I do not expect you to remember this. I do, however, expect – that I remember it. The word “Maundy” is strange.
Maundy Thursday always gets “strange looks” and reactions. The word “Maundy” is always questioned. What does that mean again? I have forgotten! Maundy is not Monday.
After all, we only hear it “once a year” and a great many people have “never heard of it before-ever!” It’s a liturgical thing. Part of the Three Great Days!
Churches celebrate Good Friday and Easter…but who ever heard of Maundy Thursday? It sounds made up…like a Hallmark card day…
It is just more of that strange “churchy language.” Language that we just expect “others” to understand…and to comprehend and they do not!
Maundy actually means “commandment.” It comes from an “old Latin root word” – “mandatum.”
We call tonight “Maundy Thursday” because according to the Gospel of John, Jesus gave a “new commandment” on this day…on this night. It was a mandate…a command…a demand…an order…an administrative determination, a legal authority…something that is required.
It is mandatory. It is not an option or optional. It is not a choice. Nor is it a simple request. There is no “wiggling room” here. “Loop holes” are not permitted or allowed.
The “unfortunate thing” is that we have grown up with “the commandment” – to “love one another, as I have loved you.” It is “old hat.” Old school!
We have heard it over and over again – all of our life. It is nothing new. It may even be a yawn…just something taken for granted…heard, but not really registering or listened to. It’s been around for a long time.
“Love one another” there’s nothing new there- we think. More of the same old, same old.
It is nothing novel. Nothing radical. It is pretty much “Ho-Hum.”
Pick up the Hebrew Bible and go way back to the book of Leviticus (3rd book of the Torah) 19.18, didn’t it encourage loving one’s neighbor? I mean any one can read it there-smack dab in the middle of the Torah. Love one another. Hesed, God’s “steadfast love.” It lies at the very heart of the Torah.
The idea of loving “others” has been around for a long-long time. So what’s “new?”
Apparently, the “new thing” it seems, IS the ONE who is offering the commandment: Jesus himself.
He is the very love that he commands and THAT is new.
Just like God is love, Jesus too, is love – incarnate. Love in the flesh.
So, what’s really “new” here is the “Jesus Mandate:” to love as Jesus loves.
To love unconditionally, without condition…
You have to remember Jesus and all the examples that he sets before us…
He is the one who feeds.
He is the one who heals.
He is the one who welcomes.
He is the one who teaches.
He is the one who forgives.
He is the one who shares table fellowship.
He is the one who reaches out to everyone…women, men, children, the sick and the lame, the orphan and the widow, the sinner and the outsider…
He is the one who takes on the role of a servant and washes the disciples feet. He is the one, who is the living-breathing-example of what it looks like “to love the other person.”
He is the one who loves and accepts the disciples with all their human frailties – including Judas.
He is the one who reaches out and touches the ones – that society says are unlovable and untouchable.
Later on, when John will refer to this commandment again, a second time, he will add, “No greater love than this has any man, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
Jesus sets the example. Jesus IS the example.
Jesus shows us the way. As John will say, He is the WAY, the TRUTH and the LIFE.
IT IS the “Jesus Mandate” that makes this day and this commandment different.
We are to love as HE LOVED.
And that, changes everything. You are sent out of this place, to love and indeed to act, like Jesus.
Amen.