On my second trip to the Holy Land, our tour guide took us to the spot where Jesus and his disciples likely had the Last Supper, as depicted in tonight’s Gospel reading of the Passover meal and which we remember tonight on this Maundy Thursday. If we hadn’t had our tour guide with us, we probably would have missed it. Because it was this upper room, tucked away amidst all of these other buildings now. But, what’s really interesting about this space is that it was also believed to be used as a mosque at some point. So we have Jewish Jesus celebrating a meal that we remember weekly as Christians and yearly by the Jewish people according to the instruction in Exodus, in a space that was also used by Muslims for worship. I think that’s a pretty good example right there of Jesus’ commandment to love one another (Matthew 13: 35).
I want to pick up on that love theme in today’s reading because it really gets to the heart of what Jesus is trying to tell his disciples. He is telling them that things are about to get a lot harder, but they are to love one another. For anyone that has experienced a death of close friends or family, you may know that grief sometimes makes it really hard to like each other. We often say that our biggest lesson in family dynamics happens when planning for a funeral. Not just is Jesus seemingly giving a warning about what is to come, he is also trying to keep them centered on each other. To care for and support one another in the days ahead, even when it feels like the last thing they want to do. I know for me, grief tends to make me retreat and draw in on myself. Jesus is trying to remind them that they are community that loves and cares for one another because they shouldn’t have to go through the coming days and weeks alone.
Additionally, I think this love piece is important because Jesus doesn’t promise that they will always like each other. He doesn’t say that they will always get along or that they have to just be Minnesota nice to each other’s faces. Love is all encompassing. Love is so deep that Jesus is having this last meal with his disciples knowing that his fate is to go to the cross out of his love for them and the world. Love is hard. Love has compromises and sacrifices for the mutual uplifting of all people. Love is not perfect. It takes work and responsibility, accountability for our actions and our mistakes. Love isn’t just the feeling of butterflies, but to love requires risking vulnerability and knowing that we might get hurt in the process. So love is also scary.
Love doesn’t make us a doormat for the world to use, but it does open our hearts to the pain that is all around us. It compels us to do something for other people, to make their day better, to reduce their suffering even a little bit. Love is painful because love opens us to grief and pain, and it does so in ways that other ways of being in the world can’t quite match. Jesus is calling the disciples and us to love the world that God created good. To love our neighbors. To love each other. To risk showing up for one another, not just in this room but out in the world.
Because as Jesus is showing us today, love is actionable. Yes, saying and hearing “I love you” is important, but if those words are not matched through actions it is really hard to truly believe them. So Jesus sends us out into the world to show our love for it. He could have said just about anything in his last teaching to his disciples, but he focused on love. This is his new commandment; one that doesn’t take the place of the 10 commandments that the Jewish people follow, but arguably one that sums those others up. The emphasis is on love. Love for God. Love for creation. Love for others.
The love that Jesus is talking about isn’t a love that is conditional or requires someone to change or deny who they are. Love isn’t about twisting Jesus’ words to say what we prefer he would say. Jesus doesn’t say “love each other if…,” but “love each other like I have loved you” (John 13: 34). Jesus has shown us over and over again throughout his ministry that his love applies to the poor, widowed, ill, injured, outcast people of the world. Jesus wasn’t for just a select group of people who acted and thought and taught in the way that he did. Jesus’ love is so much more than even Christian labels. Because plain and simple the love of God is meant to care for the world, to help us see every single person as the Beloved of God, a person for whom Christ died. The love of God isn’t intended to shame or guilt or harm people; if it does, that is not God’s love. Not in my opinion anyway.
So on the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread and broke it still. He knew that Judas was about to hand him over to the authorities, but he didn’t let that stop him from having this last meal with his disciples. He used this as an opportunity to remind them of the one thing he wanted them to take away from his ministry, that they love one another as he has loved them (John 13: 35). He washed their feet as an act of love, just as today we will wash one another’s hands to remember that. Because in the time when COVID still exists, washing our hands is a sign of of our love for one another and the neighbors around us, just as washing his disciples’ feet that would be dirty from walking through dust in sandals was a sign of love. It is a reminder of the kind of service that we are called into through our baptisms, that we are sent out to love and care for the world because we have been freed from our sin through Christ’s death on the cross and his resurrection. It was what the disciples needed during that time, an example that we too are called to care for the needs of the world around us.
So we love the world. We embrace all of its messiness and pain and brokenness. We try to help in any small way that we can, even when it seems like we are not able to do that much. But through little acts of love we resist the ways of the world that want to pit us against one another, the forces that try to divide us into us and them. The same forces and fear that led to Christ’s public crucifixion in the first place. We are recalled to the fact that Christ’s death wasn’t just for you and me. Something that we are called to remember every time we commune together at this table, as we remember the words that Jesus taught his disciples that night of the Passover in what was likely a mosque. We will show the world who we are by the way that we show up and love the world. This is our response to Christ’s love for us.