Maundy Thursday

John 13:1-15 - Maundy Thursday - April 17, 2014
May I Give Thee Love for Love

Today is Maundy Thursday.  The word Maundy comes from the Latin word for command or mandate.  Jesus commands his disciples to do for each other what he did for them.  He says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (John 13:34).  This commandment to love is what Maundy Thursday is named after.  We are to pattern our love for each other on Jesus’ love for us.  And how does Jesus love us?  It is as he says, “Greater love has no man than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (John 15:13). 

But on the night when he was betrayed, before these events took place, Jesus gave a picture of this love by washing his disciples’ feet. 

He knew he was the Son of God.  And he knew what he must now do as the Son of Man.  All things had been given into his hands including the cup of his Father’s wrath against sin that he must now drink in our stead.  It was all but accomplished.  But first, by being a servant to his disciples on this evening, Jesus showed them the love behind it all.  Love stoops to serve.  It doesn’t aim to make a flamboyant show of affection in order to impress its beloved.  Rather, it humbly seeks the advantage of the beloved with nothing else in mind than that her welfare be improved.  Only God is capable of such self-giving love. 

When Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, he taught three lessons that I would like now to consider.  1) He taught the purpose and goal of his suffering and death.  2) He taught by example how we are to love one another.  And 3) he taught his disciples what they needed to be prepared for preaching the gospel. 

(I)

We begin with the purpose and goal of Christ’s passion.  If we are to love one another because of Christ’s love for us, then where else should we look to understand our Lord’s command than to the command of his Father to him?  This command is summarized so well in the hymn that I often quote, and which we just sang:

“Go forth, My Son,” the Father saith,
“And free men from the fear of death,
From guilt and condemnation.
The wrath and stripes are hard to bear,
But by Thy Passion men shall share
The fruit of Thy salvation.” 

The reason Jesus died on the cross was not just for some grand display of love.  Often the crucifixion of Jesus is presented in this way – as though all it were were a dramatic expression of God’s commitment: “He loves us so much that he was willing to suffer and die.”  While this is most certainly true — God forbid that anything else should serve as the measure of God’s love than the death of his Son! —  But while this is true, we must remember that love doesn’t just flaunt itself for its own sake.  No, love is active.  It accomplishes something.  The purpose and goal of the crucifixion was not simply to show off how much God loves us despite our many sins.  It was more.  It was to pay for our many sins.  It was to fully satisfy God’s righteous anger against the disobedient nature we were born with and against everything that proceeds from our sinful hearts.  Christ’s death takes our sins away and gives us peace with God.  This is the command that the Father gave his Son.  He required more than that he show love.  He required that he do what love does. 

As St. Paul writes in Romans 5: “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” — For us, this means that it benefits us, and Paul tells us how in the next verse — “Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him” (Romans 5:8-9). 

In the same way that Christ’s death is more than just an expression of love, so also Jesus did not wash his disciples’ feet just in order to show off his humility.  He washed his disciples’ feet in order to teach them that they needed his service.  The Son of Man came to be served, and to give his life as a ransom for all.  They needed to benefit from his humility.  The crucifixion of Jesus, as awe-inspiring as it is as an image of self-sacrifice, does us no good at all unless Jesus serves us with the forgiveness that he earns. 

Everyone’s feet were dirty.  Everyone needed them cleaned.  Someone else should have volunteered to play the part of the servant.  But everyone thought it was beneath him.  Everyone placed himself above the other.  That is why Peter was so aghast when Jesus did what none was willing to do: “Lord, do you wash my feet?”  It’s as if he said, “Andrew, little brother, you should be doing this.”  But Jesus insisted: “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” 

Only when we first understand that we are sinners who place ourselves above others do we see our need for Jesus to place himself under God’s wrath in our place.  And only then does his service of placing himself below us make sense.  Only when we see our need for the fruit of Jesus’ suffering and death, do we long for where this fruit is offered. 

And in this way, we see how beneficial it is to be served with the body and blood of Jesus in the Lord’s Supper.  Here Jesus stoops lower than washing our feet.  He humbly gives us what his death and resurrection earned.  Yet, how many people are as horrified as Peter by what Jesus offers in this Sacrament?  It offends them.  They think it’s ridiculous and see no use.  “Eat his body and drink his blood?  Never!”  But how do we learn to love this Sacrament despite our inability to understand it?  Only by learning our need for what Jesus earned on the cross.  Only when the soul hungers for mercy does the Christian learn to hunger for the body and blood of Jesus.  This is where Jesus serves us. 

In the washing of his disciples’ feet, and in the humble bestowal of his body and blood under bread and wine, Jesus teaches us the goal and purpose of his suffering and death. 

(II)

By washing his disciples’ feet, Jesus also set an example of how to love one another.  St. John writes in his first epistle: “My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18).  We love in deed and in truth not by literally washing one another’s feet, because that would not be useful in our climate and culture.  Such a gesture would be sentimental only and would amount to loving only in word and tongue.  Jesus did not institute foot washing as an everlasting ordinance.  He commands more than a gesture.  He commands us to serve one another in the same humility and selflessness as he served us.  Jesus loved and served in deed and truth by laying down his life. 

Now, does this then mean that we ought to actually lay down our lives for one another?  — Yes.  That’s exactly what it means!  It means that we are to offer ourselves so completely to our fellow Christians just as Christ offered himself completely to us, so that we not only share our wealth, talent, honor, and time for each other’s benefit, but also so that we offer our very lives – our very flesh and blood – as a daily sacrifice of love to everyone who is named a brother or sister in Christ.  This is the love that Jesus commands, because this is the love that Jesus showed to us. 

It would do no good for me to die a gruesome death for you or for you to die a gruesome death for me.  But it does great good to all of us here as brothers and sisters and to the whole body of Christ when we prize our own life no more highly than we prize one another’s.  But how do we do that?  By knowing where our life is found.  “He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39).  Our life is found not in how disciplined we are, or how successful we are.  Our life is not found in how well we raised our kids or spent our lives or invested our talents compared to the one sitting in the pew behind or in front of you.  Our lives our found in Christ who loved us.  Our feet are all dirty.   Our souls are all in need of daily cleansing. 

Who will stoop to serve?  How will you do it?  Well, the “how” must be determined by what station in life God has given you.  You serve with what you have.  But the “why” and “wherefore” is found here – where Christ behaves differently than we are inclined to act, and serves us with the eternal gifts of heaven.  He cleanses us with the blood he shed to atone for all our sins, and he cleanses us all the same.  Each one of us wears the same robe of righteousness that we received in our Baptism.  We claim nothing less before God, and so we claim nothing more before each other.  We lay down our lives for one another by repenting side by side that we are together poor miserable sinners, and so also by confessing with one another the true life we share.  We wash one another’s feet by forgiving as we have been forgiven, and by loving as we have been loved. 

Only when we are served and washed together by Jesus are we enabled by his Holy Spirit to live together.  It is as we pray in the Collect after Communion: “We implore You that of Your mercy You would strengthen us in faith toward You and in fervent love toward one another.” 

(III)

Jesus washed his disciples’ feet thirdly in order to prepare them to preach the gospel.  In order to serve, we must be served.  So also, in order for a minister of the gospel to be a faithful servant of Christ, he must himself learn to be served by Christ. 

St. Paul once persecuted the gospel.  He hated Jesus and this displayed itself in hatred for all Christians.  But when Jesus in his resurrected glory confronted Paul on his way to Damascus in order to set him apart as an Apostle, he first set him apart as his child.  Paul relates in Galatians 1: “But … it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles” (Galatians 1:15-16a).  Having received mercy himself, he was prepared to show mercy to others.   

Your pastor is a sinner.  The Apostles were sinners.  Jesus knew this.  He sends sinners who love their lives, who struggle with pride, and laziness, and lusts of the flesh who dearly need the gospel in order to preach the gospel.  Those who feed others must know how to feed themselves.  Those who admonish with the word of God that you should not walk in the path of sinners, but be lead in the way of peace need to know where their own feet have trod and to have them washed by Jesus.  Jesus taught his disciples to love mercy so that they might be faithful in proclaiming it.  That’s why he washed their feet.  How else could Christ have sent them to preach the gospel than by cleansing them of their sins?  As Paul says in Romans 10, “And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things!’” (Romans 10:15).

And so you can expect Jesus to do the same for you.  How much more beautiful are the feet of those who believe the gospel of peace, and who sing with joy in their hearts the good tidings of Christ!  Our sins are forgiven.  We have peace with God.  Christ has served us and gives us eternal life and salvation – together and individually.  And so we love him who loved us by living at peace with one another. 

Let us pray:

Jesus, Bread of Life, I pray Thee,
Let me gladly here obey Thee.
By Thy love I am invited,
Be Thy love with love requited;
From this Supper let me measure,
Lord, how vast and deep Love’s treasure.
Through the gifts Thou here dost give me
As Thy guest in heaven receive me. Amen.