Mandatum novum do vobis: ut diligatis inuicem, sicut dilexi vos, dicit dominus. Mandatum. Maundy. Mandate. Commandment. This day, known in the Anglican Communion as Maundy Thursday, is the first of the great three days, the Paschal Triduum. It is the beginning of the Christian Passover, the event through which sin and death have been conquered and we are given life and immortality. The liturgy begins tonight, but does not end until the Great Vigil of Easter, for the three days are one event.
Today, Mandatum Thursday, Maundy Thursday, we begin in the Upper Room as our Lord has the Last Supper with his disciples. At this supper he gives them, and all of us, a new commandment. “Mandatum novum do vobis,” are Jesus’ words in Latin for “a new commandment I give to you.” I have quoted that commandment in Latin because our name for this day is a derivative of the first Latin word in Jesus’ commandment. And that commandment is: “That you love one another as I have loved you.”
The Church has not yet been brought into being at the Last Supper, but the foundation is being laid by our Lord. Whatever else the Church is to be, it is certainly to be a fellowship of love. How easy it is to get bogged down in the everyday business of the Church, with all of our activities and meetings, and forget the wonderful fact of what we are really about—and that is love. We are a fellowship that has been loved into being, and in turn we exist in order to love others into being.
Thus, by its very nature, the Church is relational; Christian faith is relational. To say that a person has faith in Christ but doesn’t need the Church is a contradiction of the most fundamental sort. The Church is not a building where we come to carry on our private conversation with God; the Church is a living, breathing organism made up of the flesh and blood of Christ and his people. The English economist R. H. Tawney, who was also a devout Christian, said that “the man who seeks God in isolation from his fellows is likely to find not God, but the devil, who will bear an embarrassing resemblance to himself.”
And so the Church is a fellowship of people relating to one another in love. But by love Jesus does not mean a warm feeling that is without much further definition. It is love grounded first of all in the love of God, revealed most fully in his Son, Jesus Christ. And our love is to be like his love for us. Of what does that love consist?
It is love that seeks always to be within God’s will, even when doing so makes us uncomfortable, even to the point of suffering and death. It is love that returns good for evil; that seeks to serve rather than to be served; that is characterized by giving rather than receiving; that strives to fill the needs of others; that is always willing to forgive; that desires in all things to be like Christ and to bring others to Christ.
To symbolize the nature of the kind of love he was talking about, Jesus at the Last Supper chose to perform the work of a servant, doing one of the most menial of tasks. He washed his disciples’ feet. It was his last night with them before his crucifixion. These were the ones he had chosen to be the leaders of his Church after the descent of the Holy Spirit. He wanted to make one last, highly dramatic point. And that point was, “You are to be a servant. You are to love others by caring about every little hurt that they feel, every burden that they bear.”
That is how Christ has loved us. He comes to us where we are, just as we are. He knows and cares about our hurts and frustrations as well as our triumphs and our joys, and he wants to help us with our problems and to share with us in our joys. Likewise, others will know of that care and concern as we share it with them.
This is the nature of the Church, down through the ages. Yes, the Church has her faults, because it remains an institution filled with fallible human beings. But it is also filled with people who know of God’s love and want to share it. I see it day after day as I see how you love others. I see it in the Vestry, as they continually strive to meet the needs of the parish; I see it in committees, the choir, the Altar Guild, and other organizations as persons are cared for, no matter how small or great the problem appears to be.
The committee of the parish that is directly charged with putting forth Redeemer as truly a parish that washes feet is our Mission and Outreach Committee. Chaired by Dr. Pat Fitzgerald, this committee meets once a month to decide how our mission and outreach dollars are spent. They have a significant amount of money that they deal with, for our parish is committed to giving ten per cent of our income to mission and outreach. With close to a two million dollar budget, that’s a good chunk of change. We also give ten per cent of undesignated bequests to mission and outreach. You can be proud of the many ways your gifts to Redeemer help the needy in our community and around the world.
Just recently, through the decision of the Mission and Outreach Committee, and ratified by the vestry, we decided to give $40,000 to a hospital in Africa under the direction of Bishop Masereka. We asked him where he felt the money could best be used, and he said they really needed a generator for the hospital, and that the $40,000 would just cover the expense. Following his advice, that is where we designated our gift to go. You can imagine how important electricity is in a hospital, then think about how, in third world countries, interruption in electrical service is a common, almost daily experience, and you know that our gift of a generator is a life-saving gift. It’s not glamorous. It’s not something you can put a plaque on so that people will know who gave the gift. But it is a gift that comes from responding to a need. It comes from our desire to respond to a need with a servant love. It is a foot washing kind of thing to do.
On this night, when we celebrate also the institution of the Holy Eucharist, we give thanks for the way our Lord continually gives himself to us, most specifically in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood. As he showed his disciples in the Upper Room, he meets us where we are, seeking to fill our need, however small and seemingly insignificant.
And we remember that other command, that other Maundy: “Do this for the remembrance of me.” For it is in the sacrifice that we recall that he made that bond of love that unites us to God and one another for all time and eternity.