Taste and see that the Lord is good

Two months since my last post ... but this has been a full time in my life. In fact, it is going to continue to be so for most of this year. I said that I'd pop my head up every now and again, even while stepping back from regular blogging. And there is no better time to do that than now, in the midst of Holy Week.

In the services at my church tonight, tomorrow, and on Sunday, we will gather to worship, pray, and sing our common faith. The vigil that will begin tomorrow, and the celebration that will follow on Sunday, are the very events that all of history hinges upon. So it is appropriate that we remember the passage from Hebrews:

We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek (Hebrews 6:19-20).

If you find yourself in need of a prayer for Maundy Thursday, I want to offer you this one from our Book of Worship (p.349) -

O God, by the example of your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ,

you taught us the greatness of true humility,

and call us to watch with him in his passion.

Give us grace to serve one another in all lowliness,

and to enter into the fellowship of his suffering;

in his name and for his sake. Amen.

Mandatum Day

Like countless other children, I grew up hearing the term "Maundy Thursday" during the Lenten season and just assumed that the grown-ups around me were saying "Monday Thursday." I knew Easter was a special time, so I just assumed that this "Monday Thursday" thing was part of the deal. If Jesus could come out of the tomb on Easter morning, why couldn't we have Monday and Thursday on the same day??

I was actually in divinity school, about ten years ago, before I never learned the origin of Maundy Thursday. By then I knew enough to say "Maundy" instead of "Monday." And I knew the term had to have something to do with the final gathering of Jesus with his disciples on the night he was betrayed. But I still didn't know what the strange modifier "Maundy" meant, nor why it had been attached to a day that otherwise would have done just fine as "Holy Thursday."

Tracing Maundy Thursday's lineage actually requires doing something that Protestants almost never do: opening up the Latin Vulgate. Turning to John 13, where Jesus washes the disciples' feet, we read this in verses 34-35:

Mandatum novum do vobis, ut diligatis invicem. Sicut dilexi vos ut et vos diligatis invicem. In hoc cognoscent omnes quia mei discipuli estis, si dilectionem habueritis ad invicem.

Here is a literal, if somewhat clunky, translation:

A new commandment I give to you all, that you love mutually. Just as I have held you dear, so that you may also hold one another dear. In this way, everyone shall learn that you are my disciples, if you will have love for the purpose of mutuality.

The Latin mandatum novum translates as the English new commandment (think of our synonym "mandate"). And Maundy is just a corruption of the original mandatum. So Maundy Thursday is really just Commandment Thursday, the day when Jesus commands us to love one another as he has loved us. Moreover, wrapped up in Jesus' mandatum to us is a deeper implication: namely, that if we are doing it right, the world will be able to identify us as Christians by the very quality of love that we bear toward one another.

When we preach this passage on Maundy Thursday, we should take care to emphasize the extent of the love Jesus was talking about. Specifically, Jesus' qualifier, "Just as I have held you dear" (or more conventionally, "Just as I have loved you"), calls us to look both forward and backward in the gospel for those specific ways that Jesus loves the disciples.

Looking backward, we recognize that Jesus says these words right after he has disrobed and, taking the role of a servant, washed each of the disciples' feet. He models love for them not by a long-winded discourse on the virtue of love, but rather by showing them love firsthand through his actions. The footwashing conveys a depth of meaning that simple words could not.

We also look forward to how Jesus will love the disciples (and indeed, the whole world) through his death on the cross. So while the love he models for us takes the form of servanthood, it also carries that servanthood to an absolute extreme. It includes the sacrifice of the servant's own life, or as Jesus himself says, the laying down of the shepherd's life for his sheep (John 10:11). And this is the love with which we are to love one another.

As difficult as this teaching is for Christians, we should recognize that it is not an option. Jesus teaching is a mandatum, a commandment. And there is a reason for this. In English translations, the end of the passage reads, "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." But the static quality of "know" in English obscures the meaning of the Latin cognoscent, which carries the progressive meaning of learning or acquiring knowledge. The world does not understand the true meaning of love. But through the church's witness to Christ's love for the world - expressed through the love of the disciples for one another - the world can learn what love really means. So the telos of Mandatum Day is that our embodiment of the command becomes the means of salvation for the world. Only when the church faithfully practices Jesus' love can the world learn that there is a better way to live.