sermon-maun-thurs-2010-mp3  (Click here for an audio version of the sermon.)

We call today Maundy Thursday. The word Maundy comes from the Latin, mandatum, from which we get the word “mandate.” A mandate is a command or an order that has some authority. Maundy Thursday is the day when we celebrate Jesus’ giving to the disciples a new command or a new set of orders regarding what they must do in order to enter the kingdom of God.

Another word for “mandate” is “covenant.” Tonight we celebrate how Jesus established a new covenant relationship between God and his people. It’s the new covenant brought about by the love that is revealed in Jesus Christ. Jesus had talked about this new covenant, but now he was doing something to give the disciples a permanent reminder and an enduring symbol of Jesus’ love for them and for the world.

Tonight, we celebrate how Jesus gave his disciples and gives us two different actions that symbolize this new covenant.  He gave us bread and wine as a symbol of his life. In doing this, he gave the disciples what had been a Jewish Passover meal a new meaning. Whenever they ate this meal together and used these words, which Jesus used, he would be present with them. Whenever they shared bread and wine in his name, this new covenant would be activated in them and through them…forever.

On Maundy Thursday, we also remember how Jesus gave the disciples an additional sign of this mandate of love – the washing of feet.  When Jesus wrapped the towel around him and washed the disciples’ feet, he wanted to drive home the point that Paul makes in his letter to the Corinthians. When we eat the bread and drink wine that represent Jesus’ new commandment, this isn’t just an occasion when individuals receive forgiveness of sins or when we receive grace to grow spiritually as individuals. Paul says that when we do this in remembrance of what Jesus did for us, we become members of his Body…. we are united with everyone else, the whole body of the faithful, who are also joined to Christ. Jesus commanded the disciples to wash each other’s feet as a sign of the kind of community they were to be. They were to do to others as Christ had done to them…they were to do acts of servant love for others.

So, tonight, we celebrate the fact that Jesus gave us two things to remind us of God’s covenant of love – he gave us a meal and he gave us himself as a role model of how we are to live our lives. When you think about it, meals and role models are two of the most important ways that we remember who we are and what is our purpose in life.

When I think of my grandmother, I can’t help but remember the three months I spent with her in the late 70’s. And I will never forget the fresh Cape Cod strawberries that we ate almost every day of the summer. It is these familiar meals that keep us connected to the people we love and who love us, whether it’s a Thanksgiving turkey dinner with friend our relatives,  a home-baked apple pie when we returned from college, or a bowl of fresh strawberries and cream eaten with our grandmother.

I can also never forget the people who modeled servant love for me: a 4^th grade teacher who taught me about respecting the dignity of every person; my 8^th grade history teacher who taught me the importance of team work; my Bishop in Chicago, who never forgot the names of the people whose parishes he visited. We have all known these people in our lives – the people who reflected something of Jesus’ servant ministry… the people who showed us how to love and care for others.

But, when Jesus gave his disciples these two signs of his covenant love, he did it in a way that was completely unexpected. He did it in a way that got people’s attention …got their attention in a dramatic, even radical way.  For the disciples, who, at the Last Supper, were expecting either that night or the following night, to eat the flesh of the sacrificial lamb - which united them to God and to each other – it would have been a total shock to their Jewish ears for them to hear Jesus say, “This is my blood of the New Covenant; drink this”. It would have been shocking because Jews were forbidden to drink blood or to eat meat containing blood because the blood of an animal or a person was believed to contain the life of that animal or person.

In the same way, in Jewish society, although it was the custom for a host to provide water for a guest to wash his feet, foot washing was something one did oneself. The Jewish household codes were very clear in saying that washing of a master’s feet could not be required of a Jewish servant. Even a slave would be spared such humiliation. So, for Jesus to command that his disciples do this, as he does in John’s gospel, would have been received as a radical suggestion… radical because it would have been so degrading and humiliating.

What both these symbolic actions have in common is that they would have caused an emotional  reaction from people and I believe Jesus knew this when he suggested it. It’s as if Jesus is acknowledging that fact that creating a new covenant of love between God and God’s people, these actions may provoke anger, resistance, betrayal and even death.

Tonight is the night when we remember and celebrate what Jesus did, what actions he took that make it possible for us to live our lives in the world…the be members of  Christ’s body….to be members of the community of the church. Each time we come together as a Christian community to celebrate the Eucharist or to live out our faith by serving others, this is a remembering of Christ. But it’s also a time for us to remember that when we take Jesus’ life into ours and when we go forward demonstrating the kind of free, liberating love that Jesus embodies, we will probably run into resistance. We can never get away from fact that loving like Jesus loved had a cost and has a cost for us today.

In his historical novel, Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful, the great South African writer and prophet, Alan Paton tells a story about a South African judge by the name of Jan Christian Oliver. A black pastor invited him to attend his church service on Maundy Thursday. Given the fact of apartheid, the judge knew he would be risking his career if he went; but meaning to be a good man, he accepted the invitation.

Judge Oliver learned on his arrival that it was a service of foot washing, and was urged to participate. He was called forward to wash the feet of a woman named Martha Fortuin, who, as it happened, had been a servant in his own house for thirty years. Kneeling by her feet, he was struck by how weary they looked from so many years of serving him. Gently moved, he held her feet with gentle hands and kissed them. Martha fell to weeping, as did many others. The newspapers got word of it, and Oliver lost his political career. No doubt, however, he found his soul.

We are here tonight to remember the new covenant of love that God has made with us in Jesus …. the covenant given to us in a sacred meal and in a model of servant love.  But more than that, we are here to try to comprehend the great mystery of God’s love for us….a love that lasts and never runs out, but a love that is also costly. As we move into Good Friday and Easter, let us pray that God will lead us to discover the joy and the power of following Jesus and his servant love.  Amen.