Maundy Thursday, 2011

Text: St. John 13:31-35

The Rev. Jerry Kistler

St. Stephen’s Reformed Episcopal Church

Montrose, Colorado

“The Mandatum Novum”

“A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”

We call this night “Maundy Thursday,” for this is the night Jesus gave the Church his mandatum novum, his new commandment. What’s so new about the “new commandment?” It is in fact so new and so different, and yet now so common and so well-known, that we hardly recognize just how radical a commandment it really is. The old commandment commanded you to love your neighbor as yourself. Love others as much as yourself. That’s tough enough, because we don’t love most people half as much as we love ourselves, and we love ourselves twice as much as we should. (I’m starting to sound a little like Bilbo Baggins.) But Jesus said, “Love one another as I have loved you.” It’s not enough for Christians to love each other as much as they love themselves; we’re commanded to love each other in the same manner that Christ has love us – which is to the point of loosing our own lives for the other’s sake. This is a love that is so radical and so new because it’s a love that doesn’t fit into anybody’s system of strict justice or fairness. It is a love that, in fact, willing and cheerfully accepts injustice for oneself, rather than demanding strict justice for a fellow Christian. It’s a love that rejoices in receiving injury to oneself, rather than seeing the hurt of a brother or sister in the Lord. If we love each other that much, we may just have to die for one another.

Jesus said, “Greater love has no man than this: that He lay down his life for his friends.” And make no mistake; what Christ’s new commandment demands of us is that we die for one another – that we die to our selfish demand that we get our “rights” - my rights – over against any consideration of what might be good for others; that we die to our expectation that “every body in the Church had better treat me fairly, or else I’m not going to go out of my way to lift a finger for them!” Did Jesus have that attitude? If He did, we’d still be in our sins. “My new commandment to you,” He said, “is that you love one another, as I have loved you.”

The actions of Jesus in the upper room that first Maundy Thursday manifest this self-sacrificing, self-effacing kind of love He has for us, and that we are now to have for one another. The Master becomes the Servant. The Lord stoops so low as to get down on his hands and knees and to wash the grimy feet of his disciples. And the irony of this, the total world-turned-up-side-down and on its head sort of picture of love this presents wasn’t in any way lost of St. John. In his Gospel He wrote, “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself. After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.” Do you get the picture? The Lord of Glory, before whom angels and archangels and every other created being rightfully should fall down prostrate in fear and adoration, literally puts Himself at the feet of a bunch of sinful men, who don’t yet even fully believe in Him, and will soon abandon Him in his moment of greatest need and trial. Why? Simple. Because He loved them, and would give Himself for them.

What’s the implication for us? That’s simple too, for Jesus said, “If I then, you Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” Love is a concrete thing. It manifests itself in our actions, not in merely in our feelings or our words.

The love of Christ drove Him to lay down his life for his friends. And this He did that we might receive life and liberty and the forgiveness of our sins. But He died also, as we say in our collect for Palm Sunday, that we “should follow the example of his great humility.” The Scriptures teach that we too are to bear our crosses and die. Someone has said there are 1001 ways to die and none of them are any good. He was probably right. We naturally shrink away from death. We want to avoid it at all costs. Our natural impulse is for self-preservation. But the Scriptures call us to die to ourselves, to love sacrificially, to have the same mind of love in us as was in our Lord Jesus Christ.

And Jesus says this is the kind of love that will be the mark of his Church. He says, “By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” In other words, people who are not Christians will know we are Christians if we love one another. And our love will be to them an even more powerful witness to the truth of the Gospel than our words. Without love our words are empty. And so it stands to reason then, that the degree to which we love another, and to which our love for one another is displayed in our actions towards one another, is the degree to which we will be effective witnesses of the power of Christ to transform lives. Are we that kind of Church? Are you that kind of Christian?

We could begin to despair if we focused on weaknesses and failures in face of Christ’s New Commandment. But there were other commandments Jesus gave that first Maundy Thursday. He took bread and said, “Take, eat, this is my body.” He took the cup and said, “Drink ye all of this, for this is my blood of the new covenant.” You see, Jesus didn’t command us to love one another and then leave us to our own devices and desires to try to fulfill that commandment. He said that night, “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in Him, bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing.” We must be in Jesus, and He in us, if we are ever to have the love of Christ for one another. We must be united with Christ in his death if we are ever to die to ourselves, and united to Him in His resurrection if we would ever walk in newness of life and love. And Jesus gives us his feast tonight to nurture us in that union.

Beloved, here, at this table, is where we may have communion with our crucified and risen Lord. Here is where He fills us with Himself and with His love. ‘Greater love has no man than to give his life for his friends.” Let us come ready to receive his life, that we may minister his love. +