In our Holy Week services, we are no longer spectators but participants. Tonight, we sit with the disciples eating and drinking at a solemn and haunting meal with Jesus in the Upper Room. As Jesus invites us to share in bread and wine, he says those mysterious words that have become central to our celebration of the Holy Eucharist: ‘this is my body, this is my blood’. And soon afterwards, that trusted disciple, Judas, makes a hasty exit.

At the end of the Eucharist, the altar is stripped. Why? The altar represents Christ, and the stripping of the altar reminds us how he was stripped of his garments and was exposed naked to the insults of his persecutors.

After supper we go to the garden of Gethsemane to pray. Or in our case, at the end of our Eucharist, we go to the cemetery garden to watch and pray. Jesus didn’t sleep that night, and his disciples slept only fitfully. In fact he didn’t hesitate to rouse them….as if perhaps he wanted companionship during those late night hours. So let us give him ours.

And then, suddenly, Judas returns, the disciple now turned betrayer, and we share the shock and fear of the disciples as he is accompanied by armed soldiers, and Jesus is arrested. And so Maundy Thursday ends ....in chaos.

Today we remember Christ's crucifixion on the hill of Calvary.

Traditionally the Eucharist is not celebrated today. Instead we celebrate a Mass of the Pre-sanctified, in which we receive the Sacrament that was consecrated at an earlier Eucharist.

This liturgy had already been developed by the Second Trullan Synod, at the end of the 7th century. and is used only on Good Friday,

"Lord, … You accepted patiently and humbly the rebuffs of human life, as well as the torture of the cross. Help us to accept the pains and conflicts that come to us each day as opportunity to grow as people and become more like you……… that we can come to live more fully - only by dying with you, that we can rise with you." (Mother Teresa)

One of the things people challenge Christians with is the apparent absence of God in the world. When there is tragic loss of life, where there is famine or gross injustice, where then is God?

So it is an extraordinary twist of fate that at the heart of the greatest Christian festival of Easter, there is an absence – the absence of a body in the tomb.

When Jesus died on Good Friday, his disciples scattered - confused, fearful, without direction, without a future. But the absence of a body on Easter Sunday was altogether different. Now they saw Jesus everywhere – in the garden, on the road to Emmaus, as they fished, as they gathered together. And not as some spooky ghost of the past, but as the recognisable presence of the Son of God, risen from the dead.

This is what we are celebrating this Eastertide – our God, real, alive, recognisable and present. Martin Luther wrote: “Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime”. He has also written that promise on every human heart.

Click More Info below to hear Surrexit Christus, an Easter song from the Taizé Community in France.