Maundy Thursday: The Funded Mandate

Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10) 11-14; Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17; 31b-35

I'm actually writing this entry on Good Friday, because I spent all day yesterday escorting the Work and Witness team on campus on a sightseeing trip. We spent time going up to a beautiful waterfall, enjoying the richness of creation with a view toward praising the creator. Two of us, one of the team members and I, took the additional step of being pulled under the falls on a bamboo raft. This got us exceedingly wet, but we got to enjoy an extra view of various caves and wonderful rock formations behind the falls. So, anyway, that's where I spent Maundy Thursday, and then I ate a Passover meal, of sorts, with my faculty colleague who is the main sponsor of this work team and the team members. I thought I simply couldn't leave out Maundy Thursday as I did with one of the Sundays of Lent. I probably should have written an entry like this for each of the days of Holy Week. I didn't, though, because of responsibilties related to the wrapping up of the semester. Enough of the excuses.

Maundy Thursday has been a significant day for me in the Christian calendar since I was first introduced to some special practices involved with it when I was a teenager. The church we attended at that time practiced foot-washing on Maundy Thursday, an idea which instantly turned me offand in which I consequently never participated. This is in part related to my own squeamishness, but also because the theological significance of the rite was not fully explained to us. This was a failure of the catechetical operation of that particular church, though I am not setting out in this piece to be critical of former churches.

The association of Maundy Thursday with the institution of the Eucharist was communicated to me in college. Then, in seminary, Holy Week took on an especially significant flavor, as Maundy Thursday services--in which I often publicly read Scripture during Eucharist--were joined with the Service of Darkness on Good Friday. I intend to post a Good Friday meditation later today, but I am also attending a service at Antipolo First Church of the Nazarene at 3:00 PM, which I think is perhaps the most appropriate time to have a Good Friday service, for it is the "ninth hour" of the day when our Lord is said to have died.

I once preached a Maundy Thursday sermon under the title "Funded Mandate." At the time, the phrase "unfunded mandate" was all the rage in the American political scene, describing the complaints of state and local leadership that the federal government was mandating certain things (really savage things, by the way, like making facilities accessible to the physically challenged) without providing funds necessary to come into compliance. The name "Maundy Thursday" comes from the Latin Vulgate translation of John 13:34--I give you a mandatum novatum, a new commandment, that you love one another.

That this commandment comes in the midst of Jesus washing the disciples' feet is what was not properly communicated to me when I was a kid. This is the supremely funded mandate, for throughout the Gospel of John Jesus is shown to be doing for the disciples everything that God has done for him--sending them into the world, providing comfort and direction, protecting them from evil. As, therefore, Christ has loved us, so we are to love one another, as says the second part of John 13:34. We are not merely commanded to come into compliance with a new directive from the leadership (a really savage thing, by the way, like loving one another) and left to find our own resources to do it, but instead we are but following the example of Christ. And he left us yet a further example by what happened to him the day after washing his disciples' feet. Though we might not be called to do exactly that in following the further example, nevertheless we are called to follow the example of Christ in expending our lives for the redemption of the world. This is a mandate which we must follow. But there is funding available. Amen.