John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?" Jesus answered, "You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand." Peter said to him, "You will never wash my feet." Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no share with me." Simon Peter said to him, "Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!" Jesus said to him, "One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you." For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.”

After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.

 "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.' I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

Every year around this time, I am asked the same question: What does Maundy mean?

People often confuse the term for Monday, thinking the day is Monday-Thursday (which sounds more like a course schedule than a sacred holiday).  Others think that Maundy has something to do with maudlin or being sad.  In reality, Maundy is the worn down English form of the Latin word mandatum meaning “commandment”.  For it is on this night that the passage from John is read that contains the verse “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

It is fitting then to stop to pause and reflect on this New Commandment.  To love one another as Christ loved us.  How do we understand what a commandment to love means?

Preachers like me always like to start with the common observation that love is not a feeling.  Agape love, true Christian love is a love of action.  A love of right relationship.  It is possible in the Christian sense to love a person you don’t even like.  It is not a sense of fondness.  To be in right relationship does not mean to have to feel warm and fuzzy about.  Loving is a way of living. It is as much about the doing as it is about the feeling.

I suppose we can continue this reflection by asking ourselves what kinds of action this love entails. We can look at the self-sacrificial love of Christ.  A love that is willing to give fully of itself for others. 

We can look and the ways we as a community might express that love, we can look at it in the way that Jesus himself understood that love. 

We can look at it as loving one another through shared praise and worship.  We can look at it as building relationships with one another, strengthening the bonds of community. We can look at it as loving one another in helping each other to discern the truths of our faith in studying the scriptures together. 

We can look at it as reaching out in service to a broken world.  To help those who have so little. Or those who have no voice.  We can look at love as acting out acts of justice, reaching out to transform the structures of power in the world.  We can look at it as creating communities of hospitality and inclusiveness, where all God’s children are welcomed.

We can do all those things.  We can look at love in a lot of the ways that we are very busy doing things.  We can look at it as all the ways that we in a community like this find to do.  We can find all kinds of way to express the love that we know from Christ Jesus.

But there is a danger here.  For many of us in what we call the “mainline” traditions, there is a very special danger that we lose touch with a fundamental truth.  I have often said that the divide between so-called “evangelical” Christians and so-called “mainline” Christians is that one has all the fervor but doesn’t know what to do with it and the other is really busy but doesn’t know why.

Sometimes I worry that when we focus too much on how we’re living it out, we wind up creating more work for ourselves.  Finding ourselves with new burdens, new things that we have to do.  New things that we feel compelled to do.  New programs to create, new ministries to run.  New work on top of an already busy life.  And we wonder where exactly is the love in all of this.  It doesn’t feel a lot like love, it feels like we have more work to do. 

I think back to what Jesus said: Love one another as I have loved you. 

There is a danger that we can be so busy finding ways that we can live out the love of Christ, that we can love as Jesus loved us, that we lose sight of the fact that in reality we are doing these things because Jesus loved us.

We gather these three days of awe—Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Thursday—to contemplate that awesome, mysterious, and wondrous love of God in Jesus Christ.  That love that is so self-giving that it gives freely, self-sacrificially.  That it lays down its life for us. Breaks down the barriers for us.  That it is a welcoming love.

And that love of Jesus is a wondrous love.  It is a love that has existed since the founding of the world.  A love that was first glimpsed in the act of creation itself.  A love that made itself known to the patriarchs and matriarchs of Israel.  A love made known to the Children of Israel in Egypt, the daughters and sons of Judah in Exile.  A love glimpsed by the prophets in their calls for justice.  A love seen in the feeding of the multitudes.  A love seen in the healing of the blind, the lame, the afflicted.  A love seen in the willingness to go to the cross for our sakes.  A love seen in the victory over death itself through the Empty Tomb. 

It is a wondrous love. 

We live out this love not because it’s good to be busy—a hard thing to remember in a town like this.  And a school like this one.  We live out this wondrous love because we have been loved.  And all the ways that we would seek to share that love are not a new obligation, a new burden, they are the result of having been freed from all our burdens.  We are liberated from our guilt, and shame, and oppression. They are the response of a joyful people who sing and celebrate this love.

This is the wondrous love that we gather here these days to celebrate.  It is a love that undergirds our understanding of who we are.  We are a loved people and therefore a loving people.

We gather on Maundy Thursday to read the commandment to love.  We gather also to celebrate the communion. To celebrate the meal that Christ shared with his disciples, that we continue to share as a perpetual remembrance of that last supper and a perpetual foretaste of the coming glorious heavenly banquet.

And yet for so many Christians, the Eucharist is a dour formal event.  We line up in neat little rows.  We come forward, we put out our hands.  We take and go back to our seats.  Quietly.

Let this Eucharist be for us a love feast.  Let it be a celebration of a people who are loved and loving one another in the world.  Let it be a time of joy in the midst of the sorrow of the crucifixion and betrayal.  Let it be for us a sign that we are a people who understands what this love is that we are seeing.  That we are a people who understand that self-sacrificial love that Christ so freely shared with us.  That awesome life transforming love that we are called to live out.  Because it is a joy to do so.

Let this feast be the way that we celebrate the love that we have for one another.  That love with which Christ first love us.  The love of God that Christ shared with us.  This love can transform us, and by this love all will know that we are Christ’s disciples.