Maundy Thursday 2012
Posted on Thu 05 April 2012 in misc
“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love on another.”
It is fitting that we should begin this three day journey to Easter together with a story about a meal. Tonight’s theme comes from an important meal: the Last Supper. It’s fitting because this journey we make to Easter is really one big meal. A feast that remembers the death and celebrates the resurrection of Jesus. It’s a feast of music and scripture and silence (maybe too much for some of you!) and the main course is Jesus. Everything about these three days (R, F, and Easter) centers around Jesus — both Crucified and Resurrected Jesus. (betrayed, humiliated, and killed) (who was raised by God, who is God)
On the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus shared a meal with his disciples. We have windows into the Upper Room event as told from the various Gospels and from the writings of Paul, and from early church tradition. But as we will read tonight in the Gospel of John, the focus in not what they ate, or drank, or how much, or how little. The focus is this: during the meal, Jesus stoops down like a servant and washes the feet of the disciples.
Washing feet is uncomfortable for our society because it invades our personal space. Washing feet was uncomfortable in the society of Jesus, because it put you lower on the social ladder. It was offensive to have to touch another person’s feet.
Jesus stoops down like a servant and washes the feet of the disciples. Jesus — knowing full well that all things had been given to him. That he was with God and that he was God. That all things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. And still, he stoops down like a servant and washes the feet of the disciples.
And the crazy thing is that because Jesus was with God, and was God, and that all things came into being through him, Jesus knew the hearts of his disciples and knew that one of them would betray him. Not only does Jesus stoop down from the level of God to the level of humanity to wash the feet of disciples who loved him…he washes the feet of the disciple that sells him out to his death.
Jesus sets an example of crazy love and then commends it to his disciples. This is the new commandment. The mandate from which get Maundy Thursday: “Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love on another.”
[PAUSE] Did you know this was the kind of meal you signed up for? Where we are called to love and serve (actually serve!) every kind of person? Those who annoy us. Those who are different from us. Those who haven’t worked as hard as we have. Those who don’t like us. Even those who would betray us? This is a struggle. Did you realize that Christ has called us to this kind of love?
This kind of love is the only reason that anyone of us can sit down to this meal. This kind of love welcomes us less-than-perfect people to share a meal with God. This kind of love helps us to forgive others as we have been forgiven.
It’s not that we reenact the Last Supper tonight. We can’t replicate what happened between Jesus and his disciples in the Upper Room. But we will embody this kind of love and service here and now. Tonight we worship together in a pattern that will live out in our own lives. Welcoming each other to the table, and serving our neighbors with Jesus’ own kind of love. Welcome to the feast of this kind of love.