Maundy Thursday Message

Maundy Thursday: It's About You

John 13:1-5

Sometimes we wonder where did Maundy Thursday come from. The word "maundy" actually comes from the Latin word mandatum, which means "command." It's where we get the English word "mandate."

That word "command" is specifically referencing a moment Jesus shared with His disciples the night before He was crucified. Most of us know the story of what happened. It seemed like an ordinary Passover dinner. The parade was over, but the after effects were still lingering for the disciples.

Jesus knew what was coming. He knew this moment was different from all others. He wanted one final opportunity to eat with His closest friends. He wanted to share with them what was going to happen. He wanted to give them a living example of what He was calling them to become.

Ultimately, Jesus gives the command, the mandatum that would mark the event. He tells them - -

34 A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another" - John 13:34

Jesus has been teaching, healing and demonstrating the power and reality of the Son of God. But now, at this moment, Jesus becomes intensely personal with the disciples.

Everything has been about bringing healing to the people of Israel and to the far ends of the earth. But now, it’s no longer about everyone else, it’s not even about the person next to you. It was becoming personal. Because it was about you!

In order to wrap their minds around the words of Jesus, to go into the world and love one another as Jesus loved them, they needed to understand what Jesus meant.

Before they could ever understand what the command called for them to do, first they had to wrap their minds around what that command revealed about them.

See, before the command to love others is about others, it's about us. Before it's about the person sitting next to you, it's about you. If this unique love was ever to be for anyone else, first it had to be for them.

They had to grasp the depths of what Jesus was telling them. You see, in verse 1, John tells us - -

1 Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.

What does that mean to love them to the end? Does it mean what it says, I loved you until I died, end of statement? No that’s not what John is telling us. A better way to translate that last part, would be to say "He loved them fully, or to the utmost. He loved them to the greatest possible extent."

It’s not so much a statement about loving to the end of time, but it’s more about the depth of His love for them. It’s a statement about how deep the love of Christ was for the disciples. What does it look like to love a person like that? What's so special about this night is that Jesus pauses to make it very clear to show them.

You see, as the night began, the disciples didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. It was another Passover celebration. They would remember the exodus from Egypt, laugh a little and remember the power of God.

But, in the middle of the meal, Jesus interrupts it. He shakes up the ordinary - -

3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going back to God,

4 rose from supper. He laid aside His outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around His waist.

5 Then He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around Him.

WOE! Jesus gets up and He takes off His garment, which would have left Him in a tunic, a shorter garment, kind of like an undershirt. This garment was actually what servants in that day would wear to serve a meal. And Jesus gets up from the table and He physically looks like a servant.

Years later, the apostle Paul would write to the Philippian church the famous words of Philippians 2, writing -

5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,

6 who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,

7 but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a SERVANT, being born in the likeness of men. - Philippians 2:5-7

Understand what Paul meant with these words. He could hzve said Jesus came and served. But Paul actually says Jesus took the form of a servant. Jesus actually changed His clothes and became a servant.