Mandate to Love

           

                                        

            Maundy Thursday – Holy Thursday – the beginning of a twenty-four hour period in the Christian tradition where we who profess our faith in Jesus Christ come face to face with all the implications of that confession.  We stand at the precipice knowing that Easter is coming.  But we know also, so very well aware, that all the forces that brought us the passion of Christ are still at work within our world, including within our own hearts.  God in your mercy, forgive us.

            The unusual name given to Holy Thursday has its roots in the gospel of John, the 13^th chapter.  There the Passover Meal Jesus shared with his disciples on the evening he was betrayed does not include the words that are the basis of what we call Communion or the Eucharist.  The familiar images of bread and wine become instead the images of a towel and a basin.  Jesus washes the feet of his disciples and tells them they are to be a servant people.  Jesus gives them a very clear directive, a command in fact, mandatum in Latin – the root of that word “Maundy”.  I give you a new commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you, you should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

            Through the words of the gospel of John we are told that on the night, when Jesus was well aware that he would die, he shared a meal with his disciples and his central message in word and action was service and love.  He told his disciples that love was to be their defining characteristic.

            We have a sentimental tendency to place great value on last words.  Good Friday services will often focus on those Last Words of Jesus from the cross.  We ask those who are to face the death penalty what they want for their last meal as if they really cared at that point.  We write about deathbed confessions.  Within the Christian Church we have the sacrament known as “last rites”.  Once upon a time the church encouraged baptism as a person was dying so they wouldn’t live long enough to sin again.

            Here in the 13^th chapter of John we have Jesus speaking to his disciples, not through the agony of the cross, but in fellowship with those who had been chosen to continue the ministry and witness Jesus had carried out the past three years.  According to the account in John, Jesus comes to this Passover meal fully aware that it would be his last.  Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father.

            This last meal would not be steak and cake or some other favorite food of a lifetime.  This last meal would be meal filled with the food that told the story of the Jewish people – shank bone, egg, bitter herbs, vegetable and haroset.  There would be unleavened bread and chalices of wine.  The meal would tell the story of God’s action in history when the Hebrew people were freed from their enslavement by the Pharaoh.  The meal would include Jesus taking the unleavened bread, breaking it and offering it to his disciples – “This is my body, broken for you.  Take, eat, in remembrance of me.”

During the meal Jesus would hold the chalice of wine and offer the traditional blessing and give it to his disciples.  “This is the blood of the new covenant.  Drink of it in remembrance of me.”

            The bread and the cup are indeed defining symbols of the Christian faith.  In some churches, Communion is a part of each service where members gather to worship.  John’s gospel though has more to offer about what is to be the defining quality of a Christian.  After Jesus takes a towel and a basin and gets down on the floor in order to wash his disciples’ feet, he tells them that servanthood is to be a hallmark of their life moving forward.  A few verses later he gives his very clear command to love one another as he has loved them. 

            This past week my home church and the Jewish community center about a mile further down the road were vandalized with some of the most vile symbols and words of hate possible to imagine.  The community center was targeted because it served the Jewish community.  We as a church were targeted because we had put up a banner against hate and bigotry leveled against those who are Muslims.  Among the vile words leveled against us was that “we have been found wanting” (based on a verse in the book of Daniel) and that if we “know Jesus” we will hate Muslims. 

            What a contrast to the commandment Jesus gave on that Thursday evening before his betrayal!

            We are living in one of those periods of time when vicious language and hate are being leveled against groups of people because of their religion, their color, their sexuality.  According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, 917 hate groups are currently operating in our country this very moment.  Sadly some of these groups are promulgating hate in the name of their interpretation of teachings of Jesus and the Christian Church.

            Against that reality we are confronted this Holy Thursday with the words of Jesus as recorded through the gospel of John.  We are commanded to love at the same level as Jesus has loved us.  We are confronted with Jesus hearing the abuses of the crowd assailing him as he stood in front of them stripped of his normal clothing, beaten unmercifully, wearing a crown of thorns pressed into his head.  He stood there absorbing their hate into his body and returning to them unconditional love.  We are confronted with Jesus on the cross still refusing to hate or retaliate.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  

            May we hear the words of our Savior this Holy Thursday and commit  to radical, inclusive, all-embracing love to each and every person, no conditions attached.  It is what it means to follow Jesus.  It is the way out of the tombs of our making to the new life Christ gives.

Grace and Peace,

Rev. C.