Something we tend to forget
on Maundy Thursday is why on earth we call it “Maundy.” We get caught up in the
stunning revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ’s gift of the Eucharist, the
supper of bread and wine, and forget the rest. The gift of the Eucharist is
indeed wondrous and revelatory, yet it is the frame in which the act of food
washing is the picture.
We forget because it is so
easy to ignore loving. It is so easy to forget loving. It is much easier to remain
unloving.
Yet
the word “Maundy” is taken from the word “mandatum” from which we derive the
English word “mandate” or “command.”
I
often used to wonder, when I was younger, why we needed to be commanded to
love. Now that I am a little older, and I hope just a little wiser, I think I
know the reason, or at least part of the reason. It is because it is so easy
for us to ignore love, to forget love, to remain unloving.
We
ignore love because we live in a world of never enough. We think if we can just
gather enough, we will somehow get to the point where we have enough. Then we will have time to love. We
forget love because we go in pursuit of love, forgetting pursued love is wily
and slippery and cannot be really pursued. We remain unloving because it is
easier to be unloving than to allow God to stretch us and pull us and yes,
sometimes pummel us into loving when we whine, “But I don’t feel like it.”
To
love as our Lord loves is not a feeling. Love is a command. Love is a mandate. Love
is a policy. Love is something we apply regardless of circumstances, of
happenstances, and of choice. Do I like that? No, no, and no! I want the kind
of love that is dependent on my feeling like being loving. I do not want a love
that is demanding things of me I might not feel like giving. I do not want a
love that demands I love when I am not in the mood for anything, not even love.
The
love our Lord Jesus Christ showed, demonstrated, simply did, on the night
before he died, was love that is the same, now and always. It was a love that
was willing to make itself nearly naked in the role of a servant, a slave, and
wash the filthy, stinking, calloused feet of that motley awkward unsavory
sometime stupid band of folks he called his apostles, his disciples, his
followers, his friends, his brothers, his family, and his companions.
In
Jesus’ time, in culture of first century Palestine, no rabbi, no teacher worthy
of respect would lower himself to wash feet. Foot washing was a job for a
servant, or a slave. If the host owned no slaves, then he would give the guest
a towel and water to wash, not wash feet himself. Foot washing was a job for a
woman, or a child, or a non-Jewish slave, an alien, not a Jewish male. Even a Jewish slave could not be made to wash
the feet of someone.
You
can see why this loving act of Jesus was so scandalous, so out there, so
completely beyond the pale that the disciples were shocked. And Jesus told
them, “Do you know what I have done for you? You call me Teacher and Lord – and
you are right, for that is what I am. So if, I, your Lord and Teacher, have
washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you
an example, that you should also should do as I have done for you.”[1]
Jesus
knows Judas has left to betray him, and after Judas leaves 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.”[2]
Jesus means us to love even those who betray us, those who leave us, those who
are our enemies, and those we would rather not think about at all. This is how Jesus
calls us to love, whether we like it or not, or feel like it or not.
Tonight
is the reminder, the reminder of love. Tonight is the reminder of how easy love
is to ignore, to forget, to remain unloving. Tonight is the reminder of the
love our Lord Jesus Christ holds us in always, even when we are least lovable,
and even as he gave his love for us, love that became death on a cross. AMEN.
The Rev Nicolette Papanek
©2017
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