Maundy Thursday is the Christian commemoration during Holy Week of the great mandatum (mandate) from Christ, the New Commandment that supersedes all the others:
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
(John 13:34, NRSV)
Something that gets skipped over in the Gospel of John version of the story is the part that makes some mainline Christians cringe just a little… and reserve this part just for this one day in Holy Week:
Jesus washing the disciples’ feet.
In among this lesson He teaches on how the servant is not better than the master, nor the messenger any greater than the one who sent, Jesus leaves his followers with a less “demanding” idea beyond the mind-boggling concept that all His followers should love one another. (Jesus was a Galilean, which put him one step above rabble-rousing Trailer Trash in that day and time.)
While Jesus taught the lesson that we now speak of as “servant leadership,” he mentions the most powerful new idea of the evening:
Peace.
Here is a section of the readings for the Maundy Thursday service from the Episcopal prayer book (read responsively, as shown by the italics) which pretty-well sums it up:
The Lord Jesus, after he had supped with his disciples and had washed their feet, said to them, “Do you know what I, your Lord and Master have done to you? I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done.”
Peace is my last gift to you, my own peace I now leave with you; peace which the world cannot give, I give to you.
I give you a new commandment: Love one another as I have loved you.
Peace is my last gift to you, my own peace I now leave with you; peace which the world cannot give, I give to you.
By this the world shall know that you are my disciples: that you have love for one another.
…and so on it goes.
The important part to pull from this (“the learning,” as I say in the office) is that we are downright Commanded to show love one for another.
I won’t ask “And how difficult could that be?!” because I would have to tell myself the answer, after seeing violence, abuse, neglect, absolute hatred with the worst sort of death-sounding name calling; I’ve seen ignorance of our brothers’ problems, and I’ve felt the indifference of those who were ignorant of mine.
I have sat the midnight watch at the bedside and held a teenager’s hands while the angels took him away, after a horrific beating too terrible to describe, which will never scrub from my memory. Holding his hands because his own parents – for whatever reason they had – would not come and sit with a boy in the indigent hospital in Washington, DC, because of who their son was, and who in his life he loved.
How difficult it is – just then – not to shake my fist at the Maker and ask “WHY? What possible lesson was this boy to learn here?” How difficult it is, in that darkest of night, to feel that unconditional, Commanded love for our fellow humans.
I have seen that, and I have picked up empty bullet casings on the street, stepped over blood stains on the sidewalk, listened to awful preachers lauding nothing but HATE by putting their own words into the mouth of God. I have seen them be their darkest and most vile and inhuman at the most human of times: putting lies in the mouth of God during a Hero’s funeral.
I saw my own minister angry to the point of near tears in the pulpit as he told us of such pranksters visiting our small out-of-the-news corner of the world, and “coincidentally” crosses were burned on the front lawn of one of our sister parishes. How difficult it is, then to love those people when we cannot see the way, through eyes red with rage, to love.
Peace.
The Holy Thursday prayer gives us the clue to how this works, as we paraphrase Christ who said “…I give you my own peace, which the world cannot give to you.”
When we feel our grip on such mandated love slipping away from us, then we have but to turn inward, to Jesus’ last and best gift to us on this day: HIS peace, which we can never find the world around us.
Don’t worry – we get more stuff tomorrow!
This meditation came to me this morning as I woke up with an odd little song running around my brain, from my old Gym Boy days: a techno remix of (who else!) Dolly Parton singing her jumped-up-a-notch version of the old Cat Stevens song, “Peace Train.” Even though I couldn’t find the particular version on my old sweat-stained (now dusty) iPod, I am quite fond of this “Holy Roller” mix from 2008, featuring Dolly Parton in a video montage, doing the song accompanied by the South African acapella group Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
Even as we work and strive. Even as we try to follow Christ’s command to LOVE one another as only He has loved us… a new and better time is coming.
Work for that new day now, today, this minute! Even if we, the sowers, may not be around to taste the first fruit from our plantings!
Keep the faith!
- Amen
Peace Train
by Cat Stevens
Now I’ve been happy lately, thinking about the good things to come
And I believe it could be, something good has begun
Oh I’ve been smiling lately, dreaming about the world as one
And I believe it could be, some day it’s going to come
Cause out on the edge of darkness, there rides a peace train
Oh peace train take this country, come take me home again
Now I’ve been smiling lately, thinking about the good things to come
And I believe it could be, something good has begun
Oh peace train sounding louder
Glide on the peace train
Come on now peace train
Yes, peace train holy roller
Everyone jump upon the peace train
Come on now peace train
Get your bags together, go bring your good friends too
Cause it’s getting nearer, it soon will be with you
Now come and join the living, it’s not so far from you
And it’s getting nearer, soon it will all be true
Oh peace train sounding louder
Glide on the peace train
Come on now peace train
Now I’ve been crying lately, thinking about the world as it is
Why must we go on hating, why can’t we live in bliss
Cause out on the edge of darkness, there rides a peace train
Oh peace train take this country, come take me home again
Oh peace train sounding louder
Glide on the peace train
Come on now peace train
Yes, peace train holy roller
Everyone jump upon the peace train
Come on peace train
Yes, it’s the peace train
Tags: Christians, compassion, hope, Jesus, laws, Meditation, Peace
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