Maundy Thursday 2020

Maundy Thursday 2020
John 13:1-17, 31b-35

I am particularly grieved that we cannot be physically together this evening, because our remembrance of this gospel story is usually such a sensory worship experience. Some communities practice foot washing at the Maundy Thursday service. Many communities share the Lord’s Supper on Maundy Thursday. And these things, these experiences where we touch and taste and exercise our physical selves in celebration of an incarnated God who washed feet and had his own feet anointed, who ate and drank and dipped his bread with his disciples, who would later be betrayed by a kiss…in our current circumstances, those physical acts of worship are not available to us. We cannot worship as we usually do, as we wish we could, as we maybe feel we should.

But just to be clear: the command Jesus gave to the disciples was not that they wash each other’s feet. The command that Jesus gave was that they love one another. And at first, it would seem that there has never been a time when it is so easy to love one another. Right now, loving one another looks like sitting on the couch and watching TV or reading a book, maybe making some phone calls. It looks like wearing a mask and planning a little more thoughtfully for grocery shopping. It looks like sending a card or placing a care package on a porch and resisting the urge to get closer. Loving one another these days may require thoroughly washing our own hands, but it definitely doesn’t demand that we wash someone else’s feet.

Yet Jesus also says that we are to love others as he has loved us. Which makes things a little harder. Because Jesus loved us enough to die for us. And if we read tonight’s story very carefully, we would see that Jesus washed Judas’ feet and fed him, even knowing that Judas would betray him. Sure it’s easy for us to love the anonymous masses or our vulnerable family and friends through social distancing in this strange time…but what about when we are back together again? Or even now, how are we doing at loving others in a way that actually requires us to make sacrifices, or to love the one who treats us as Judas treated Jesus. As we listen to the politics and opinions surrounding this pandemic, are we thinking and speaking and acting in love toward those who establish or view or follow public policies differently than we do? Now that this crisis has revealed the severe disadvantage of some members of our society, will we become advocates for them in the future, even if that means making a sacrifice on our part? Will we treat with equal love the person who wrongs us, as Jesus loved Judas? Will it help if we remember that to Jesus, we all are Judas?

Loving those whom we judge hard to love is the most Jesusy thing we can do. Because Jesus reminds us that when we love like that, like he did, we’re not doing for ourselves, but because, as he says, by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. Jesus who loved us enough to give himself up for us wants us to love others, not because it wins us personal piety points, but because that’s how other people come to know the love of God. Sure, it probably made the disciples’ own community nicer, but Jesus’ broader concern was that their love for one another be the light by which other people could see the love of God.

Whatever we’re currently doing, or not doing, whatever we will go back to doing, or not doing, sometime in the future—may it be not for ourselves but for the glory of God who loves all of us to the end. Let them know we are Christians by our love, so they can know that God is love.