Day in the Church Year: Maundy Thursday
Gospel Passage: John 13:1-17, 31b-35
When Jesus gathers with his disciples, we already know that Judas will betray Jesus.
Jesus had traveled and ministered with his disciples for three years, but he had never washed their feet before, an unsightly task for the Son of God.
Jesus informs them: I am with you only a little longer...Where I am going, you cannot come.
After three years, Jesus gives the disciples a new commandment and his last: to love one another.
We do not know if the disciples sense change afoot, but we readers of the gospel of John certainly do. Maundy Thursday ushers in change. The disciples likely believe they will spend their lives accompanying Jesus in his ministry. They likely expect that life with Jesus will only get better and better as Jesus ushers in the kingdom of God in glory and power. Instead, Maundy Thursday brings grief. Maundy Thursday ends abruptly with arrest and abandonment. Maundy Thursday transports Jesus and the disciples to the cusp of something entirely new.
That cusp is possibly the scariest, most alive place we humans know. March 15, 2020 when we announced to those who showed up for pancake breakfast that we would have to temporarily shut down the breakfast because of the coronavirus, and communication went out that we were canceling worship and all in person activities for at least two weeks. September 11, 2001 when we woke up to images of planes flying into the World Trade Center towers. The moment we ask ourselves: Is this the end of this relationship? The day we step onto a plane or a bus or climb into our cars to travel to a different place and make a life there. The day we begin college or move out of our parents’ house and we realize for the first time what it is to be on our own, making our own way in life. The moment after the funeral, the necessary financial and legal knots untangled that we sit down and really take in: My dad is dead. My mom is dead. My spouse is dead.
This cusp is one of the scariest places we humans know because, on the cusp of something entirely new, we really do not know what will come next. The scariest because we look into the future and don’t recognize the world: a world where terrorists fly planes into buildings, for instance. This cusp is also one of the most alive places we know because, on the cusp of something entirely new, we cannot rely on what we’ve done before to guide us. Standing on this cusp is a creative act, one that requires our full attention to the present moment.
This cusp is Maundy Thursday. Jesus gathers with his disciples to wash their feet, to send them into lives of loving service, to give them a new commandment: to love one another. He will go on to teach them and pray for them, and then, they enter a garden where Judas brings soldiers and police officers to arrest Jesus. Suddenly, the disciples’ world stops, the way our worlds have stopped, and just as we have experienced, they are scared, perhaps panicked, disoriented. In the gospel of John, Simon Peter and the disciple Jesus loves follow after the soldiers, police officers, and Jesus. The rest of the disciples are not mentioned again until the third day. Even though Simon Peter follows Jesus, when he stands warming himself in the courtyard of the high priest, Peter denies knowing Jesus to a bystander. What will happen next to Jesus? What will come of their lives? Peter does not know. The disciples who scatter do not know. The world is askew; they are on the cusp of something entirely new.
At this moment in history, we too are on the cusp of something entirely new. A year ago, our collective life came to a sudden stop, and we had no idea what to expect. Here we are again, at what I hope is the cusp of a post-pandemic world, a world that will not look the same as the pre-pandemic world. In our own personal worlds, we may be on the cusp of something entirely new, a moment we will look back on, a time requiring deep breaths and courage and faith. The world is askew, just as on that first Maundy Thursday. On the cusp of something entirely new that they could neither control nor understand, the disciples hear a new commandment, a commandment to us dearly familiar: to love one another. In the gospel of John, the very last act of Jesus’ ministry is washing the disciples’ feet. He has lots to say to them that night, four full chapters of teaching we will hear in the coming weeks, but Jesus’ last command is embodied in his last act and it is simply to love.
On the cusp of something entirely new, in a world that no longer feels secure or certain, at a time when we are forced to honestly say “I don’t know” more often than not, Jesus’ dearly familiar commandment is for us a guide. I think about Jesus weighing that night: what will help my disciples move forward? An act of love accompanied by a command to love.
How do we move forward? Most if not all of us get tangled up in the judgmental chatter of our minds, in the partisan chatter of the news, in the ceaseless worries and tensions and questions of this life. On this cusp, we might feel bereft, like we just don’t know how to move forward. But here, on the cusp that is Maundy Thursday, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet and commands them to love one another. How do we move forward? With love because God first loved us. We discern the loving action, the deeply loving action, and then we do it because God first loved us. Maundy Thursday shows us the love of Christ, love not as platitude but as dirty hands and aching knees. We might be scared as we stand on the cusp of something entirely new. Still, we are loved, and that love guides us always. Amen.