Lenten Devotionals: Maundy Thursday

A word from Todd: Good afternoon!  Our devotional today comes from someone outside of the TCU community.  She is a world renowned preacher, professor, and author.  Her name is Barbara Brown Taylor, and I’ll confess, she is one of my favorites.  I own several of her books and studied her preaching style in seminary.  She has a gift for speaking truth into light in the most profound and relational way.  As I was reading a devotional she had written for Lent, I was very moved by her words and wanted to share an excerpt of them with you today.  I hope you’ll be as moved by her profound thoughts as I was.  Blessings upon your Holy Week…Todd
March 26, 2013                     By: Barbara Brown Taylor
I remember being at a retreat once where the leader asked us to think of someone who represented Christ in our lives.  When it came time to share our answers, one woman stood up and said, “I had to think hard about that one.  I kept thinking, Who is it who told me the truth about myself so clearly that I wanted to kill him for it?”  According to John, Jesus died because he told the truth to everyone he met.  He was the truth, a perfect mirror in which people saw themselves in God’s own light.
What happened then goes on happening now.  In the presence of his integrity, our own pretense is exposed.  In the presence of his constancy, our cowardice is brought to light.  In the presence of his fierce love for God and for us, our own hardness of heart is revealed.  Take him out of the room and all those things become relative.  I am not that much worse than you are nor you than I, but leave him in the room and there is no room to hide.  He is the light of the world.  In his presence, people either fall down to worship him or do everything they can to extinguish his light.
A cross and nails are not always necessary.  There are a thousand ways to kill him, some of them as obvious as choosing where you will stand when the showdown between the weak and the strong comes along, others of them as subtle as keeping your mouth shut when someone asks you if you know him.
This week, while he dies, do not turn away.  Make yourselves look in the mirror.  This week no one gets away without being shamed by his beauty.  This week no one flees without being laid bare to his light.
Amen.