Maundy Thursday

Part of me really wants to write a long blog post directed at panicking first time parents of toddlers, assuring them that their child staying home with them is not going to stunt their social-emotional growth. I also really want to write a long blog post gently pointing out that sometimes when we are stuck with people we love (children, spouses, children, more children) that the closeness can bring some things to the surface that are not always comfortable. This would be a version of my it's not a homeschooling problem, but a relationship problem sermon. But I'm not because I've promised myself that I will stick to posts relating to the days of Holy Week for the next few days.

Today is Maundy Thursday. For those not familiar with the term, it stands for the day that Jesus and His disciples celebrated the last supper. Maundy actually comes from a Latin word (mandatum) which means command or mandate. It comes from the command that Jesus gave to His disciples after He washed their feet at the beginning of the seder they were celebrating together. As a child I always heard it as 'Monday' Thursday which seemed a little baffling.

I also want to talk a bit about the meal they were celebrating together. If this is familiar to you, bear with me, I have found that there are plenty of believing Christians out there for whom figuring out how all the pieces of the Bible fit together is an ongoing process. I also know that I have quite a few non-Christian readers here (and are quite welcome, I'm thrilled you visit) for whom this all may be completely unfamiliar.

Every year, Jews gather together to celebrate Passover, and the meal that is shared together is called a seder. The Passover story happened very early in the Bible. (You can read the whole of it in Exodus, chapters 1 through 14.) At the beginning of the book, the Jewish people, having arrived in Egypt generations earlier, had multiplied greatly and eventually became enslaved by the pharoahs of Egypt. As with all enslaved people, they were treated harshly and cruelly, and cried to God for deliverance. The beginning of Exodus tells the story of God's deliverance of the Jews, His chosen people. Moses was chosen by God to go to pharaoh and demand that he (pharaoh) let the Jews leave. This goes on for quite some time, with the subsequent plague sent by God each time pharaoh refused increasing in severity. The final plague was that the angel of death would visit each house killing every first born, both person and animal. Up to this point, the Jews suffered the plagues right along with their enslavers, but the last plague was different. On the day before the promised plague, the Jews were to eat a meal of lamb, unleavened bread so that it would be done in time, dressed and ready to leave at a moments notice. When the lamb was killed in order to prepare the meal, its blood was to be painted on the door frame of the home. It was in this way that the angel of death would know to passover that home, thus sparing the Jews from the last plague.

This plague was the final straw, and pharaoh ordered the Jews to get out of Egypt, so they left immediately. There is more... the crossing of the Red Sea on dry ground, manna from Heaven, water from rocks... but it is the event of the Passover that I want to focus on. Ever since that first salvation from the plague of death, the Jews were directed to celebrate the Passover, to commemorate it, so that each generation would know and remember how God brought them out of slavery and into freedom. If you have ever celebrated a Passover meal, you know that each aspect of the meal reminds the celebrants of each part of the story. It is this meal that Jesus and His disciples gathered to celebrate together.

There would have been the unleavened bread, the salt water (to remind them of their ancestors' tears), the charoset (a sort of paste made with apples and nuts to remind them of the mortar they needed in their hard labor under pharaoh), bitter herbs (to remind them of slavery), and among other things, a roasted lamb shank bone to remind them of the sacrifice which provided the blood necessary for their salvation.

So here we have Jesus and His disciples remembering the Passover of God. Jesus would probably be the one leading the seder, which means that He would be holding up the lamb shank, reminding his companions that it represents the sacrifice which bought the Jews' salvation from death. The Lamb of God (one of the names for Jesus) was conducting a seder reminding the others of the sacrifice of the lamb.

Yes, Jesus predicts His death, but this is the prediction I find most powerful. This is the tying together of the ancient story of deliverance of the Jews with the story of deliverance and salvation for the entire world. Death will arrive, but the sacrifice of the Lamb will overcome death.

If you are curious as to why the word 'maundy' got connected with this occasion, it's because at the end of the meal, after Judas has left, Jesus gives one more command. "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." (John 13: 34-35, ESV)

Here we are in the midst of a pandemic. People are fearful. Many people have died or have had a loved one die. It can be difficult to see the good in any of this. Here we have a story set in Roman occupied Palestine, where being Jewish is not always a safe thing, with Jewish people celebrating the story of their ancestors' escape from enslavement and death. These people all knew something about fear and the possibility of death. Jesus knew He was going to die in the next twenty-four hours. He knew His disciples would struggle, be afraid, and deny Him. Yet He was doing this for them, for us, for me, for you. The ultimate angel of death will passover us because the blood of the Lamb of God is on our doorpost. We know how the story, our story, will ultimately end.

In the meantime, Jesus explicitly tells us what to do. We are to love each other. We are to love each other the way Jesus loves us... sacrificially. We are to love each other with a crazy, wild abandon because we do know how the story ends. And it is a very, very good ending.