Pastoral - Holy Week: Maundy Thursday

Maundy Thursday

Imagine, you are sitting at the table dinner table with the disciples, and Jesus gathers your attention and proclaims these powerful words:

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

This commandment would have changed the very fabric of your faith. Anytime that Jesus, the Messiah that you would have been waiting eagerly for, uttered a commandment, He would have had every fiber of your attention. Yet, what solidified this commandment were the acts that took place leading up to it.

            Jesus, just before the Feast of the Passover, invites his disciples to have dinner with Him one last time before he is led to His death. If you have ever had dinner with a prominent person in your life, you know the great excitement and eagerness that comes with that occasion. Jesus and His disciples began to have dinner together with what I’m sure involved many hearty laughs and “amens”. However, right in the middle of dinner, Jesus stands up, takes off his outer garments, ties a towel around his waist, and begins to wash His disciple’s feet.

            Given the culture that they lived and the sandals that almost everyone wore, every house had a basin of water at the door for people to wash their OWN feet. The only individuals that washed other people’s feet were the lowest of slaves. Could you imagine the look of shock on the disciple’s faces when the Messiah started to do this seemingly detestable act? This would be like having dinner at your house with your boss, and right in the middle of enjoying your meal, he stands up and begins to clean your toilet. You could picture now why Peter would have responded by initially refusing for Jesus to wash his feet! Yet, Jesus had a different motive. He was displaying to them what it meant to love one another. If you want to ponder on the depth of Jesus’ love, 2 of 24 feet that were washed belonged to a man that would betray Him in a few hours. The disciples didn’t understand this at the time, but this act of humility was forecasting something far greater than simply washing feet. It was foreshadowing the deep humility it would take for a king to die a peasant’s death on a cross for the betterment of His kingdom. Yet, Jesus didn’t stop at washing feet. When Jesus finished, He uttered these words in John 13:14–15:

If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. 

Jesus’ example was meant for more than just being awe-struck; it was meant to move us to love one another in the same vein of humility that bled for us.

            After washing His disciple’s feet, resumed His place at the table and begins to administer what we refer to now as the Lord’s Supper. We see many moment’s in Jesus’ ministry that in His omniscience, He was clearly aware of the intentions of man’s heart. The Last Supper was no different. Jesus was very much aware that Judas, the disciple that had already committed to betraying Him by giving Him up to the Sanhedrin for money, was at the table. Yet, this did not deter Him. Jesus, acting in humility, served Judas at the exact same time He served the rest of His disciples. Jesus still chose to pursue the heart of Judas. It was almost as if Jesus was pleading with Judas to not go through with it. You can almost hear the concern in His voice when He ultimately dismisses Judas from the table.

            This brings so much more reflective light on the Lord’s Supper. At the depth of our heart, our flesh trades the joy that is freely offered to us in Christ for other things on a daily basis. An old theologian once said that our nature is a perpetual factory of idols. Yet, at the same time, Jesus intentionally and lovingly served us on the cross, despite our propensity to dismiss Him. When we take the Lord’s Supper, we are doing more than participating in a Christian tradition; we are reflecting and remembering Jesus’ unconditional sacrifice on the cross for you and I. When Jesus commanded us to love and serve one another, He was doing so out of the example that He laid before us.

This Maundy Thursday, ask yourself how you can love and serve others despite their indifference towards you. Are there people in your life, workplace, etc. that maybe don’t deserve love, but that you could unconditionally serve just as Christ did to us? What are some ways that you can reflect and remember what Christ accomplished on the cross despite being fully aware of your sin?