What's This Maundy Thursday Stuff Anyway?

The other day I mentioned to someone that tomorrow is Maundy Thursday and they shot me a funny look and then said, “I think you mean Mardi Gras”

It’s easy to ignore this. It can also be more comfortable to ignore it.

But I am madly and wildly in love with it.

What do you like to do before the most difficult day of your life? Go to bed early? Special dinner? Extra time doing something you like? Skip out of some responsibilities? What would be your preferred self-care at such a crucial moment?

I’m sitting here going ape that on the night before the worst day ever Jesus’ life - He had a menaingful but simple dinner with the guys He’d been trying to teach everything to for quite some time - and then He sums the whole three years of stomping all over His dusty homeland and sloshing all around that huge Sea of Galilee - and he gets up, get’s comfortable to do His cultures most lowly job - and starts washing His disciples’ feet.

His self-care, was telling us to care for one another, serve one another, Love one another.

Not gimme gimme gimme. Not, “ya know what? I’m gonna eat all the deviled eggs, okay? They’re MY favorite. Not fight over politics - which would’ve been as big a disaster for them as for us because Jesus’ hand-picked disciples subscribed to at least 5 different political parties.

Nope - He’s scrubbing His disciples’ feet. Not feet shod in 21st-century shoes and having ridden around all the last three years in some cushy air-conditioned SUV. Nope. We all know those feet were in need of more than a pedicure. It was the most disrespected job because everyone’s feet were like that and everyone with feet like that or even us today with our pristine, barely used up baby-smooth feet wrapped in plush socks and squishy shoes - LOVES that kind of TLC. And - it just needed to be done. He wanted them to have this bit of loving from Him because He knew what was coming. And as He’s scrubbing the caked-on grime off their tired dogs and toweling them dry, He’s telling them “This is how you love one another.”

For God so LOVED the world He gave His only Son - and His only Son - on His last night with His friends - loved on them like crazy.

The name MAUNDY comes from the Latin word from which we get our modern English word mandate. The Thursday before Good Friday we celebrate Jesus’ commandment - His mandate to love one another.

And I am as certain as I am short - that He gave us that mandate for our good. They were about to have their worst day ever too. A bad day stinks no matter how you slice it - but it sure does stink a whole lot less if you can go through it with those who love you - and I mean love you enough to grab your stinky, crusty, dusty old foot and tenderly scrub it - and still love you all the same if not even just a bit more because ain’t nobody’s foot, or problems, or heart-aches or burdens any better. We’re all carrying the same old awful stuff. Oh sure - yours may seem to be a bit different from mine, but that’s just cuz our human eyes are sometimes easily confused.

And isn’t this so much of what makes Good Friday so good? He went through that bad Friday for our good and it was His good pleasure to do so. Just like it was His good pleasure to let us in on the secret sauce He was going to use in order to get through it. We talk about being united with Him in baptism which was like His death - but I do not think we talk enough about being united with Him in Love.

Love like the kind He washed those feet with and dabbed them dry again - it’s “checkbox” love. It’s transformational love. It’s the kind that absolutely will not work if we attempt it out of obligation. It’s the kind that flows from seeing ourselves as He does - which always is an adjustment from the glitz and glam of the world. He sees our brokenness and loves us anyway - if not all the more. He sees our imperfections and still washes away. He sees all those things about us that we will never figure out how to bring to Him, and still, he gently dries between every single toe. It’s the kind that knows that we just will never give Him some areas of our lives - out of fear, or anger, or blindness or whathaveyou - and still He tells us that the secret sauce that makes it all work in so far as it can work at all, is Love - and even if we never get it as much as He’s love for us to, He’ll still go to the cross for us - out of love for us. He gave the mandate. He modeled the mandate.

Tomorrow is Mandate Thursday.

So we can have a lifetime of Good Fridays.

I’m broken by His wild, unstoppable, infinite love for us.

May we all love one another and together love what remember He did for us.