a host of images. He also attracts a host of other images since.
In the age we live in, the daily violence that ravages the Middle East is televised on screens as accepted news. The list of genocides goes on from the Albigensian crusades in the twelve hundreds to the holocaust of the Second World War, to the mass-graves of Srebrenica, the pogroms of Rwanda and the now accepted news of the Gaza genocide. "Those dreadful histories with which, in our lifetime, we have become implicated in flood upon us. And we can lose our view of that one event which acts as a beacon by which to navigate them." Precisely, it is for human beings who are capable of these images that Christ died for us in a most grotesque and gruesome torture.
Yet before setting himself to do this, Jesus laid out, in four fulsome discourse, a farewell to his disciples and a farewell prayer for all believers who may come to know Him. This happened on the night before the great judgement which reconciled humankind to one another and to God. It was on this night that Jesus held a feast of Passover to which he invited his disciples. Passover is a household feast, a feast of the family, of intimates — a fraternal occasion.
So on Maundy Thursday, we are summoned to a spiritual banquet just like the Last Supper that Jesus held in what many historians believed to be in 33 AD. Like Judas, we have a decision about what role to play as Oliver O'Donovans challenged us. "We may accept the dangerous favour offered us at the altar, and then endure as we find ourselves called to a fate like his. For Jesus has nothing else to give us, only the bread and the cup which are his destiny of suffering; to be put in the wrong when we are in the wrong, accused when we cannot defend ourselves, caused to suffer on account of other people’s bitterness; and all that we are invited simply to accept, for the sake of him who suffered for us.
We may receive it and accept its terms gladly, as a token of the care of him who knows the truth of our situation, sustains us and finally vindicates us. Or we may take what is offered and walk away, out into the night, far from the fraternity, and make ourselves the judge of God."
Whatever the choice, do so knowing the character of Christ's farewell on Maundy Thursday.
The word ‘maundy’ in Middle English comes from the Latin word "mandatum", meaning mandate or command that originated from the phrase "mandatum novum" that means new commandment. Beyond a message of service as Jesus breaks bread and pours wine over a meal as the sacrificial lamb for men, he commands us to love. The words in John 13:33-34 are:
“My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come. A new commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another"
The farewell discourse then followed from hereon.
Today we have the French exit and the Irish goodbye.
For someone who will return, Jesus bid farewell the way He did on the night before crucifixion and to those who are not ready to bid him farewell. If this does not speak of love, I am not sure what speaks more of love than this?
With thanks and acknowledgement to Oliver O'Donovan's article "Only the victim could be the judge: Meditations on the betrayal of Joseph and the trial of Jesus for Holy Week" (https://www.abc.net.au/religion/oliver-odonovan-holy-week-betrayal-of-joseph-and-trial-of-jesus/105176488?fbclid=IwY2xjawJtP19leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHlqQ-C5Jhylu9tHs9XgUlzbNCA96NACL5knXE7IJth9uwZ6Hd9Y62mI23_kC_aem_lUeBsjHEtofX-NC7gYRR3Q).
