A Devotion for Maundy Thursday: A Posture of Love

As we have journeyed together through this season of Lent, we’ve been noticing the words that have tugged at our attention, the vocabulary that has helped us make a map through these days in the desert of reflection and repentance. Dust and dirt, seed and grain. They are words that have guided our thoughts, and now as we approach the cross, we listen ever closely to the words of Scripture.

We listen, like those awaiting a death – heads turned toward our loved one, searching for meaning in the pain and toward hope.

This day, Holy Thursday, leads us to the table, where Jesus has gathered his friends. In their company, he will speak his final words and wishes. We know that the disciples will not understand everything Jesus has to say, will not be able to wrap their heads around the magnitude of his speech – but his words will remain written upon their hearts.

These words are the ones that the disciples will visit again, later, in that disorienting time known as after. These will be words of comfort, and eventually words of courage – sustaining them as they travel the same dusty roads as Jesus once did.

But for this night, we join the disciples at the table. We come to hear the word he has for them, and for us.

On this long and bewildering night, what word is at the center? What word is passed up and down the table with the loaf and the cup?

Love.

We only have to read what is known as the Farewell Discourse in John 13:31-17:26 to know as much.

Jesus will utter the word love thirty-one times. In these final hours before his death, the word will mark nearly every sentence he speaks – it will ring in the air like the peal of bells, marking the hours through the dark night.

What comes before Jesus even utters the word are the actions that speak of the depth of his love.

Jesus takes a towel, a basin, water, and begins to wash the feet of his friends, naming them as Beloved. Like the waters of his own baptism in the River Jordan, Jesus covers them in the water of grace, of service and sacrifice, of love.

More than any word of love that Jesus utters this night within this strange custom, washing the feet of another lies the source of the name of Maundy Thursday. Maundy, from the same root as “mandate,” refers to the commandment Jesus gave his disciples on the night before he was crucified: “Love one another.”

For I have set you an example, Jesus tells them as he returns to the table after washing their feet, that you also should do as I have done to you (John 13.15).

On Maundy Thursday, we begin the path through the ultimate act of humility and self-sacrifice. On this eve of Good Friday, we anticipate the moment in which Jesus stoops in love, to offer his life for ours.

This is our mandate: that we would set a table before friends and enemies, just as He has done.

That we would wash the dirty and tired feet of those before us.

In our work, service is not a foreign notion; it is the backbone of our call, the DNA of the volunteers we work with. But service without the posture of love, falls short.

We serve because of the love we have found: in the Upper Room, on the dusty roads, in the Garden of Sorrow. It has beckoned us come. The holy, earth-changing, sacrificial love of Jesus that has stooped before us.

We serve because love has found us.

As we enter into the next 4 days, take time for rest, reflection, and worship. It is not part of your work, this is our work as people of God.

Grace and peace,

Chaplain Amy