Thread by @crazypastor

It makes sense that #MaundyThursday isn’t given attention in evangelical and moderate Christianity.

Even ones who might give a passing glance at #GoodFriday aren’t thrilled about today.

Because it’s not just about Jesus’ final meal and washing feet.

It’s about betrayal. It’s about a small group of disciples crossing from nuisances to security threats.

It’s about the Lord and Savior being arrested on false charges and taken away under police custody.

This story is anything but moderate.

And it takes a stunning side with those who are routinely ripped apart by a violent narrative from the conservatives and right-wing Christo-fascists in this country.

It’s a story about male disciples professing ad nauseum that they would NEVER betray Jesus (“Even though I must DIE, I will never forsake you,” Peter screams in Mark’s version).

Yea, no. They all run away. Some fight back in different Gospels, but they all abandon eventually.

These men will become invisible at the crucifixion, like they never existed.

From the time Jesus is taken into police custody, he will be alone until his public execution.

Women come up and watch at a distance, but the men are gone.

As this evening ends, Jesus is a brown man living under occupation who has been stripped of all rights and privileges. He is less than nothing in the eyes of the state. He is utterly alone.

There’s a reason he’s sometimes referenced as a “man of constant sorrow.”

And the #MaundyThursday worship ends with a ritual stripping of the altar.

It’s a liturgical action embodying the emptiness of this day.

I believe this is the crux of the Jesus narrative and the Christian liturgical year. It all hangs in the balance tonight.

And so, of course Christo-fascism hates today.

Because their bullshit narrative can’t imagine a Jesus who is a man of color, who is actively seen as a terrorist, who is thrown in the back of a Baltimore city “rough rider” van, like the one in which Freddie Gray was murdered.

They don’t worship a weak-ass Savior who says “those who live by the sword will die by it” — their reinvented Christ wears an American flag lapel and wholeheartedly endorses bombing black and brown people across the globe.

But that ain’t biblical, y’all.

That is Christo-fascism, and it might have infected too much of our Christian landscape — but it ain’t our story. It’s a lie.

And tonight, I think, exposes that lie and forces us to stare injustice in the face.

“Then, it was night,” John writes.

Now, it is night.

And no matter how much we hear that “Jesus isn’t political,” God CHOSE to enter into humanity in an occupied land, among the poor and oppressed.

God knew what she was doing.

May we attend, as my Eastern Orthodox siblings say.

May we pay attention to the radical narrative in which we find ourselves.

May we take this sacred story seriously.