Maundy Thursday - Love from within the Human Condition

The Three Great Days of Easter are traditionally celebrated as a single service of worship. This year I am reflecting on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Day as an exploration of three perspectives on Divine Love. Firstly, we explore Divine love as expressed in Incarnation – that is within the human condition.

On his last night on earth Jesus gathers with his friends in an upper room to celebrate the feast of the Passover. (Maundy Thursday. Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14; Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; and John 13:1-17, 31b-35.) While at table he breaks bread and shares the cup declaring that his body and life blood are to be understood and received as the new, or renewed, covenant God made with his people. And then he washes his disciples’ feet to teach about service as love in action.

Jesus loved his disciples and friends, his followers, from within the human condition. Incarnation meant that he became one of us, that the same divinity from which whole worlds were created came pouring into the human condition. Jesus’ life and teachings showed us that his love and healing presence sought out the poor and broken to make it clear that the love of God was not reserved for the righteous only.

If this were not clear enough Jesus spends his last night kneeling at the feet of his disciples, his companions on the way, and washing those who within hours will betray, deny, hide and accept defeat. The love of the divine made known to us in the person of Jesus was not reserved for the already holy but poured out for those in most need of being loved, cleansed, and embraced.

And Jesus taught that this is how we are to love and serve others as an expression, as a conduit, of that same love. The love that flowed through Jesus is to flow through us that all might be included. And that love found, and still needs to find, itself in the midst of the messy, not-yet-ready world that we live in.

Maundy Thursday reminds us that love comes to us from below, from within, our creaturely existence. Love comes wanting to eat with us and afterwards to wash our feet. And love asks that we offer the same to those we share life with.

Even so, come Lord Jesus the Christ, come grant us the courage and faith to surrender to your tender mercies and to share them with others.

You may like to consider a reflection for Maundy Thursday on how the location of the holy is in the familiar.

The Holy is in the Familiar

You may also like to consider other reflections I have shared for Maundy Thursday.

Maundy Thursday

This is my work informed by everything I have heard, read and experienced. I am indebted to the wisdom of others. This week I am especially grateful to:

Borg, Marucs J & Crossan, John Dominic “The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem” Harper-Collins, New York, 2006