Maundy
Thursday – March 28th, 2013 – John 13:1-15
In the Name of Christ the Crucified +
The hour approaches – the hour approaches where our Lord
will be betrayed, where He will be handed over to be beaten, and scourged, and
crucified. The hour is getting late, and
He knows that His time of teaching His disciples is short. There are all these things that they don’t
understand. Sin keeps popping up in
them, and temptations will continue to hound them. What teaching do they hear, now, when time is
short?
Jesus washes their feet.
Jesus shows Himself to be humble, to be a servant. Why? For I have given you an example. Jesus knows, Jesus sees, Jesus
understands. Jesus gets what sin
is. To sin is fundamentally to love
yourself and hate the neighbor. To sin
is to make demands of your neighbor, to expect them to serve you. To paraphrase a former President, to sin is
to ask what your neighbor can do for you, rather than asking what you can do
for your neighbor. And Jesus realizes
that this will be a lingering problem, and so this is where He focuses a great
deal of His teaching this day.
He sums it up. He
gives us a nice little phrase that we can understand. A
new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; just as I have loved
you, you are also to love one another.
It’s not really that new of a commandment. Obey Your Parents. Don’t kill.
Don’t steal. That’s all covered
in the commandments. But Jesus knows how
we can abuse those – how we can look simply at what we are supposed to not do,
and build ourselves up as hypocrites. I
haven’t stolen, I’ve not robbed a bank, see how wonderful I am. We try to find loopholes in the law, and
Jesus slams them shut. Love one
another. No, people, don’t think that
you can deftly avoid the law, don’t think that you can use it to prove yourself
to be a good person. Here is the
standard, here is the commandment. Love
one another.
Think about that.
That’s a harsh law, that’s a harsh commandment. When you are doing something, pause, stop and
think, “How am I loving my neighbor by doing this?” That is a high standard. But this is nothing new. The Law always has high demands – but Jesus
isn’t going to let us fool ourselves into thinking otherwise. He gives us in the Church our marching
orders, and they are rough. But even as
He speaks this Law to us, even as He gives us this new commandment – He doesn’t
just let us stew. He doesn’t just let us
fret. Rather, hear what He says, “Just as I have loved you.” Although our eyes are shown our own lack,
they are also focused on Christ and His love for us.
Christ’s focus is always upon the neighbor. Christ’s concern is always shown for those
around Him. Think on the times where
Jesus shows compassion upon people, where He heals, where He feeds, where He
shows love and concern. Indeed,
involving the love of the neighbor, He is our highest example. But think on this. Jesus has loved you. This is His great focus – showing love to
you. This is His great focus as this
Thursday gives way to Good Friday.
Christ’s eyes are upon showing love to you as He goes to the garden; His
love for you is shown as He is led like a lamb, silent to the slaughter, during
the accusations and kangaroo court of the Night. His love for you is shown as He allows
Himself to be whipped, to be beaten, to be nailed to the tree. All this is done because Jesus has loved
you. All this is done because Jesus
would have your sins be forgiven, because He would rather pay the penalty for
sin than let you bear it. For Jesus,
saying that He has loved us is not just some empty words, a trite phrase used
to manipulate and seduce. He puts His
love into action as He strides towards the shame and suffering of the Cross.
This is the very same love that Christ gives to you. This is the very same love that Christ fills
you with, this is the love that is the fruit of His Spirit, which He has given
you. As Christians, you do love each
other just as Christ has loved you, for the love you bear and share and show
forth to each other is in fact Christ’s love, Christ’s love welling up and in
and through you. Christ’s command this
night is also a declaration of what He is doing with your lives. Christ takes sinful men, and washing you
clean He shapes you with His Word – the Potter remolds the clay into His Holy
vessels, and now you are filled with Christ’s love, and He pours out that love
upon your neighbor through you. When you
show love to your neighbor, that is Christ working through you. It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in
me. This is how Paul describes this
miracle. Christ fills you to bursting
with His love, so that you can’t but help to show forth His love, in spite of
yourself. This is our lives as Christians,
where Christ overwhelms our sinfulness with His forgiveness and with His love.
This is what He does whenever He calls
and invites you to His table. It is no
accident that our Lord, the night when He gives us this new command, the night
when He was betrayed, takes simple Bread and Wine, and uses them to give us a
gift beyond the ability of our mind or reason to comprehend. Jesus knows and understands in full a truth
that we are taught when we are young but can so often forget as we grow old –
that we are weak, but He is strong. So
He calls us to His table and says, “Take and Eat, this is My Body. Take and Drink, this is My Blood.” Of course our Lord would do this, of course
our Lord would give you all that He is, all His strength and love – for this is
what love is – to give of one’s own self to the neighbor. And this is what Christ does in His
supper. And why? We have a great prayer after Communion which
tells us the answer. “and we beseech
Thee that of Thy mercy Thou wouldst strengthen us through the same, through
this supper, in faith towards Thee and in fervent love toward one
another.” Jesus sees His disciples that
Maundy Thursday evening, He sees you – and He wants you to be strong and firm
in the faith, to be filled with Him and His love, and so, He calls you to His table,
this very day, this very hour God Himself says, “Come and receive me, take all
that I am, so that I might be your strength, and that you might cling only to
me.” This is what our God does for
you. He washes you clean of all your
sins and brings you unto Himself. He
gives you every good gift; He gives you Himself.
The hour of our Lord’s Crucifixion was drawing closer and
closer the first Maundy Thursday night – but as always, our Lord’s eyes are
fixed on His neighbor – His eyes are fixed upon you. And He takes you, and turns your focus away
from selfish desires and foolish greed, and instead teaches you to love your
neighbor. He feeds you on His own Body
and Blood that you will be strengthened in Him.
Behold what Christ Jesus our Lord does for you. In the Name of Christ the Crucified + Amen.
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