Maundy Thursday - Just As I Have Loved You

Exodus 12:1-14; Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:31b-35; Mark 14:43-50

“Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Which half of this sentence is easier for you to remember? “I have loved you,” or “love one another?” I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the latter––love one another. After all, that is the commandment Jesus leaves with his disciples, and the reason we call tonight Maundy Thursday, from the Latin Mandatum which means mandate, or command. “Love your neighbour as yourself,” “love one another,” we find it easy to remember that we are supposed to love others, even if we can’t always manage to do it. We repeat it over and over because we know that this is how, as Christians, we are supposed to live our lives.

Except that so often we don’t. We don’t always live our lives loving our neighbours as ourselves, we don’t always love one another as Jesus has loved us. Particularly in moments of crisis or moments of betrayal, we panic. We become afraid.

And that fear causes us to forget about love. The story of Passover is a story of a Pharaoh who was so afraid of immigrants that he decided to enslave them all, justifying it with the argument that they might join forces with Egypt’s enemies and defeat the country from within. He made a decision based out of fear, not love.

Fear caused the disciples to abandon their leader when he was arrested. As we heard from the Gospel of Luke on Palm Sunday, Peter, who followed Jesus all over Galilee out of love for God, was so frightened at the end that he denied knowing Jesus three times. As we will hear from the Gospel of Mark at the end of tonight, as soon as Jesus was arrested, his disciples fled. Fear possessed them, and they forgot all their proclamations of love and chose to preserve their own skins.

In our own lives, we have all made decisions based out of fear rather than love. As individuals and as groups, we get caught up in protecting ourselves, caught up in fear of what-if, and we forget to ask, “What can we do that most embodies our love for our neighbour?” When we’re anxious, when we feel that we’re under threat, we opt for self-preservation even if it’s at the expense of the other. It’s understandable, but it’s not what Jesus calls his followers to do.

“Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” “Do this in remembrance of me.” Fear causes us to forget about love. Specifically, it causes us to forget that God loves us. We forget to love one another because we forget that God first loves us. The Pharaoh didn’t love the Israelites because all of Egypt had forgotten that it was the God of Israel who had saved them from a seven-year famine, precisely through the actions of one of those Israelite immigrants named Joseph. They forgot that God loved even Egypt, and so they failed to love in return.

Peter and the rest of the disciples, in their panic over Jesus’ arrest, clearly forgot the words of Psalm 116, which we recited earlier: “I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my supplications. Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live.” God hears us in our times of need, God always responds to us in love. Jesus tried to remind his disciples of this before he was arrested, over and over again he said to them, I love you because the Father has loved me, abide in my love. He told them that God loves him, and therefore he loves them, and out of that love they are to love others. As they entered the darkness of the garden, Jesus tried to prepare them by reminding them, “You are loved by God, God has made you one with God through me, God loves you through me.” Knowing that the prospect of death would make them afraid, Jesus wanted them to cling to the remembrance that God loves them and that that love is what would carry them through.

The constant reminder of God’s love is what carries us, too. Through today and tomorrow, through betrayal and death, through the betrayals and deaths in our own lives. Remembering God’s love for us is what strengthens us to love others, because when we remember God’s love for us, we forget to be afraid. “Perfect love casts out fear,” it says in the first letter of John. In times of fear and anxiety, Jesus reminds us to cling to the anchor of God’s love for us. Whenever you have to choose between someone else’s well-being and your own, remember that you are loved by God, trust that you will always be loved by God, and see what decision emerges.

“Do this in remembrance of me.” Even in this, God helps us. This evening’s service began, right off the bat, with the proclamation of God’s love for us. “God, who is rich in mercy, loved us even when we were dead in sin.” Before we are asked to engage in the difficult work of confronting our own role in the betrayal and death of others––Christ above all, we are forgiven and reminded of God’s love for us. “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” It’s not the “love one another” part that we need to remember most, it’s “just as I have loved you.” It is only when we are anchored in this reminder that we can remember to love one another.

“Do this in remembrance of me.” Through Holy Communion, Jesus gives us what he asks us to give others. On the night of his betrayal, he loves his disciples so they can love others. Even knowing that they are going to betray him, and deny him, and abandon him, he still gives them his love. When we come to the rail, Jesus gives us his embodied love so that we can go and love others. Even knowing that we might again betray, that we might again deny, that we might again abandon others, he still gives us his love. The love of Christ, the love of God, is the anchor of our love for our neighbour, a love that is given “for you.”

The fear that causes us to forget about love is pervasive in our world these days, just as it was during the time of Jesus. The opportunities to choose ourselves over others, as Peter and the disciples did, are many and frequent. But as Jesus tells us, and as he shows us on Good Friday, the most Christian act in times of fear is to choose to become open and vulnerable to others––to choose to love others. How blessed we are, then, when faced with this choice, to know that God has already chosen to love us. Thanks be to God. Amen.