It was time to get ready for dinner. I was finishing cooking at the stove and my husband, David, came into the kitchen to get the dishes to set the table. Monday of Holy Week, 2020.
He opened the cupboard and then dropped his head to the kitchen counter and started to sob. The action was abrupt and the noise of his cry frightened me. I could tell that whatever he was weeping about was tragic.
What did he know that I didn’t know yet? What phone call had he just received with terrible news that he had to tell me? Who had died? What happened? My heart beat fast and my chest suddenly hurt as I walked over to him and put my hands on his back and said, “What is it? What is it? What happened?”
It took a bit for him to get out the words, “I just watched the news.”
I couldn’t imagine what had just happened in the world.
He managed then to say, “People are dying everywhere.” Then he sobbed again, shoulders heaving off the kitchen counter, head in his hands, cupboard door still open above him.
Holy Week 2020 is a week of Covid-19. Around the world, in our country, in our state, and in our county, people are very sick and dying from this pandemic.
It is tragic.
And while David doesn’t personally know any of the people who have died from this—yet—he joins the collective grief of the world.
I think he also joins God’s heart in this moment, in this week, on this Maundy Thursday as I write these words.
The Gospel accounts tell of Jesus last Thursday evening before He was crucified. He celebrated a Passover meal with his disciples. He predicted Judas’s betrayal and Peter’s denial. He taught, encouraged, and prayed for his followers. He washed their feet. He officially instituted the New Covenant which would be sealed with His blood—the final Passover Lamb—once and for all the next day.
After the meal they went to one of Jesus’ usual places (see Luke 22:39 and John 18:2) on the Mount of Olives, a place called Gethsemane, which means “oil press.”
Jesus told his disciples, “Sit here while I pray,” then took Peter, James, and John with him a little further away.
It is then that we hear some of the depths of the suffering of Jesus’ heart: “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” (Mark 14:34).
Seven hundred years earlier, the prophet Isaiah described Jesus as “a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering” (Isaiah 53:3). And just a few days before, on the Sunday of what we call the Triumphal Entry or Palm Sunday, Jesus had been weeping as he rode that donkey into Jerusalem (Luke 19:41-44). Weeping because these people He loved did not know what would bring them peace—did not recognize that God was coming to them.
I believe Jesus is weeping with us today. He does not take lightly the suffering of the world. Indeed, He takes that suffering upon Himself.
I wonder if the collective grief of this world-wide coronavirus is allowing us to get a glimpse of the sorrow Jesus always feels. Because the truth is that people are dying everywhere, every day, without Him.
This is tragic.
Perhaps what has always been true is now being revealed to us in a new way.
Is Jesus asking us today—in the oil press of global pandemic, in the week of walking towards the cross, in listening to and joining with the weeping lament, and in wrestling again with what will truly bring us peace—“Stay here and keep watch and pray” (Mark 14:33, 38)?
Stay here—in the reality, whatever it is. God is here with us.
Keep watch—for God’s purposes, for angels to attend, and for God Himself.
And pray—as Jesus prayed on that Maundy Thursday, that people around the world might “have eternal life—to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth” (John 17:3 NLT).