A Holy Week Pilgrimage at the National Gallery London: Days 4-5
Is there actually a Holy Wednesday? What happened that day? And what is Maundy Thursday?
“The Son of Man indeed goes just as it is written of Him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been good for that man if he had not been born.”
Matthew 26:24 (NKJV)
Holy Week Events Attributed to Day 4
Well, it looks like I may have jumped ahead a little bit yesterday. Judas negotiating with the chief priests to betray Jesus for thirty silver coins may have actually happened today. Sometimes Wednesday of Holy Week is actually called “Spy Wednesday” because of this.
I didn’t see any paintings of Judas Iscariot at the National Gallery. (Oh, wait! There was one with him at a Last Supper scene…maybe we’ll get to that today.)
But California, my home state, has an illuminated manuscript miniature of Judas accepting the thirty pieces of silver on display at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.
The topic of Judas accepting the money, I am learning, is certainly not as well-represented as Judas betraying Jesus with a kiss in the Garden.
Here’s the manuscript painting:
Not a whole lot else is attributed to Wednesday of Holy Week in the Bible, which gives me the idea to jump ahead a little bit and divide Maundy Thursday, or Holy Thursday, into two posts. Perhaps today I can discuss the Passover Dinner with the Disciples and tomorrow we can delve further into the weight of Gethsemane and the arrest of Jesus.
“And He sent out two of His disciples and said to them, ‘Go into the city, and a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water: follow him. Wherever he goes in, say to the master of the house, “The Teacher says, ‘Where is the guest room in which I may eat the Passover with My disciples?’ Then he will show you a large upper room, furnished and prepared; there make ready for us.
So His disciples went out, and came into the city, and found it just as He had said to them; and they prepared the Passover.”
Mark 14:13-16 (NKJV)
How could Jesus have known there’d be a man carrying a pitcher of water? Just as with the donkey and foal tied up on Palm Sunday, this is another example of a Word of Knowledge from the Holy Spirit.
“Jesus’s physical mind was not any more capable of knowing all of these details through natural means than were the minds of any of His disciples. Jesus knew these things through His spirit [and] it’s amazing how specific this word of knowledge was. Many people carried pitchers of water, but they were usually women. It was unusual for a man to be carrying a pitcher of water.” Plus, they had to follow him directly to a house with a large upper room already prepared and furnished.1 And it all happened just as He said.
Holy Week Events Attributed to Day 5 (Holy Thursday or Maundy Thursday)
The Lord’s Supper, or Last Supper. Jesus shared the Passover Meal with His disciples, instituted the Eucharist (or Communion), and gave the Greatest Commandment—to love one another.
Jesus washed His disciples’ feet
Jesus predicts Peter’s denial of Him
The lead up to Judas’s betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane
A Maundy Thursday Remembrance, March 2024
“Now, before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.
And supper being ended, the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot…to betray Him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself. After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.”
John 13:1-5
(John 13:32)
My friend Jean joined me for the Maundy Thursday service at HTB Queen’s Gate and I was glad. There were little nibbles prior to the service right there in the sanctuary. I remember black olives and a cheesy bite of something. Cherry tomatoes. It was all delicious.
During this three month stay in London, God had made it clear to me that HTB would be my “home” church. HTB Brompton, specifically. But there were other HTB sites and HTB Queen’s Gate in South Kensington was one I occasionally visited for a more contemplative and “drawing in” experience. If there was a particularly Holy day recognized, like a Christmas Eve service, I had learned that HTB Queen’s Gate would bring the quiet beauty and sense of the sacred I was after.
Plus, Brompton wasn’t offering a Maundy Thursday service, so options were limited anyway.
I just wanted to experience as much as I could of the wondrous Lenten season in London, even if I wasn’t sure what Maundy Thursday was. Lenten season in London is a big deal. A beautiful big deal.
But, what exactly was Maundy Thursday? I hadn’t a clue and didn’t know what to expect. Is it even an occasion anywhere in the United States? I don’t believe so. I’d certainly never experienced it and I’d been attending church since before I was born. Maybe some of the grander churches in the U.S. honored this Holy Thursday?
As the gentle violin and piano and selected singers began, I soon better understood.
When the introductory music faded, the vicar explained to us that tonight we would be contemplating and honoring Jesus’s last meal with His disciples at the Last Supper. This was Jesus intentionally creating space to be with his best friends on earth. Since coming to Jerusalem this week, Jesus had cleansed His Father’s temple of traders; He had healed the sick; He’d called out and met the challenges of the hypocritical Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, etc.; He’d loved the people up-close on the Mount of Olives one last time; giving, giving, and giving. Now it was time to gather His disciples together and prepare them for what was about to happen. He wanted the opportunity to explain again that He was about to go but that He would come again. He said, “Greater love has no man than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”
He needed to instruct them. There would be a New Covenant now, borne of what He was about to do. The Holy Spirit would be coming to them and the Passover would be viewed with fresh awareness. There would be a new standard set first with them, and then for all believers, that bread and wine would be eaten and drunk in regular celebration “In remembrance of Me.” There would be persecution and death. He said, “I’m going.” But then He said, “Abide in Me.” And there was a new commandment (they’d heard it before, but not in this sort of setting): “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” He told them that they were chosen and appointed and that they should bear fruit. And they were told they could ask anything of the Father and He’d give it!
And He had so much more to say to them. He LONGED to tell them even more. But He knew they could not bear it now and would require the Holy Spirit to lead them into all truth.
He most of all wanted the opportunity to tell them how much He loved them and how much His Father loved them. And He needed to reassure them of this over and over again.
Sitting next to Jean in that marvelous space with its high, neogothic ceilings, candle light, and with our seats arranged intimately in semicircles facing in toward the center aisle of the church, singing softly the hymns of the evening , and listening to the different speakers read the Bible accounts of that Passover meal in the upper room, I found that I was beginning to weep.
I had never thought about the Last Supper in such an intentional and focused way before. The thought of Jesus so desiring this intimate and sacred last time with His disciples sent brand new waves of understanding about Jesus’s tremendous love rolling through me.
It was He who was about to be brutalized and murdered and He knew it. Yet His primary thoughts were towards His disciples. I felt like I was being given the opportunity to feel the love in the Upper Room and I was undone by it.
The tears continued. Jean put an arm around me as we listened together.
The disciples, not understanding that this was to be their last time together with Jesus like this, decided it was a good idea to start to squabble over who was the greatest.
Jesus didn’t criticize or judge. He just got up, replaced His garments with a towel, and began to wash His disciples’ feet. Including Judas’s feet. I can imagine the hush that came over the room at the sight of the Master bowing low before them, cleaning away the caked-on dirt from their soles. And from their souls.
I could so picture—and feel—the visual lesson in humility—and love—that the disciples were receiving that the tears now began to run in streams down my face.
The readings and teachings finished shortly thereafter. Jean had to go but along the side aisle of the church, the opportunity to have our feet washed by the vicar and other speakers would now occur should we desire.
I did.
I took a seat along the wall of the side aisle and took off my boots which sent a strange sense of vulnerability through me to have my feet bare like that. My tears slowed as I took a seat in front of the vicar when it was my turn. He was bowed low before me as he placed my feet into the basin of water between us and began to wash them with a towel. My heart immediately opened and I imagined Jesus in the vicar’s place, washing my feet, and I openly wept. There was nothing to be done about it. I could sense that the vicar was praying for me and I was filled with so much gratitude for him, for the service, for a new understanding of Maundy Thursday, and especially for a deep and new revelation of the love of Jesus, which sent Him to the cross for me the following day.
Something transformative happened during that service for me. Jesus—and His great love—became more real to me somehow.
Why don’t we here in America recognize and honor Maundy Thursday? Or do we?
“Eucharist” by Nicolas Poussin at the National Gallery
This was the only work I found at the National Gallery depicting the Last Supper and/or a scene from Holy/Maundy Thursday.
It’s a significant work of art, just acquired by the National Gallery a month or so before I viewed it in 2024. It shows the moment when Christ blesses the bread and the cup, instituting the Eucharist, or Holy Communion, in remembrance of what He was about to do. (Judas is likely the one in the shadows on the left, the only one not looking at Jesus.)
Poussin was considered a leading French Classicist artist for his use of restrained and symmetrical architectural settings, historical fidelity (e.g., the use of triclinia, or Roman reclining couches), structured compositions creating balance and harmony, restrained emotional expression, restrained lighting avoiding the dramatic chiaroscuro (light and shadow) of his Baroque contemporaries, and a prioritization of rationality over emotion, timelessness over immediacy, and scholarly appeal.
Interestingly, I learned today that this painting was acquired by the National Gallery through a UK Governmental program called the Acceptance in Lieu Scheme whereby individuals are allowed to settle inheritance tax or estate duty by transferring important cultural, artistic, or historical objects to public ownership. “In lieu of” paying their obligation to the government in cash, individuals can settle their debt by giving objects or artworks of major cultural significance and value to Britain, ensuring that these great works of art remain within the UK.
Today’s Bible Passages
Matthew 26:17-29
Mark 14:12-31
Luke 22:3-23
John 13:1-38; 14:1—17:26
Contemplations from Today
Luke 22:15: “Some people have argued that this was not the Passover meal, because it was not the fourteenth but the thirteenth day of the first month. However, this scripture, along with Luke 22:13, makes it very clear that Jesus did eat the Passover meal with His disciples. He simply partook of the Passover one day early because at the time the actual Passover meal was eaten, Jesus had become our Passover Lamb” 3[italics mine].
Luke 22:20: “…[I]t is entirely wrong to place more importance on the elements [the bread and wine of communion] themselves than on what they represent…Jesus made a point of saying that this Supper was for the purpose of remembering Him. A person who uses a hamburger and a soft drink for the elements of the Lord’s Supper and really communes with the Lord about His death would honor the Lord much more than someone who had the correct elements yet missed their meaning.”4
Have you seen the movie The Jesus Revolution? It’s a groovy true story.
I think Jesus would really approve of this particular scene especially.
Andrew Wommack. Free Online Bible Commentary. awmi.net/reading/online-bible-commentary. (Note at Mark 14:13)
John 13:3. “John was emphasizing that Jesus knew the full extent of who He was and the power He had been given, to dramatize just how much Jesus humbled Himself when He washed His disciples’ feet.” Andrew Wommack. Free Online Bible Commentary. awmi.net/reading/online-bible-commentary.
Andrew Wommack. Free Online Bibe Commentary. awmi.net/reading/online-bible-commentary. (Note at Luke 22:15)
Andrew Wommack. Free Online Bibe Commentary. awmi.net/reading/online-bible-commentary. (Note at Luke 22:20) I just really liked this quote about the hamburger and soft drink.
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
John 13:34-35 (NKJV)
Your description of the service you attended in London was beautiful. I can only imagine how moving it must have been.
Some churches still celebrate Maundy Thursday. I went to a Lutheran grade school and we did; perhaps it’s more connected to the Catholic and/or Lutheran churches.
I smile because I came across some teachings years ago that showed how the Last Supper Jesus shared with his disciples was more likely on Wednesday night, with his crucifixion actually occurring on Thursday… 😮!
Oh, what a grenade that would throw into hundreds of years of church history! It’s a fascinating discussion, but people do love their traditions.
Regardless, I appreciate the deep reverence that some still have for this season and your post was lovely. The important, central focus of it all is still Jesus and his amazing love for us!