“Having loved his own who were in the world he loved them to the end.”
On Christmas morning I preached about love. I talked about how the Incarnation is God’s Love coming into our midst. I talked about how Love came into our midst so that we can be reborn as children of God, like he was born of a brave young woman in Bethlehem. Love came into our midst to gather us up, like he was gathered up in the arms of his mother. Love came into our midst to swaddle us in himself, like he was swaddled in strips of cloth. Love came into our midst to nestle us into the bosom of God, like he was nestled to sleep in the manger. On Christmas, Love came into our midst—the Word became flesh—to love us: “his own who are in the world.” And tonight on Maundy Thursday, he shows us where that love leads as he “loves us to the end.”
If on Christmas we heard the good news of Love coming into our midst to unite us to God, tonight we see the path to this union. We are led into union with the God who made us by following a path—a way of love. But not a generic, sentimental love. Our path to God is a love that lays down its life for another. “This [love] is the guiding principle of the dawning messianic age” [1] which will break through tomorrow when Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. It is a love that doesn’t hold anything back. It doesn’t keep receipts, tallying up sacrifices to be reimbursed. It’s a love that prompts the Son of God—through whom all things were made—to not only take on our human nature, but to wash the dirty, dusty feet of his disciples.
“Lord, are YOU going to wash MY feet?”
Now, I got a pedicure this morning to spare y’all the nastiness of my winter feet. But in a society where sandals were the norm and animals were everywhere, washing your own feet was gross (let alone someone else’s). It was a task considered too menial for free people to do, and even higher-ranking slaves considered it beneath them. Someone worthy of being called ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord’ would never dream of washing the feet of his students.
But love prompts Jesus, our Teacher and Lord, to take off his robe and get down on his knees. He washes the dirty feet—the feet of those who love him and the feet of the one who will betray him. And in this humble act of tender care, he points us towards the climax of the drama of God’s love becoming flesh. Tomorrow, Jesus will embrace the ultimate end of self-sacrificial love, loving us by offering up his life for our sake. And tonight looking forward to that ultimate gift, he calls us, his disciples, to live like that too.
“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
This love is the distinguishing mark of the life that Christ is leading us into. As the sign by which we will be known as Christ’s own, this love gives meaning and shape to every other aspect of our lives as Christians. Tonight, this love reveals Baptism as more than a ritual to mark membership or a procedure to wash away sin. Christ’s new commandment reveals Baptism as a moment of receiving this self-giving love—of letting ourselves be washed by the Lord who has become a servant, the Word who has become flesh.
This love reveals the Eucharist as more than a meal in which we merely remember Jesus or even an esoteric ritual in which we spiritually feed his body and blood. The new commandment reveals Communion as sharing in Christ’s sacrifice as our Passover lamb, totally and completely offering ourselves in union with Christ out of love.
And this love reveals the Christian life as more than being a good person or part of a loving community. The new commandment reveals Christianity as a grateful response with our whole lives to the love we have already received as disciples of Christ.
“…love one another. Just as I have loved you…”
We have a mandate (a mandatum) in the New Creation that Christ inaugurates with his Passion this week. It’s a mandate to love one another in the same way that Christ has loved us. The new commandment bids us to follow Christ in his act of self-giving, self-sacrificing love and to practice this love in all our affairs—from the smallest act of kindness, even up to laying down our lives for each other.
Tonight, as he points us towards his death on the Cross, Jesus tells us that this is how the world is meant to know that we are his disciples. This is how we make him known in the world: By accepting the love of the Lord who washes us. By receiving the gift of his very flesh & blood so that we are utterly united to his sacrifice on the Cross. By living as walking tabernacles—living sacraments—so united to Christ and caught up in the love that God shows, that we embody that love in everything we do.
The new commandment Jesus gives us tonight is a mandate to shape our whole lives around participation in the love of Christ our Passover; so that we love Christ’s own who are in the world, and we love them to the end. Love came down at Christmas. And now Love-Made-Flesh loves us to the end. So let us love one another, as Christ loves us, and pour ourselves out, living our whole lives in the posture of a servant; so that the world may know that Love is in our midst. He is and ever shall be. Amen.
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[1] Scott M Lewis, SJ in The New Collegeville Bible Commentary: New Testament