Dear Substack Community: I have settled into this very fast paced week; it is already Thursday and I don’t know how that happened! Today is Maundy Thursday in the Christian Calendar. It’s the night before Jesus was executed by the Roman Empire. I posted this on Substack Notes earlier today. I share it here for you to consider it.
May we be the healing of the wounds!
Paz, —RCE+
Maundy Thursday Reflection: What the Night Holds
✨ Contextual Reflection Paragraph
On this night of shadows and trembling, we remember another night layered in fear and holy instruction. Exodus 12 tells of the first Passover—when the people stood on the threshold of liberation, uncertain and afraid. It was a night of blood on doorposts and bread without leaven, a night when fugitivity began not as a metaphor, but as embodied survival. They ate standing up, ready to flee, ready to trust that the night—though dark—was making way for freedom. The command was not only to act, but to remember. To carry the memory of liberation through generations. Maundy Thursday echoes this call. Here too we gather in the night, with sandals still on, betrayal at the door, and a world heavy with empire. We remember that transformation often begins not in the light, but in urgency, in exile, in shadow. Like compost, what seems like ending may be the fertile ground of becoming. And just as God passed through Egypt to dismantle the machinery of death, Christ moves through this night—unarmed, unflinching—carrying love toward its breaking point, so that we might be made whole.
Tonight we enter the night of betrayal.
The room still smells like bread and wine,
but the shadow has already entered.
Judas has already left.
And Jesus knows what’s coming.
This is not the night of resurrection.
It is the night of unraveling.
Of dislocation.
Of things falling apart.
And still—Jesus stays.
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There is something holy about this kind of night.
Not holy in the way stained glass is holy.
Holy like compost.
Holy like rot.
Holy like the underside of the leaf,
where new life begins in secret.
Because here’s the truth:
The Kin-dom of God does not rise without decomposition.
And the injustices of empire are not undone by light alone.
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The Gospel of John tells us:
“And it was night.”
Those four words hold so much.
The moment when Judas slips into darkness isn’t just a plot point—
it’s a mirror.
Each of us knows what it means to walk into night.
To carry betrayal in our bodies.
To leave what we love.
To choose self-protection over solidarity.
To stay silent when we should have spoken.
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But night is not only where betrayal happens.
It’s also where fugitivity begins.
Think of Harriet Tubman.
She moved only in the dark.
Guiding bodies toward freedom beneath the moon.
Because fugitivity—real, sacred fugitivity—is not about escape.
It’s about survival.
About finding another way
when the sanctioned paths only lead to death.
Jesus, too, becomes a fugitive now.
He is no longer safe anywhere.
His truth has disrupted too much.
His love has cost too much.
His refusal to play by empire’s rules
means he now carries a death sentence.
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And yet—he kneels.
And yet—he washes.
And yet—he feeds.
Not despite the night, but within it.
He gives his body and his blessing,
knowing full well that the seeds of justice often germinate in shadow.
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Tonight, let us not rush to the sunrise.
Let us honor what the night holds:
• The pain that is not yet resolved.
• The betrayal we do not yet understand.
• The parts of ourselves that are dying so something deeper might live.
Let us remember that God is not absent in the dark.
God is composting with us.
God is kneeling beside us.
God is gathering the pieces we’ve lost and whispering,
Even this is part of becoming.
So may we sit in the silence.
May we hold the ache.
May we not flee too quickly from the shadows.
For what is being born in us—
and in this world—
may need the dark to take root.
Ashe. Amen. May it Be So.
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