Maundy Thursday 2009
Maundy Thursday gets its name from a derivation of the Latin scripture reference: Mandatum novum. Maundy is the Middle English word for Mandate or commandment. Jesus gives to his disciples a new commandment, or new mandate, a mondatum novum. The new commandment that Jesus gives his disciples before his death and burial is the focus of this day. The instruction that Jesus gives his disciples is that they love each other as he has loved them. Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
The focus of this day is Christian love: Christian love that is tested by conflict, tragedy, denial, sin, death, and evil. This Christian love requires forgiveness, reconciliation, and compassion. This love is not puppy love. It is not a crush or a warm fuzzy feeling. This is the kind of love that bears the crushing weight of the cross and the heat of the fiery furnace. This new mandate is a rally cry to self-sacrifice and self denial. This is a call to humble service that gets down on its hands and knees.
Like a wonderful teacher and instructor, our savior, Jesus demonstrates for his disciples what this humble service and love looks like. He gets down on his hands and knees and washes each of his disciples’ feet. He models for his disciples what this looks like. It looks like the powerful respected master humbling himself and pouring out his love and life for the sake of those who follow him. This is the very posture that the church in its power and respect should emulate. This is how our churches should act, not as demanding allegiance or sovereignty, but as a humble servant of the people. This is what the discipleship of the church should look like: getting down on hands and knees to wash putrid feet.
Christian love is not about proving a position correct in an argument; it is about reaching out in service to a community that every day grows more and more desperate. Christian love is not about how to best hold onto our assets, funds, and property, but how best to give it away for the glory of God. Christian love is not about winning the competition for whose building stays open. Christian love says here I am, Lord. Let it be done to me according to your will. Christian love gets down on its hands and knees for the sake of others. Christian love gives away its life in love for the neighbor.
This new commandment is a tall order and it is impossible for us to do. This new commandment is completely unattainable. This kind of love requires us to be forgiving, to be open to reconciliation, to be compassionate, and those are not traits that the world holds dear. Those are traits that the world despises. If you are forgiving you are a chump. If you display an openness to reconciliation you are willing to have people walk all over you. If you are compassionate, then you are a pansy. To make it in this world you’ve got to be tough, shrewd, and hard-nosed not vulnerable only to being taken advantage of.
This new commandment would be impossible for the church were it not for Jesus example and because Jesus makes the first move. The book of John differs from the synoptic gospels in several important ways. Today one of those ways comes through. In Matthew Mark and Luke, Jesus dines with his disciples at the Passover meal. That is where he has his Last Supper and institutes the Sacrament of the Altar or the Lord’s Supper. In the Gospel of John, Jesus’ hour to begin his departure comes not on the Passover, but before the Passover. In the Gospel of John, Jesus does not eat the Passover meal with his disciple. In John the Last Supper falls before the Passover. This is an intentional move on the part of John to show that Jesus does not eat the Passover, because Jesus is the Passover. Jesus bleeds and dies as the Passover lamb. Jesus’ blood is like the blood of the lamb that is poured out so that God’s judgment will not befall His people. In John Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Were this not so we would have no ground for loving each other as Jesus loves us.
We can love each other because Jesus loved us. We can stick it to the world and say I will forgive, I will be reconciled, and I will be merciful, because Jesus has forgiven me, he has reconciled me to God, and he has been merciful to me. We can love each other and give God’s gifts of love, mercy, forgiveness, because he loved, forgave, and displayed his mercy so profoundly and so abundantly. The church can give, and by the church I don’t mean Salem, St. John’s, St. Paul or Zion, I mean you, and when I say give, I mean love. Because the church is the recipient of such a great gift of love, the church can pour itself out for the sake of the world. Because Jesus became vulnerable to death poured his life out for the sake of the world, the church is in a position to become vulnerable and pour its life out for the sake of the world. The church can give this much because the church has been given so much more than it will ever be able to give. But it makes us uncomfortable to be the recipient of such precious gifts.
Who has ever been made to feel uncomfortable by receiving a precious gift that they did not earn or deserve? I know I have. Without going into detail, I have been the recipient of some very wonderful and amazing gifts. I was humbled when after the accident, that happened almost three years ago, this community held a benefit in my honor to help defray legal and medical expenses. My family was humbled almost a year and a half ago when this community gave so many wonderful gifts to prepare for the coming of our son. There are other amazing and humbling and extravagant things I have received in my life: the gift of education opportunities, outrageous hospitality, presents, and delicious meals.
I am sometimes very self-conscious about all that I have been given. I am and extremely fortunate individual and sometimes that makes me feel awkward. Imagine when Jesus got down on his hands and knees to wash the disciples’ feet how they must have felt. Jesus was honoring them by doing this. He was humbling himself to serve them. He was demonstrating what a gift of love looks like, and it made them feel awkward, self-conscious, and humbled all at the same time. At first Peter does not want to allow his Lord to wash his stinky dusty dirty feet. He does not want to have his feet washed. In the same way sometimes the church does not want to have its feet washed. It wants to be self-sufficient and independent, but that is the last thing it can be.
The church, and by church I mean assembly—I mean you and me both, I mean all of us pew sitters together—the church, that means us, we are in the posture of being a recipient of such honor and grace and love that it sometimes makes us feel awkward. We sometimes resist having our feet washed in the blood of the lamb. We sometimes want to refuse the extravagant gift of love that is the precious blood of our Savior. We are made self-conscious of the unmerited and precious gift we have been given. But the fact is this: the church itself, this gathering on this Maundy Thursday exists, only as a result of the cleansing act of Jesus Christ. The fact is that the very existence of this church is dependant upon Him who gave his life for us, so that we could give something back in the same way that it was given to us: freely, abundantly, and extravagantly.
There is no denying it, we as the church have to be receptive and accept the generosity of our God. We have to hold out our hands to receive his body and blood or else we will have nothing to give. We have to accept his extravagance so that we can give extravagantly. We have to receive his grace if we are to be a part of the mission of God: that is give ourselves away for the sake of love. If we are to live into the Novum Mandatum, the new commandment to love one another as Christ has loved us, we must be willing to receive his generosity as he comes to us in his Holy Meal. If we are to live into the new commandment of love we must accept that we are first and foremost the recipients of his great love.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
