Maundy Thursday, April 9, 2009 “Series B”
Grace be unto you and peace, from God our Father and from our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Let us pray: Dear Heavenly Father, we come before your altar as your people, baptized into the death and resurrection of your Son, Jesus the Christ. Give us humble and thankful hearts to embrace the covenant that you have made with us, and through the power of your Holy Spirit, enable us to love others as you have loved us. This we ask in Christ’s Holy name. Amen.
Think about the first verse of our Gospel lesson for this evening. John tells us that “before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Jesus knew! Jesus knew that he was about to be nailed to a cross and give his life in love and atonement for the sins of the world. Jesus knew, that through his death and resurrection, God was about to establish a new covenant with his creation.
That had to be a heavy burden, to know that he was about to suffer the most agonizing death that humankind has devised to execute a healthy human being. To know that being nailed to a cross was in your immediate future, would be enough to make most free men or women do what we could to flee from that experience. But not Jesus. He chose to stay and had the courage give his life to complete his Father’s will to redeem us from our sins.
This opening verse from our Gospel lesson sets the stage for all that is to play out in the hours that will quickly unfold in Jesus’ early life. Jesus knew, and yet although troubled by that which lay ahead of him, chose not to flee, but to give his life out of love for his Father’s will, and out of love for his disciples, for you and me. And in case we may have missed this point that John was trying to make, John adds “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”
Jesus knew! He was about to give his life for the world, and yet, what does he do. Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, gets up from the table in the midst of dinner, takes off his outer robe, tied a towel around his waist, poured water into a basis, and began to wash his disciples feet. Now here was a gesture of pure humility. According to the custom of that day, when guests came to dinner, a servant was to wash the dust of their travel off their feet, that gathered because of the open sandals.
Apparently, there was no servant that day, just Jesus and his twelve disciples, who, throughout the past three years, seemed never to catch on to the true scope of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus must have noticed that none of them chose to wash their own feet, or to humble themselves to wash the feet of the others. And so Jesus, who was about to give his life for their redemption, assumes the role of servant, and does what they were unwilling to do. He humbles himself, and washes their feet. It is a sign, a symbolic gesture of what was to come, when Jesus would, in humility, give his life for their redemption.
Of course, Peter had to be the one to object, saying to Jesus, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Peter didn’t know what this gesture was all about. Peter knew that he was one of Jesus’ disciples, which is a term that means a student of a master or Rabbi. The master doesn’t wash the student’s feet. It should be the other way around. “You will never wash my feet,” he said to Jesus.
But Jesus counter’s Peter’s objection, telling Peter that he really doesn’t know what this act of love means. He says to Peter, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” And it is obvious by Peter’s response to Jesus, that he really didn’t know what Jesus was doing. For Peter, focused on the washing of his body, not the humility of Jesus, who loved God above all else, and truly showed love to those he had come to know throughout the course of his life. What he did that night, was to give us an example of to emulate as his disciples, to be humble and give of ourselves to express our love of God and uplift the lives of others.
Jesus knew! And although our text does not include the entire text, Jesus knew who was to betray him, one of his own disciples. In verse 21 John describes it in these words. “Jesus was troubled in spirit, and declared, ‘Very truly, I tell you, one of you will betray me.’” In light of all that Jesus knew this had to be the most difficult. To have just washed the feet of Judas, to have demonstrated that to be a disciple of his meant that we need to humble ourselves as a servant of God, Jesus knew that Judas thought that he knew more than his master.
Many commentators point out that they believe that the reason that Judas betrayed Jesus was to force his hand to become the kind of Messiah that Israel had longed hoped for – a Messiah that would lead the people of Israel as a military hero like King David. In fact, there is a lot of Biblical evidence to suggest that nearly all of the disciples of Jesus held this expectation. They all failed to see Jesus was the humble servant that Isaiah had predicted would, through his life, usher in a new covenant, a new relationship with God.
Jesus knew, and yet he did not stop Judas from following through with his evil plot. Here again, we encounter a love that goes beyond any love that you and I have ever seen.
At this point, I would like to jump to our second lesson for this evening, since John’s Gospel does not record Jesus instituting the sacrament of Holy Communion, although it is recorded in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Here again, Jesus knew what lay ahead of him. He not only knew, he also understood.
According to these four texts that record the night of our Lord’s Last Supper with his disciples, acting as the host, Jesus took a loaf of bread, gave thanks, broke it and gave it to his disciples saying, “Take and eat, this is my body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” Then, after the meal, Jesus took an extra cup of wine, gave thanks and said, “drink of it, all of you, for this is the new covenant in my blood, shed for you for the forgiveness of sin. Do this in remembrance of me.”
Jesus knew! Jesus knew that what was to be accomplished through the betrayal of Judas, and his impending death on the cross, was according to God’s will. He knew that through his life giving death on the cross, that he would become the ultimate Paschal lamb, who gave his life to redeem us from sin and death, and establish a new relationship, a new covenant between God, and us, that would last forever. And so Jesus institutes a new covenantal meal that has become a means of grace for all who are baptized into his death and resurrection.
Jesus knew! He knew that this new covenant that God was about to make with the world through his death and resurrection required a new direction in contractual terms. The Ten Commandments, which formed the terms of the old covenant, did not adequately express the terms of the new covenant which was about to unfold.
And so, in the concluding verses of our text, John tells us that Jesus told his disciples, “I give you a new commandment, that you should 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.”
In fact, this is how this holy day has derived its name. Maundy is a Latin word that means mandate. Thus, Maundy Thursday literally means the day of the commandment, the day in which God set the terms of a new covenant relationship with his people, based on loving one another as Jesus the Christ has loved us.
And when we think of the fact that Jesus knew that he was about to give his life on a cross, knew what it meant to humble himself in service, to even wash the feet of his disciples, knew that one of his own would betray him, what a model of love he gives us to emulate. To think that Jesus knew that this new covenant would no longer require the death of the Paschal lamb, which freed Israel from bondage from slavery in Egypt, but his body and blood, given and shed for us to free us from our bondage to sin and death, is the ultimate gift of love.
And Jesus knew that we, like Judas who betrayed him, or Peter who denied him, or the rest of the disciples who deserted him, would continue to sin, and fail to love as he has loved us, instituted a sacramental meal, a means of grace, where his loving forgiveness would be forever available to those who embrace him in faith. So let us, those who truly do not know the extent of our sin, come to partake of the body and blood of Jesus the Christ, who knowingly gave himself for our redemption.
Amen.
