Thursday • 4/6/2023 •
Maundy Thursday
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 102; Jeremiah 20:7–11; 1 Corinthians 10:14–17; 11:27–32; John 17:1–11(12–26)
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94)
Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we consider some aspect of that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you.
Today is Maundy Thursday, a day that invites contemplation of the significance of the Table at which Jesus issues the mandate (thus, “Maundy”) that we love one another.
According to the great twentieth century New Testament scholar Oscar Cullmann, John’s Gospel provides three angles of vision on the Eucharist.
First, the Eucharist portrays atonement. Vessels for purification by water become vessels prefiguring blood for atonement (John 2). The wine of a Galilean wedding feast prefigures the wine of the eschatological wedding feast of the Lamb and his Bride the Church (Revelation 19).
Second, the Eucharist is manna from heaven. Jesus is Bread from Heaven, and the Eucharist is the life-giving nourishment that the resurrected and ascended Jesus gives to his people on their journey through life (John 6).
Third, the Eucharist is a fellowship of love. By depicting Jesus washing his disciples’ feet (John 13), John paints an amazing portrait of the Table as a place where we experience love. “Having loved his own while he was in the world, he loved them to the end,” in illustration of which, Jesus takes off his outer garment, wraps himself with a servant’s towel, and takes up a basin. The foot washing becomes a profound parable of the whole project of incarnation: love stoops to conquer. As Paul puts it in Philippians 2, he who was, and is equal with God, humbles himself in the most profound service to humankind; and in the end is exalted to receive the name that is above every name. The towel and the basin paint a mini-tableau of the whole redemptive drama of God’s love for us.
Jesus’s “High Priestly Prayer.” Jesus rises from washing the feet of the disciples, and says (I paraphrase), “What I’ve done for you, you’re to do for one another. A new commandment I give to you: love one another. That’s how the world will know you’re my disciples” (John 13:34–35). And then after three chapters of teaching about various dimensions of being his disciple (John 14–16, a section which we will read in the first two weeks of Easter), Jesus prays in chapter 17. This prayer, often referred to as Jesus’s “High Priestly Prayer,” is the crowning event of their time at the Table. At the heart of Jesus’s prayer for his disciples is this (again, I paraphrase): “Father make them one as you and I are one, so that the world may know that I am in you and you are in me. May the world see our love for one another in their love for one another.”
Jesus stakes his reputation, his Father’s reputation, and indeed the credibility of the gospel on one thing. It’s not the cleverness of our arguments. It’s not the sophistication of our apologetic. It’s not the slickness of our marketing. It’s not the beauty of our music or our architecture. It’s our love for one another.
It’s interesting to observe that, for Paul, washing the feet of the saints becomes a shorthand for a lifestyle of meeting the needs of others. Think of 1 Timothy 5:10. When Paul lists qualifications for what he calls “enrolled widows,” the phrase washing the feet of the saints stands between “receiving strangers” and “relieving the afflicted.” To be sure, the objects of service are different: strangers, saints, and the afflicted, but the same attitude is expressed toward all. A spirit of humble self-giving. That’s part of what we learn at this Table.
Discerning the body. And that, dear reader, is what Paul means when, in 1 Corinthians 11:29, he warns us not to come to the Table “without discerning the body.” What he means is that we must “discern Christ’s body” at the Table in this sense: we must recognize that Christ indwells those with whom we partake of this meal. His body is made up of all the people who are shoulder to shoulder with us there: the strangers, the saints, the afflicted, the widows and orphans, the people with whom we agree, and the people with whom we disagree. To come to the Table with a sense of independent pride or a feeling of spiritual or social superiority to anybody else there—that is what it is to come “in an unworthy manner.”
Let me say this clearly and pointedly: you are not coming “in an unworthy manner” if you feel like you are an unworthy sinner; we are all—all of us—precisely that! The Table is a place to experience a fellowship of love. Jesus wraps himself with a servant’s towel and washes the feet of all his disciples, from John the beloved to Peter the impetuous … and, yes, even to Judas the betrayer. He loved each of them … he loves you and me … and he loves every other person at his Table.
Collect for Maundy Thursday. Almighty Father, whose dear Son, on the night before he suffered, instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood: Mercifully grant that we may receive it thankfully in remembrance of Jesus Christ our Lord, who in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life; and who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+