This day might’ve been the most challenging of the three days—Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday—to imagine when we are physically apart from each other. The essence of this day and this day’s worship is rooted in sensory and bodily ritual: the laying on of hands, foot or hand washing, holy communion, and stripping the altar. On this day, perhaps more than any other, actions speak louder than words. And so I found it really hard to capture that feeling when we are all physically separated from each other.
As you may know, the name for this day, Maundy, comes from the Latin word mandatum, meaning mandate or command. In the story from John, as Jesus gathers with his disciples one last time, he washes their feet, they share a meal, and he gives them a command: to love one another as he has loved them. This command gets to the heart of the meaning and ritual of this day. Love one another. And so over the past week, I’ve collected some pictures, videos and stories of ways that folks like you are living out Jesus’ command to love another, even now, largely confined to our homes. These stories are proof that even in the most extraordinary and unprecedented times, even when despair seems to filter out all hope, even when it seems to take superhuman strength to find moments of joy and positivity, God’s love persists, through people like you and me.
The story tonight of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples and commanding them to love one another brings to mind an earlier passage in the gospel of John—another one about love, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son…” You might’ve heard it before. The love expressed in this famous verse suggests love that is sacrificial, a giving of oneself. This is how much God loves the world—that God would give God’s only Son for the life of the world. Now, in our present reality, it might be hard to believe that God could love a world as broken and diseased as this one. It might be hard to believe that a God who loves the world so much could allow so much suffering and death. Yet this love is what saves us. This love—love that comes to earth as a baby, turns water into wine, chooses to hang out with sinners, offers living water gushing up to eternal life to strangers that he meets, feeds thousands with a couple loaves of bread and a few fish, makes the blind see again, even raises people from the dead—this love is what saves us.
The love that God shows us by sending the true light that has come into the world is the same kind of love that Jesus talks about with his disciples and models for them by engaging in a servant’s act. Washing feet is only the beginning of Jesus’ self-sacrificing love—love that expects nothing in return. The ultimate act of love will come tomorrow when he walks to a death on a cross.
And in baptism we are called in turn to reflect this type of love, to share this love with all the world—love that is inclusive, love that crosses boundaries, love that stands with the most marginalized and vulnerable, love that challenges the accepted yet sinful ways in which the world operates. Especially during this time that we are living in right now, a time rife with anxiety, fear, suspicion, and uncertainty, acts of love, ways in which we give of ourselves for others are as important as ever. Especially during this time, moments and glimpses of love remind us that God’s ongoing and redeeming continues. The persistence of love reminds us of the persistent presence of God.