Themes:     Exodus 12:1-4[5-10]11-14 – Institution of the Festival of Passover

Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19 – I will fulfill my vows to the LORD

1Corinthians 11:23-26 – Institution of the Lord’s Supper

(Suggested alternative text) 1John 4:7-21 – God is Love

John 13:1-17, 31b-35 – Footwashing and a Command to Love

Prayer of the Day

Holy God, source of all love, on the night of his betrayal, Jesus gave us a new commandment, to love one another as he loves us. Write this commandment in our hearts, and give us the will to serve others as he was the servant of all, your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.

Hymn Suggestions

Gathering:                     “Great God, Your Love Has Called Us”  (ELW 358)

“Before the Waters Nourished Earth”  (ACS 1049)

“Love Has Brought Us Here Together”  (ACS 1040)

Hymn of the Day:           “Love Consecrates the Humblest Act”  (ELW 360)

“Commonwealth Is God’s Commandment”  (ACS 1036)

“God Is Love”  (ACS 1041)

Offertory Response:        “For the Wholeness of the Earth”  (ACS 1067)

Communion Hymn:        “Look Who Gathers at Christ’s Table”  (ACS 977)

“Behold, Unveiled the Vesper Skies”  (ACS 997)

Sending Hymn:              “There’s A Wideness In God’s Mercy” (ELW 588)

Overview

Fire comes from friction.  Paul accentuated this dynamic of faith when he explained to dismayed Christians in Rome how “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Rom. 5:3-5, the Epistle for 3Lent, using the preferred (IMHO) NRSV translation)  If, during the forty-day passage of Lent, parishioners have come to identify themselves with “the whole congregation of the Israelites [who] journeyed by stages, as the LORD commanded” (Ex. 17:1, the OT lesson for 3Lent), then they will have experienced many of the frictions (i.e., the griefs, fears, hungers, thirsts, quarrels, betrayals, trials and temptations) that form a disparate people into a community abraded (and ignited?) to undertake justice, solidarity, compassion, and accompaniment with others who suffer, and with a creation groaning (among other things) “for the revealing [igniting] of the children of God.” (Rom. 8:19)  Perhaps the more “abrading” seasons of the church year (the penitential seasons of Advent and Lent in particular, but also bracketing the apocalyptic latter weeks of Pentecost) could be thought of as controlled burns (so to speak)—times periodically prescribed by the Church to help clear the theological imagination of accumulated debris and entangling overgrowth so that the most mature growth remains, and new growth in faith can emerge.

In our present day as it did in ancient biblical contexts, it is important to see (and an eco-faith leader’s constant challenge to show) how wilderness serves not just as a place of danger, disorientation, deprivation, temptation, and so on, but also as a holy place of retreat, renewal, respite…a sanctified place to embrace humility, appreciate diversity, discover solitude, welcome the unfamiliar, and envision the shalom by which God esteemed the entirety of creation “very good.”  (The same is true, of course, for other nature-inspired metaphors we find in abundance in the Bible such as trees, water, rock, fire, light, and world.)  Hopefully, as people have been led by stages through the wilder-ness of Lent to the Triduum of Holy Week, they will have come to identify themselves not only as a “whole congregation” (i.e., as a congregation-made-whole) by the abiding and guiding presence of God, but discover themselves at one with the great congregation of beings (Cf., Psalm 40:9-10) rendering thanks and praise to God, their all-loving Creator.

First and Second Readings:  Exodus 12:1-4 [5-10] 11-14; and 1Cor. 11:23-26.

The Maundy Thursday liturgy intends to make explicit the connection between the institution of Passover (which “the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron (Ex. 12:28)) and the institution of the Lord’s supper (which Jesus commanded “do this” in the synoptic Gospels (Mt. 26:26-28; Mk. 14:22-23; and Lk. 22:19-20) and in the appointed Epistle lesson (1Cor. 11:24-25)).  (We will address Jesus’ “new commandment” below in our discussion of the Gospel reading.)  In these pericopes of institution, the remembrance of the salvific acts of God is not simply or merely a cognitive exercise of remembering something God did in the past, but a present-day enacting / membering / manifesting of that beloved community that God’s abiding presence makes possible in the great congregation of beings. In no way, therefore, should those seeking to obey their Lord’s command construe their celebration of God’s salvific acts as somehow more honorable than (or worse yet, supersedes) the other’s—because the integrity of both remembrances (Passover and Eucharist) resides in and with the God who continues to act on their behalf, not on the supposed worthiness, authenticity, or superiority of the celebrants themselves.

Regarding the meal, it would be appropriate to consider using a Eucharistic Prayer that employs a journeying motif to reinforce the Exodus/Lenten connection (e.g., Form VIII “God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, you have brought us this far along the way…” (ELW p. 67) or Form X “When the world was a formless void…When Abraham and Sarah were barren…When the Israelites were enslaved…” (ELW p. 69)).  It will be the worship planner’s responsibility, however, (as it is for the preacher) to portray Jesus not merely “as the lamb who delivers God’s people from sin and death” (as the Sundays and Seasons introduction to the Exodus pericope suggests), but more inclusively as “the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (which echoes John the Witness’ cry at John 1:29, and liberates the familiar “Lamb of God” sung during the distribution as a hymn for all creation) because the sacrament of Christ’s real presence is fundamentally a celebration of the incarnation (viz., God’s abiding presence / communion with the earth).  (More will be said on this below in our discussion of the Gospel text from John 13.)

Psalm Response: Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19

This psalm of thanksgiving provides a virtue-based rationale for why one would obey the commands of God (be it those of Yahweh or of Jesus)—because “I love the Lord…,” because “I repay the Lord for all the good things God has done for me…,” because “I…fulfill my vows…,” and because “I am [the Lord’s] servant…”  And as a liturgical response to the Older Testament reading concerning Passover, it can serve to correlate thanks for God’s saving acts in the exodus from slavery to the promised land with thanks for Christ’s saving acts in his incarnate life among us full of grace and truth.  However, if we are to take seriously the frictions that have resisted God’s love and commands, then it might be more appropriate for Maundy Thursday that we seek a liturgical response that strips away human pretenses to virtue and instead reimagines obedience as evidence of God’s steadfast love and everlasting life at work in the world (Cf., 1Jn. 4:9)—the very love and life we see incarnate in the person and work of Jesus Christ (Jn. 1:14; 3;16; 1Jn. 4:7-8), promised in the sacraments, by which all things are created and bound together (Col. 1:16-17), and which inspires all creatures to thanks and praise. Perhaps psalms like 36, 96, 98 or 145 serve better to convey the universal, cosmic scope of God’s saving acts.

Gospel Reading:  John 13:1-17, 31b-35

I heard recently (admittedly third-hand) that the new (as of 2024) Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church has sought to reset that church’s approach to earthkeeping as less about issuing authoritative commands and demands for climate justice, and more about caring for creation—as was always God’s original intent behind humanity’s essential vocation. Another way to appreciate this shift in ecclesial strategy is to acknowledge how love is not something to be commanded, but a caring relationship to be nurtured for the blessing of all. It is further to appreciate how the kairos moment in which we find ourselves today is as vitally about resisting the pernicious authoritarianisms, exceptionalisms and coloni-zations under which civilizations have crumbled and the biosphere continues to groan, as it is about serving and preserving the symbiotic goodness and shalom of the world we inhabit.  No less pernicious are those misguided theologies that conspire to dominate and control…These, too, must be resisted if the hope of a new creation is ever to be realized.

As we noted above about the institution of the Lord’s supper in the synoptic Gospels, Jesus commands his disciples to “do this.”  But in the Gospel of John, this commandment of the Lord is directed not so much to rehearsing/remembering a past salvific event as it is to celebrate a very present reality and ongoing co-mission to “love one another…as I have loved you…” (Jn. 13:34)—which for Jesus’ purposes in that Gospel narrative and for its intended audience is illustrated by Jesus’ example of foot washing).  (Sometimes referred to as “the forgotten sacrament,” the ritual of foot washing on Maundy Thursday serves as both a remembrance of Jesus’ kenotic self-giving love for the life of the world (Cf., Jn. 3:17 and 6:51, in all its present-day and anticipatory glory, as noted above), but also a reacquaintance with the various frictions (the all-too-human feelings of vulner-ability, shame, embarrassment, pride, dismay, etc. personified by Peter’s protestations) that resist Jesus’ commandment to “love one another…as I have loved you…”)

Now commentators on John’s Gospel have wrestled with the supposed exclusivity of Jesus’ commandment to “love one another.”  Indeed, if John had wanted to (or God so dictated it to be), he could easily have had Jesus say, “I give you a new commandment, that you love the world as I do. For this is why the Father sent me (the text of John 3:16-17 withstanding)…By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for the world.” And by this rendering, the commandment to love might verily have been considered a radically new and superlative thing among all the infallible, inerrant, red-letter commandments our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ had authoritatively uttered, handed down to his apostles, enshrined in the Bible, spoken ex cathredra down through the centuries, down to the masses. Thus might fascists have bent the knee to love.

Except that we know that love is not something commanded, but lived into…it is the very source and expression of God’s grace in which we find ourselves blessed.  Love is the air in which we condense into clouds; it is the water we crappies swim in; it is the ground we dandelions tap into; it is the wind beneath our wings; it is the carrion we beetles infest; it is the sun that kindles in us the miracle of life.  Were we to broaden the event horizon of God’s salvation “to the ends of the earth” (as projected in the Noahic promise of Genesis 9:8-17, and in the Nicodemian promise of John 3:16-17, and hoped for in the wilderness wanderings of Isaiah 48:20; 49:6; Acts 1:8 and 13:47), then we might come to appreciate something genuinely new in the life of faith—that believing in the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ was never about establishing his consubstantial identity with the Father, nor securing one’s eternal salvation on shaky metaphysical grounds, but being inspired by God’s command to follow the arc of God’s creative, redemptive, and sustaining love for the world which that rainbow in the clouds always promised and which the incarnation of the Word brings to the present.  As I was researching John’s take on the incarnation, I found Karoline Lewis’ commentary on John especially helpful.  She writes, “The Word became flesh is primarily a relational claim, not a confessional or doctrinal claim.  As a result, this should infuse a homiletic for preaching John.  Every passage in this Gospel reveals some aspect of the relationship with God and Jesus that Jesus’ presence now in the world makes possible.”  She goes on to say, “To be a disciple in the Gospel of John is to be an extension of, or act out, God’s love.  Discipleship is an incarnated reality, just as the Word made flesh.  It is not an abstract existence of following, or confession, but suggests that discipleship is the presence of the Word made flesh in the world…” (John: Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries.  Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014, pp. 15-16)

Now that I find quite incendiary!