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Holy Week & Easter Sunday: We Begin in the Dark

April 8, 2020

And Love Will Rise Up and Call Us By NameImage: And Love Will Rise Up and Call Us By Name
© Jan Richardson

If we have grown weary in this season. If we have become overwhelmed. If we are living with fear or anxiety or worry about what lies ahead. If the swirl of Holy Week has become intense. If time is moving strangely. If grief has been a traveling companion. If the ground beneath us has given way. If resurrection seems less than certain.

—Jan Richardson, from Holy Saturday: Breathe
The Painted Prayerbook, March 2018

Beloved friends, I hardly know what to say in this Holy Week except that my heart is with you, along with my prayers. This year, more than ever, I am mindful that John’s Gospel tells us Mary Magdalene went to the tomb while it was still dark and found it empty. As we move through the shadows cast by COVID-19, I have gathered up a collection of reflections I’ve written for Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. I offer them with so many blessings and with deep gratitude for you and the graces you bear. In the darkness and in the day, may the risen Christ meet you with solace and hope.

Holy/Maundy Thursday

Holy Thursday: At the Table, Speaking of Love
Holy Thursday: Blessing the Bread, the Cup
Holy Thursday: Take a Blessing
Day 38/Holy Thursday: Cup of the New Covenant
Holy Thursday: Feet and Food


Good Friday

Good Friday: Speaking, Still
Good Friday: Still
Good Friday: A Blessing for What Abides
Day 39/Good Friday: They Took the Body of Jesus
Good Friday: In Which We Get Nailed


Holy Saturday

Holy Saturday: Anticipate Resurrection
Holy Saturday: Breathe
Holy Saturday: Vigil
Holy Saturday: In the Breath, Another Breathing
Day 40/Holy Saturday: Therefore I Will Hope
Holy Saturday: The Art of Enduring
Holy Saturday: A Day Between


Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday: Where Resurrection Begins
Easter Sunday: This Is Not the End
Easter Sunday: While It Was Still Dark
Easter Sunday: A Blessing for the Rising
Easter Sunday: Seen
Easter Sunday: Out of the Garden


Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image “And Love Will Rise Up and Call Us By Name,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible.

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in art, blessings, Easter, lectionary, sacred time | 15 Comments »

Epiphany Day: If You Could See the Journey Whole

January 4, 2020

TheWiseOnesImage: The Wise Ones © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels for Epiphany Day: Matthew 2.1-12

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea,
wise men from the East came to Jerusalem.
—Matthew 2.1

Friends, as Epiphany Day draws near, I want to share a blessing with you that first appeared here at The Painted Prayerbook some years ago. In the turning of the sacred year, this day of mystery and light continues to be a favorite of mine. I pray that no matter how hidden your path may become, you will be attended with mercies and wonders in every step. Blessings to you!

For Those Who Have Far to Travel
A Blessing for Epiphany

If you could see
the journey whole,
you might never
undertake it,
might never dare
the first step
that propels you
from the place
you have known
toward the place
you know not.

Call it
one of the mercies
of the road:
that we see it
only by stages
as it opens
before us,
as it comes into
our keeping,
step by
single step.

There is nothing
for it
but to go,
and by our going
take the vows
the pilgrim takes:

to be faithful to
the next step;
to rely on more
than the map;
to heed the signposts
of intuition and dream;
to follow the star
that only you
will recognize;

to keep an open eye
for the wonders that
attend the path;
to press on
beyond distractions,
beyond fatigue,
beyond what would
tempt you
from the way.

There are vows
that only you
will know:
the secret promises
for your particular path
and the new ones
you will need to make
when the road
is revealed
by turns
you could not
have foreseen.

Keep them, break them,
make them again;
each promise becomes
part of the path,
each choice creates
the road
that will take you
to the place
where at last
you will kneel

to offer the gift
most needed—
the gift that only you
can give—
before turning to go
home by
another way.

—Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons


P.S. And Merry Women’s Christmas, too! My new retreat for Women’s Christmas (which some folks in Ireland and beyond celebrate on Epiphany/January 6) has just been released. It’s a retreat that you can download at no cost and use anytime you wish throughout the year. For a link to the retreat and more about Women’s Christmas, click the Wise Women image or the title below. You are most welcome to share the retreat gift with others.

Wise Women Also Came
Women’s Christmas 2020: What the Light Shines Through


Using Jan’s artwork…
To use the image “The Wise Ones,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Advent special! During this season, subscribe to Jan Richardson Images and receive unlimited digital downloads for use in worship for only $125 per year (regularly $165). Click Subscribe to sign up. (Extended through Epiphany Day/January 6!)

Using Jan’s words…
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in art, blessings, Epiphany, Gospel of Matthew, lectionary, mystery | 2 Comments »

Easter Sunday: Where Resurrection Begins

April 21, 2019

Image: While It Was Still Dark © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Easter Sunday:
John 20.1-18 or Luke 24.1-12

John’s Gospel tells us it was still dark when Mary Magdalene arrived at the tomb and found it empty. I love that detail—that Easter began in the shadows, well before sunrise. This is the way resurrection works: it gathers itself in the darkness, beginning in such secrecy and hiddenness that when it happens, it can be difficult for us to recognize it at first.

This seems to be how it was for the Magdalene on that first Easter morning. Perhaps it was because of her tears or the early hour that she mistook Jesus for a gardener, but the truth is that despite the promises Jesus had made about his return, nothing could have prepared Mary to see him standing before her, speaking her name.

With the sound of her name came recognition, and with recognition came a choice: would Mary attempt to hold on to Christ and the life she had known, or would she accept his call to leave the empty tomb and proclaim what she had seen?

We are here because of the choice Mary Magdalene made on that Easter morning. As Easter arrives once again, what threshold will we choose to cross, that we may tell what we have seen?

The Magdalene’s Blessing
For Easter Day

You hardly imagined
standing here,
everything you ever loved
suddenly returned to you,
looking you in the eye
and calling your name.

And now
you do not know
how to abide this hole
in the center
of your chest,
where a door
slams shut
and swings open
at the same time,
turning on the hinge
of your aching
and hopeful heart.

I tell you,
this is not a banishment
from the garden.

This is an invitation,
a choice,
a threshold,
a gate.

This is your life
calling to you
from a place
you could never
have dreamed,
but now that you
have glimpsed its edge,
you cannot imagine
choosing any other way.

So let the tears come
as anointing,
as consecration,
and then
let them go.

Let this blessing
gather itself around you.

Let it give you
what you will need
for this journey.

You will not remember
the words—
they do not matter.

All you need to remember
is how it sounded
when you stood
in the place of death
and heard the living
call your name.

—Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons

Easter bonus: Some years ago, Gary and I created a video that intertwines my series The Hours of Mary Magdalene (inspired by the life and legends of the Magdalene and by illuminated books of hours from the Middle Ages) with his gorgeous and haunting song “Mary Magdalena,” which appears on his CD House of Prayer. I would love to share it with you this Easter. To view/listen, click the icon below, and it will take you to the video on the Vimeo website.



For previous reflections for Easter Sunday, visit Easter Sunday: This Is Not the End.

Using Jan’s artworkTo use the image “While It Was Still Dark,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in art, blessings, Easter, lectionary, sacred time | 6 Comments »

Lent 1: In the Desert of the Beloved

March 9, 2019
 Image: Desert of the Beloved © Jan Richardson
Reading from the Gospels, Lent 1, Year C: Luke 4.1–13

How else to enter into the forty-day place that lay ahead of him? How else to cross into the wilderness where he would have no food, no community, nothing that was familiar to him—and, to top it off, would have to wrestle with the devil? How else, but to go into that landscape with the knowledge of his own name: Beloved.

—Jan Richardson, from Lent 1: Beloved Is Where We Begin
The Painted Prayerbook, February 2016

We have traveled through many Lenten seasons here at The Painted Prayerbook; this one will be our twelfth. For our first Sunday in Lent this time around, I wanted to share a blessing from one of those seasons past. I hold you in prayer and gratitude as we cross into whatever terrain these days will hold. May we enter with the name Beloved echoing in our heart.

Beloved Is Where We Begin

If you would enter
into the wilderness,
do not begin
without a blessing.

Do not leave
without hearing
who you are:
Beloved,
named by the One
who has traveled this path
before you.

Do not go
without letting it echo
in your ears,
and if you find
it is hard
to let it into your heart,
do not despair.
That is what
this journey is for.

I cannot promise
this blessing will free you
from danger,
from fear,
from hunger
or thirst,
from the scorching
of sun
or the fall
of the night.

But I can tell you
that on this path
there will be help.

I can tell you
that on this way
there will be rest.

I can tell you
that you will know
the strange graces
that come to our aid
only on a road
such as this,
that fly to meet us
bearing comfort
and strength,
that come alongside us
for no other cause
than to lean themselves
toward our ear
and with their
curious insistence
whisper our name:

Beloved.
Beloved.
Beloved.

 —Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons

For previous reflections for the first Sunday of Lent, including reflections on the related gospel readings:

Lent 1: Where the Breath Begins
First Sunday of Lent: And the Angels Waited
Day 2: Up from the Water
Day 3: Into the Wilderness
Day 4: With the Wild Beasts
Lent 1: A Blessing for the Wilderness
Lent 1: Into the Wilderness
Lent 1: A River Runs through Him
Lent 1: Discernment and Dessert in the Desert


Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image “Desert of the Beloved,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in art, blessings, Gospel of Luke, lectionary, Lent | 5 Comments »

Ash Wednesday: Dreaming in the Dust

March 6, 2019

Image: Ash Wednesday Cross © Jan Richardson

Readings for Ash Wednesday: Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 51:1-17;
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

We are entering the season that begins with a smudge. That smudge is a testimony to what survives. It is a witness to what abides when everything seems lost. It is a sign that what we know and love may, for a time, be reduced to dust, but it does not disappear. We belong to the God who well knows what to do with dust, who sees the dust as a place to dream anew, who creates from it again and again.

—Jan Richardson, from Ash Wednesday: What God Can Do with Dust
The Painted Prayerbook, February 2018

Friends, as we enter into Lent, I want to share this Ash Wednesday blessing again. It’s been six years since I first wrote it, during what would turn out to be my last Lent with Gary. I have found that the question the blessing holds—”Did you not know what the Holy One can do with dust?”—is a good one to ask myself anew each time Ash Wednesday comes around. And I can say now: I know what God can do with dust. And I am learning still.

As this season begins, what blessing do you need to claim from the ashes?

Blessing the Dust
For Ash Wednesday

All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners

or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—

did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?

This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.

This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.

This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.

So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are

but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made
and the stars that blaze
in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.

—Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons


Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image “Ash Wednesday Cross,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible.

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in art, blessings, lectionary, Lent | 8 Comments »

Easter 2: Still Breathing

April 4, 2018

Image: Into the Wound © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Easter 2: John 20.19-31

The wounds of the risen Christ are not a prison;
they are a passage.

—from Easter 2: Into the Wound
The Painted Prayerbook, March 2008

After Gary died, when people would ask me how I was doing, I would often say, I’m still breathing. It seemed no small miracle that I could keep doing this when my heart was shattered. It seems a miracle still.

So I can just imagine the disciples on the evening of Jesus’ resurrection, gathered together in their bewilderment and sorrow, their own hearts shattered, the breath knocked from them. They did not yet understand the resurrection that had come to meet them in their grief. Then suddenly, John’s Gospel tells us, Jesus was standing among them, showing his brokenhearted friends his own wounds, breathing the Spirit into their ache.

The disciples rejoiced, John tells us in his account of this evening. I can imagine this, too. I can easily conceive the elation that came with the return of breath—the breath of the beloved, the breath in one’s own chest. I can envision the joy that came with the realization that when wounds persist, as they did for Christ in his resurrection, they do not have to be a final word, a mark of failure; they can become a place of meeting, a portal, a passage.

As we enter into this Easter season, how will we allow the wounds of the risen Christ to meet our own wounds? How will we let him breathe into us anew? Where will we let this lead us?

For this second Sunday of Easter, I’ve gathered together a collection of reflections I’ve written on this passage from John’s Gospel across the past decade. As we move through these days, may we breathe deeply in the company of Christ, who breathes in us and with us still.

Easter 2: Blessing of Breathing
Easter 2: Into the Wound
Easter 2: The Secret Room
Easter 2: The Illuminated Wound


Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image “Into the Wound,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in art, blessings, Easter, Gospel of John, lectionary | 1 Comment »

Easter Sunday: This Is Not the End

March 29, 2018

Image: Risen © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Easter Sunday, Year B:
John 20.1-18 or Mark 16.1-8

If you are looking
for a blessing,
do not linger
here.

—from Easter Sunday: A Blessing for the Rising
The Painted Prayerbook, March 2016

This is the place we have journeyed toward all these weeks, the destination we have been bound for all these days—more than forty now, if you count the Sundays. I am partial to John’s telling of the story of Easter morning, and of what happens between Mary Magdalene and Jesus here at the garden tomb—how at the sound of her name, Mary’s weeping gives way to seeing, to recognition, to the astounding joy of resurrection.

I would want to linger here, to stay and savor this miracle of reunion and return. But we know that Jesus asks something other of Mary Magdalene. Though this may be a garden, this is not a place to put down roots. It is a place of calling, of consecration, of sending as Jesus urges the Magdalene to go and tell what she has seen.

Mary has to choose whether she wants this calling, this consecration; she has to decide whether she truly wants to be sent from this place. I feel a catch in my own chest in this moment of decision, this threshold that will change everything from here.

This day, this empty tomb: this has been our destination all this time. But we see, with Mary Magdalene, that this is not a place to stop. This is not the end toward which we have been traveling.

This is the beginning.

* * *

For this day of beginning, I have gathered together a collection of reflections I’ve written for Easter Sunday across the past decade. I offer these with deep gratitude to you for traveling this path with me, and with blessings and hope for the road that leads us on from here.

Easter Sunday: While It Was Still Dark
Easter Sunday: A Blessing for the Rising
Easter Sunday: Seen
Easter Sunday: Out of the Garden

I also want to share with you a song that Gary wrote for this day. It’s called “I Am With You Always,” and it’s from a CD he had nearly finished at the time of his death. Particularly on this side of his dying, the song comes as an achingly beautiful reminder that even in the heartrending leave-takings we endure in this life, we are not alone; we are accompanied always. To listen, click the play button in the audio player below. (For my email subscribers: if you don’t see the player below, click here to go to The Painted Prayerbook, where you can view it in this post.)

O my friends. Happy Easter!


Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image “Risen,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in art, blessings, Easter, Gospel of John, lectionary, sacred time | 7 Comments »

Holy Saturday: Breathe

March 28, 2018

Holy Saturday IIImage: Holy Saturday II © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Holy Saturday:
Matthew 27.57-66 or John 19.38-42

Holy Saturday is not a day for answers. It is a threshold day, a day that lies between, and so resists any easy certainty. It is a day of waiting, of remembering to breathe, of willing ourselves to turn to one another when grief lays hold of us.

—from Holy Saturday: A Day Between
The Painted Prayerbook, March 2008

Just in case the days have blurred together, it’s Saturday, she writes. I thought you might not know that.

On the day I receive these words in a message from my friend Peg, I am in a hospital room, keeping vigil for Gary. It has been nine days since the surgery from which he will never wake. It is, as it turns out, the halfway point of our vigil.

It’s Saturday.

On that day, Peg’s words arrive as a gift, something solid amid the wrenching fear and aching hope. On that threshold, her words remind me to breathe, to remember that others are breathing with me, and with Gary; that we are not alone.

It’s Saturday.

We have journeyed far in this season of Lent. We have, most likely, carried our own fears and hopes as we’ve traveled through the wilderness spaces of these past weeks. Lent generates its own field of intensity, one that seems only to quicken as we move through Holy Week, with its wild mix of celebration and grief.

And so I am here to give you the words Peg gave to me:

It’s Saturday.

If we have grown weary in this season. If we have become overwhelmed. If we are living with fear or anxiety or worry about what lies ahead. If the swirl of Holy Week has become intense. If time is moving strangely. If grief has been a traveling companion. If the ground beneath us has given way. If resurrection seems less than certain.

It’s Saturday.

This is the day that calls us to breathe. This is the day that invites us to make a space within the weariness, the fear, the ache. This is the day that beckons us to turn toward one another, and to remember we do not breathe alone.

It’s Saturday.

* * *

For this day, I’ve gathered up a collection of the reflections I’ve written for Holy Saturday across the past decade. In the waiting, in the vigil, may you be blessed.

Holy Saturday: Vigil
Holy Saturday: In the Breath, Another Breathing
Day 40/Holy Saturday: Therefore I Will Hope
Holy Saturday: The Art of Enduring
Holy Saturday: A Day Between


Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image “Holy Saturday II,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in art, blessings, Gospel of John, Gospel of Matthew, lectionary, Lent, sacred time | 6 Comments »

Good Friday: Speaking, Still

March 27, 2018

Image: Good Friday II © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Good Friday: John 18.1-19.42

Each time we stretch out our arms in love to one another, every time we open our hearts, we find the shadow of the cross, but also a glimpse of the open tomb. We are nailed indeed. It is our keenest grief, and our deepest joy.

—from Good Friday: In Which We Get Nailed
The Painted Prayerbook, March 2008

That he can still speak.

That in the depths of his pain and his dying, he does not cease to say what he needs to say.

That as he lets go, he leaves them with words of comfort and release, of lamentation and love.

Forgive. You will be with me. Behold. Forsaken. Thirst. Finished. Into your hands.

Knowing that these are his last words, but not his final ones.

That after this, there will be a span of silence. And that soon the silence will come to an end.

For now, we watch, we weep, we bear witness, we wait.

* * *

For this day, I’ve gathered together a collection of reflections I’ve written for Good Friday over the past decade. I offer them with gratitude and many blessings. Deep peace to you in these days.

Good Friday: Still
Good Friday: A Blessing for What Abides
Day 39/Good Friday: They Took the Body of Jesus
Good Friday: In Which We Get Nailed


Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image “Good Friday II,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in art, blessings, Gospel of John, lectionary, Lent, sacred time | 2 Comments »

Holy Thursday: At the Table, Speaking of Love

March 26, 2018

Image: Holy Thursday II © Jan Richardson

Readings for Holy Thursday/Maundy Thursday:
Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14; Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19;
1 Corinthians 11.23-26; John 13.1-17, 31b-35

A blessing is not finished until we let it do its work within us and then pass it along, an offering grounded in the love that Jesus goes on to speak of this night.

—from Holy Thursday: Take a Blessing
The Painted Prayerbook, April 2011

As this season has been unfolding, we’ve been talking about the wild language of Lent, noticing the words that have tugged at our attention, the vocabulary that has helped us make a map through these wilderness days.

Now the language intensifies, and the vocabulary takes on an urgent edge as it traces a path through these days of horror and of hope. Moving into Holy Week, we listen close and more closely still to the words being said now, as one does before a death.

Holy Thursday draws us to the table, in the company of Jesus and the disciples as he begins to speak his final words on this side of his dying. The disciples will not understand everything Jesus has to say, will not be able to comprehend fully the import of what he is telling them, but his words will sear themselves into their hearts nonetheless. These are the words that will return to the disciples later, in that bewildering time known as after. These are the words that will comfort them and also stir their courage for the path that waits for them still.

But for now, they, and we, are at the table. As the night unfolds, we will see that the word at the center of Jesus’ vocabulary is this:

Love.

In John’s Gospel, in what’s known as the Farewell Discourse (John 13:31-17:26), Jesus will speak the word love thirty-one times. In these final hours before his death, the word will ring repeatedly, a potent echo of the moment when Jesus rose from the Jordan River, the waters of baptism dripping from him, and heard himself named Beloved. This night, he will give this word to his friends, passing along to them the love he received at a moment he needed it most.

But Jesus does not begin there. As he works to convey what he most wants his companions to know, he does not start with spoken words. Instead, he takes a towel, a basin, water. He begins to wash the feet of his friends, the drenching itself another echo of his baptism and his naming as Beloved.

Perhaps more than anything Jesus could say this night—and he goes on to say quite a lot as he opens his heart at the table—this washing speaks to the hearts of the disciples. In this sacramental gesture, we see Jesus’ vocabulary in action. Word made flesh.

The love that Jesus enacts and speaks this night is an extraordinary gift and grace. But, as the disciples will hear Jesus say at the table, such a grace is not reserved solely for them. They are to pass the gift along: to enact this word, to live this word, to give flesh to this word in this world.

For I have set you an example, Jesus tells them as he returns to the table after washing their feet, that you also should do as I have done to you (John 13.15).

This is my commandment, Jesus will say to them a little later, as they linger at the table, that you love one another as I have loved you (John 15.12).

As we approach the table this week, how will we listen for the love that meets us there? How will we allow ourselves to receive the gift and the grace of this love? When we leave the table, how will we carry this love with us? How will we enact this love, giving it flesh for the life of the world?

Here at The Painted Prayerbook, where we are celebrating our tenth anniversary, we have traveled through Holy Week many times. In a series of posts this week, I’ll be gathering up reflections I’ve written for Holy Week across the past decade, as well as for Easter Sunday. In the links below, you’ll find a collection of reflections for Holy Thursday. I’m tucking them beside your plate, grateful for your companionship at this table. Blessings.

Holy Thursday: Blessing the Bread, the Cup
Holy Thursday: Take a Blessing
Day 38/Holy Thursday: Cup of the New Covenant
Holy Thursday: Feet and Food


Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image “Holy Thursday II,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Using Jan’s words
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Posted in art, blessings, Gospel of John, lectionary, Lent, sacred time | 2 Comments »

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