Posted on 03/20/2008 9:11:21 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
When I was a little boy I thought this was called Monday Thursday, and I couldn’t quite figure that out.
In fact it wasn’t until I went to seminary that someone finally explained to me that Maundy Thursday got its name from the Latin word mandatum and that this had to do with the novum mandatum—the new commandment—which the gospel according to John tells us Jesus gave to his disciples on the first Maundy Thursday.
Here’s what Jesus said: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (John 13:31 , NRSV).
Love one another. Now I think we can interpret that two different ways. First we can think of it narrowly: that we who claim to be disciples of Jesus ought to love one another just as Jesus loved us. It seems to me, though, that we often fail miserably to live up to that commandment.
Not only are there the historic conflicts between different groups of Jesus’ disciples such as the drowning of Anabaptists during the Reformation era and Protestants and Catholics killing one another in Elizabethan England and twentieth-century Ireland, there are also the very local and small-scale insults and injuries that disciples of Jesus often hurl at one another from one pew to the next.
Paul famously teaches the Corinthians that love is patient and kind and rejoices in the truth; it is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude or irritable or resentful; it does not insist on its own way nor rejoice in wrongdoing; it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (see First Corinthian 13). Yet I still see lots and lots of impatience, unkindness, enviousness, boastfulness and arrogance in our churches.
I’ve seen many a church council “insist on its own way,” and I’ve known more than one church which envied some other church because of the other church’s charismatic pastor, or well-appointed building, or expanding membership rolls. The list goes on.
You remember I said this novum mandatum might be interpreted in two different ways. I suppose we might also interpret it broadly: that we who claim to be disciples of Jesus ought to love all of God’s people as Jesus loved us. Again, we haven’t done well.
There have been pogroms and Crusades and Inquisitions, and witch hunts and burnings at the stake.
All of this is just simply unacceptable. How can we sit comfortably in a Maundy Thursday service while we have been impatient, unkind, boastful, arrogant, rude; when we have insisted where or what time the service should be, or what songs had to be sung or whether or not there had to be Holy Communion or a foot washing?
Jesus comments on his new commandment by saying: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35 , NRSV). Not by how we judge one another, not by how righteous or holy or pious we are, not by how “right” we are about any particular issue. People will know we are disciples of Jesus by the quality and the quantity of our love.
Tomorrow, on Good Friday, we see the love that Jesus had for all the people of the world: that he would suffer on a cross and die for them.
If that is the quality and quantity of Jesus’ love for us, what must we be willing to do for others if we are to truly live out the meaning of Maundy Thursday?
Have a blessed Triduum!
I don’t think the Jesus who said he came to bring “not peace, but a sword” was really looking to have us all link arms and sing Kumbaya.
The day I link arms with Rev. Wright, for example, I hope someone is there who knows a lot about casting out demons, because I will truly have been possesed by one of the very worst kind should that day come.
161 English and 269 Irish Catholic Martyrs During the Reign of the Tyrant Henry VIII: 1534-1544
312 English Catholic Martyrs and Heroic Confessors During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth
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