The “Maundy” of Maundy Thursday comes from the Latin mandatum which means “mandate” – and the mandate Jesus gives is simply this: love one another.
John 13:1-17, 34-35
13Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper 3Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, 4got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. 5Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. 6He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” 7Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” 8Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” 9Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” 10Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” 11For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.” 12After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? 13You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. 14So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. 15For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. 16Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. 17If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.
34I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Dear friends, grace to you and peace this night, from our loving God through Christ who shows us that love, and urges us to likewise show it to others. Amen.
Gathered here by the Spirit this night – this is where the Lenten journey technically ends. We move into these days of re-telling the hardest part of the story, the part that maybe we’d rather skip over. Surely the last two months have been urging us to do that, as we see the big Easter candy displays in the stores.
But we know that resurrection cannot happen, if there is no death first.
If we want the seed to sprout, we must bury it in the ground.
And so we gather, as did the disciples, to hear the stories and share the meal. Their stories were of the Passover; ours are of God’s people continuing to be cared for by God across the centuries.
1 Great God, your love has called us here
as we, by love, for love were made.
Your living likeness still we bear,
though marred, dishonored, disobeyed.
We come, with all our heart and mind
your call to hear, your love to find.*
Your call to hear.
The Spirit has stirred something in us, and we lean in to hear a little better. We have heard that we are forgiven! That God loves us, even though we did those things. Even though we still have trouble speaking to that person who hurt us.
And in hearing God’s call, we find God’s love. Because God in Christ has both gone on ahead of us, and walks the road with us. Jesus enables us to continue the work of the peaceable realm of God breaking into this tired and aching world.
But this year – oh, it is hard to hear that call again! So much weighs on our hearts. The suffering of the world is great. Our OWN suffering is great! The brokenness of this world lies before us; the divisions among people, the devastation of so much of God’s good creation, the heart-pain we all feel under all that cosmic weight.
And yet, we still show up, in one way or another. We’ve had to get creative the last couple of years to do that – but God’s call is one that does not waver.
2 We come with self-inflicted pains
of broken trust and chosen wrong,
half-free, half-bound by inner chains,
by social forces swept along,
by powers and systems close confined
yet seeking hope for humankind.
Isn’t that the bottom-line reason we’ve stayed in the fray so long?
That we are seeking hope for humankind?
That we cling to the promises of God, remembering with all our strength that God keeps God’s promises. And we look for even the tiniest speck of hope for this world, for humankind.
Lent is a necessary part of that process, I think. We pay closer attention to our own failings; we acknowledge how as a church, as a community, as a nation how we have failed as well. We examine the dominant power structures and systems that are inherently sinful; and in the strong Lutheran way we call a thing what it is. We don’t try to disguise it or dress it up. It’s how we build the strength to come to these days, in this holy week.
3 Great God, in Christ you call our name
and then receive us as your own
not through some merit, right, or claim,
but by your gracious love alone.
We strain to glimpse your mercy seat
and find you kneeling at our feet.
Lord, we have answered your call, and we have acknowledged how we have failed – but really, even before we finish you have already embraced us. Like the father running out to greet his son who was lost – but is now found. We may have thought that we’d never really be good enough – and then we are stunned as you take us by the hand, show us to a seat, and begin to serve us in such a way.
4 Then take the towel, and break the bread,
and humble us, and call us friends.
Suffer and serve till all are fed,
and show how grandly love intends
to work till all creation sings,
to fill all worlds, to crown all things.
The roles have been reversed. We who might think in terms of hierarchies and class structures have seen that idea completely upended by the Lord of Life, the Prince of Peace, as he kneels to wash our feet. The task of the lowliest of servants is natural to him.
And then Jesus calls us to the same task! “As I have done, so you must do,” he says. In a week that began with a parade that exemplified political challenge, Jesus gets to the heart of the matter in this simple act of showing love to his friends. And then he does not merely invite, but commands – mandates! – that we do likewise. For the reign of God will not be brought upon earth by military might, by destruction or by death, but by LOVE.
Notice the odd question Jesus asks his friends in the middle of his teaching. “Do you know what I have done to you?”
In his presence, we have been acted upon. We don’t belong only to ourselves anymore; we are learning that when we serve in Jesus’ name, our private interests must be second to covenant ties to the welfare of the community. In this realization, our transformation has begun! At the core of our faith, the privilege-abandoning Jesus is the portrait of for the self-abandoning character of God’s love, inviting and empowering us to participate in that self-giving nature.
5 Great God, in Christ you set us free
your life to live, your joy to share.
Give us your Spirit’s liberty
to turn from guilt and dull despair,
and offer all that faith can do
while love is making all things new.
Without Maundy Thursday’s mandate to love, Good Friday’s agony is little more than divine ransom, as if God were only in the bartering business. And the joy of Sunday’s empty tomb is little more than the reassertion of divine gloating. Dear friends, we know there is more to God than that; we’ve experienced more of God than that!
Jesus has given us the capacity to live beyond mere competition. We are freed to wash because we have been washed; to forgive because we have been forgiven; to live graciously because grace is loosening the knots of self-absorbed greed in our own souls. The process of conversion (which by the way happens throughout life!) is a form of divine photosynthesis: receiving the light and love of the Beloved, so that the green fields of God’s intention for creation are continually renewed.
I’m reminded of a song by French raconteur Jacques Brel: “If We Only Have Love.” One of the verses is this:
If we only have love
Love that’s falling like rain
Then the parched desert earth
Will grow green again
We might hear this Maundy Thursday story and think to ourselves, “if only!” Our heart heaviness seems to have weight added every day.
But Jesus doesn’t add a behavior rule between the believing and the doing. There are no extra steps or qualifying heats to be run. “If you know these things,” Jesus says, “blessed are you if you do them.”
Consider the last line of our hymn of the day, “and offer all that faith can do, while love is making all things new.”
It is this pattern of divine and human collaboration that Jesus commands. As our wider church motto says, “God’s work, our hands.” We are called to be in the world, among those whom others kick to the curb, using our hands to offer all that faith can do.
Because we know that God will keep God’s promises. Love will indeed make all things new.
Amen.
*“Great God, Your Love Has Called Us Here” Text: Brian A. Wren, b. 1936; © 1977, rev. 1995 Hope Publishing Company, Carol Stream, IL 60188. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Light from the Gorge 