Maundy Thursday –
John 13 – March 29th, 2018
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 need
to 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
night.
He
sums it all 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. Honor 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 insulted mom and dad, 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 deep law, that’s a deep 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. And 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 your 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 or 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 people, and washing you clean He
shapes you with His Word – the Potter remolds the clay into His
Holy vessels, and now Christ fills you with His own 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 Jesus does
whenever He calls and invites you to His table. It is no accident
that our Lord, on the night when He gives us this new command, on 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 implore
You that of Your mercy You would strengthen us through the same,
through this supper, in faith towards You 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 sins, done by you or to you, 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 focuses your eyes upon Him and 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.