Maundy Thursday is usually associated with our Lord's institution of the Sacrament of Holy Communion. But it gets its name from the Latin word mandamus, or "commandment," after the words Jesus spoke to His disciples that night, immediately after washing their feet as an example of how they ought to serve one another: "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).
And that of course, is Law. We are all too familiar with Law, aren't we? Nobody knows better than we the truth of Paul's observation that the Law kills. It brings wrath. But it is given for our benefit, and despite the damage it can do if used inappropriately, it can be a blessing to us "if we use it lawfully."
Obsessions tend to be about us. They cause us to look inward, living in our heads. They are about us "getting it right" and being OK because of things we can do, or not do. They are often meaningless rituals or attempts to figure out the "meaning" of a spike in anxiety which has no real meaning other than a biochemical glitch, so that we can be "safe." But spiritual safety and God's approval are never found by what we do. They are never found in our heads, our inside us at all. They don't live in our muddled thoughts or our selfish emotions or our feeble strivings. They are always found outside of us, in Christ.
God and our neighbor whom God has given us are outside of us. The devil and our flesh and our own faulty nervous systems may tell us to try to please God by looking inside, but all we will ever find there is darkness and confusion and sin and death. But in giving us His New Commandment, Jesus directs our attention outside of ourselves. It's hard to worry about our own, often imaginary problems when we're making our neighbor and his very real problems our concern.
When Luther's friend Phillip Melanchthon was in a dither seeking peace by manipulating his own thoughts, Luther told him bluntly that the Gospel is "wholly outside of you." God is always found extra nos, outside of us. We find Him in our neighbor. By serving our neighbor, we also serve Him. He calls us out of ourselves, away from our worries and our emotions and our sinful fixation on ourselves to follow the example of the God Who knelt before His own creatures on that night long ago to do perhaps the humblest of all a servant's tasks and wash their feet.
We also find Him in the Means of Grace- in the Word about Jesus, in our baptism, and in the Gospel part of Maundy Thursday, the institution of the Holy Supper. This is not something we offer to God, but rather our reception of what He offers to us. It is pure Gospel.
Jesus was not content merely to be a vague spiritual presence among us. He was not content to leave us with only the story of that awful yet glorious week. He wasn't satisfied to simply let us hear about how He went to the cross to take upon Himself all those sins and all those burdens, real and imaginary, we obsess about. He was not content to leave us gazing at a crucifix or a painting of Golgotha. He gave us a personal window into the meaning and power of His death in the most vivid and powerful way possible. He gives us the body that hung on the cross and the blood that was shed there to eat and to drink, to become part of ourselves and to say to each and every one of us, individually, "I did this for you."
St. Augustine once said that if all the world had remained righteous and only one human being had fallen into sin, Jesus would have come to earth to live the same life and suffer the same cross for that one person as He did for the whole human race. "He loves each of us, " Augustine wrote, "as if there were only one of us."
He loves you as if you were the one person He came to earth to suffer and to die for. And He wants you to know it. When the pastor says, "The body of Christ, given for you," and "The blood of Christ, shed for you," he is merely explaining what Jesus Himself is giving you. You aren't really receiving it from the pastor. You're receiving it from Jesus.
He is giving you- personally and individually- Himself. He is applying what He did on the cross to you, personally, as an individual. He is telling you, personally, that it was your sin for which He died- all of it, without exception- most definitely including the sin you fear is too great to be forgiven or the thing about which you cannot find inner peace.
You should never be afraid of the Holy Supper. It's true, as Paul warns, that to receive it in an unworthy manner has dire spiritual consequences. But the only kind of person who can receive the Supper unworthily is one who willfully rejects the words "given and shed for you for the remission of your sins." Don't worry about how weak or how strong your faith is. If you come to the altar as a sinner who regrets her sin and knows his need for forgiveness, and who comes there to receive it in the form of the body that was broken and the blood that was shed not just for "the world" but for you, you cannot receive it unworthily.
In the Supper, Jesus comes to us Himself to fill that emptiness inside us we can never fill by our own worrying and effort. We will never find such peace by looking inside our own broken minds and sinful hearts. We can never "fix" what is broken there, much less the imaginary things our emotions tell us are broken but which may not even exist. We can find peace and healing only by looking outside of ourselves to the One Who is our healing and our forgiveness and our very life. And having found Him- or rather, been found by Him- we join Him in serving our neighbor, being the means outside of them by which Jesus gives them the gifts of healing and peace and pardon and life and comfort and love.
John 15:13 NIV
ReplyDeleteGreater love has no one that this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
Thank you for this post!!