John 13:1-7, 31b-35
Jesus says, “I give you a new
commandment…” That’s how we get the name
Maundy for Maundy Thursday. Maundy comes
from the Latin mandatum - which means mandate or command. So Maundy Thursday is really Mandate or
Commandment Thursday. And what is this
new commandment that Jesus is giving us?
Love one another, he says, but that’s not new. We remember Jesus earlier in his ministry
summing up the law with the Great Commandment:
love God and love your neighbor as yourself. And when he was doing that he was referencing
Old Testament scripture. So the command
to love has been around for a long, long time.
What is all this talk about a new commandment to love one
another? The answer may be found in the
words that follow “Love one another” for it’s “just as I have loved you.” That’s the new part. Our love is to be modeled and inspired by how
we’ve been loved by Jesus. And how is
that? Well, in very concrete ways.
Right before he gives this new
commandment to love Jesus, knowing who he was and what was coming, took off his
outer clothing, wrapped a towel around himself, bent down, washed his disciples
feet, and used the very towel he was wearing to wipe those dirty feet
clean. You probably already know how
humbling this act of washing feet was in Jesus’s time. People’s feet were dusty, dirty, and
damaged. This act of washing another’s
feet was one of the lowest things a person could do - usually it was a slave
who had no choice. What’s remarkable is
that Jesus had a choice and he used that choice to choose this way of being in
the world, to choose this way of loving the world and asks us to choose to do
the same. To literally wash feet
tonight, and since washing feet isn’t what we do nowadays, for the rest of the
year we are to choose to serve in humble ways those in need. We are to love one another just as we have
been loved by Jesus.
And I think we get that part. I know you and I am very aware that there are
countless ways that you all go about your lives seeking to serve others in love
both here in our church community and in the world beyond. And that’s great - keep it up! For Jesus is commanding us to humbly wash
feet in the countless ways that that can be done.
But this washing, this concrete way of
loving and of serving does not just go one way.
Jesus commands that we wash and love one another - one another means
it’s not a one way, but a two way relationship.
It’s reciprocal. Jesus calls us
to a service and a love that is mutual where there’s both a giving and a receiving. This is where I think a lot of us
struggle. As I said, I know you. I see you serving and loving others. And I also know and see (and I include myself
in this) how hard it is for us to be on the receiving end of love and
service. We are happy to give, but we
mightily resist receiving. I wonder
why? Perhaps it’s because being in the
position of serving is safer and often is a position of power. Most of the time when we serve we are in
control for we are the ones with the resources: we chose whom we serve, and
when we serve, and how much we serve.
The one who receives is somewhat at the mercy of the giver. The receiver
is potentially exposed, vulnerable, needy.
Who wants to take on that role?
No wonder most of us find it much easier to serve than to be
served. But if we insist on just taking
on one role we distort what love is. And
we reject the fullness Jesus’s new command: Love one another, it goes both
ways- love one another as Jesus loves us.
For real love, genuine, authentic love is
by its very nature mutual. There’s a
give and a take. Watch Jesus. Yes, on this last night he was the one who
was giving as he washed feet, but just six days earlier it was Lazarus’ sister
Mary who was the giver and Jesus graciously received her love and service as
she anointed and washed his feet. That
mutuality of love is not only acted out here as we wash someone’s feet and
experience having our feet washed, but it is also what we participate in during
the Eucharistic feast as Jesus loves us by giving his very body to us in the
bread and the wine. We receive that love
and then we give back and Jesus receives our love (imperfect though it is) as
we worship and give thanks. And because
we have experienced that mutuality of love, that flow of give and take, loving
and being loved, we go into this night seeking to fully live into Jesus’s new
command: Love one another just as I have loved you.
Brother James Koester of the Society of
St. John the Evangelist puts it this way, “Sometime this week, someone will
need you to lay down your life for them, and [sometime this week] you will need
another to lay down their life for you; when that happens you will be in the
presence of love. You will be in the
presence of God.”
So that’s where we get to be tonight as
we wash and as we worship - we are in the presence of God for we are in the
presence of Love.
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