Maundy Thursday

Maundy Thursday

Jeff Lampl
March 23, 2016

What does Maundy mean anyway?  It means . . .  .

“command”.   The word “maundy” comes from the Latin world “mandatus” from which we get the word, “mandate” or command.  It refers to the day of Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, the day on which he washed their feet and then gave them a brand new commandment, one which turned everything upside down.  Here it is;

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”      John 13:34-35

Previously everyone knew the old command, “love your neighbor in the same way that you love yourself”.   When you think about this “old” commandment, repeated by Jesus in Matthew 22 as the second part of the “Great Commandment”,  you will notice that the reference point for knowing how to love your neighbor is  yourself. 

Notice how Jesus ups the ante.   How I want to be loved is now no longer the benchmark for how well I am to love others.  I am too flawed a creature to be the reference point or benchmark for anything.   And my “neighbor” is far too valuable a creature to base how well they are loved on my evaluation of love.    If it’s up to me I might think, “if it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough for them,”  or “this is how I like to be loved, therefore that’s how I’ll love them” while being totally oblivious to how that other person needs loved.  Further and more importantly, Jesus defined love with his sacrificing himself for others.   He redefined love from, “I’ll treat others as I wish to be treated”  to “I must treat others as Jesus treats them (service. Humility, forgiveness, all the cost of my own needs). 

Tomorrow evening we’ll gather for a Maundy Thursday remembrance, a reminder of how Jesus loves us.   We’ll eat together, then worship together.   As we share communion together we will take into ourselves the bread and Juice, symbolically, the body and blood and Jesus, so that we too can be Jesus to others.  

It’s an amazing story isn’t it?   Jesus, the creator, sustainer and ruler of the universe, teaches that the way to live is by dying, that the way to get is to give, that they way to purpose, meaning, and a vibrant life is by way of giving all that up.   When we lose our live for the sake of God and others we gain it. 

Where is it in your life you need to love another, not as you would want to be loved, rather as Jesus has loved you?

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