Maundy Thursday – George Yandell
I’d like to offer a distinction, tiny in some ways, earth-shaking in others. The distinction comes from comments Marcus Borg made on a pilgrimage to Turkey that I took in 2006 with 40 other pilgrims. What would it be like for us instead of saying “We have faith in Jesus,” to say “We have the faith of Jesus?” Do you hear the fine distinction? To claim the faith of Jesus makes me, for one, sit up, take notice, and feel woefully inadequate. On this holy night, the faith of Jesus drives him to offer the most poignant goodbye in religious history.
In everything he did, Jesus disclosed the character of God. Having the faith in God Jesus himself had means we have the passion for doing God’s will, as Jesus did. It means having the confidence in God that Jesus demonstrated the night before he was cruelly tortured and executed by the Roman Empire. It means we participate in the passion for justice Jesus lived each hour of his ministry. Having the faith of Jesus implies the same loyalty to God that Jesus lived up the moment of his death.
There are many overlays in our remembering the last night before Jesus’ crucifixion. First, there was the foot washing. Peter balked, as we heard, at having his feet washed by Jesus. Peter thought it was too embarrassing, too demeaning for Jesus to do so. But as he washed the feet of his closest friends, Jesus symbolized the whole of his message and ministry. Kneeling at their feet acts out: THIS is what it means to do God’s will, THIS is what it means to have faith in God like God’s own Son. The new commandment says in words what Jesus acted out in the foot washing- “Love one another as I have loved you.” Live the love God intends.
Jesus planned well for the Passover meal with his disciples. It continued and culminated the open, common meal-sharing Jesus practiced with undesirables and marginalized people. The religious significance of the open table fellowship meant including those who were excluded- excluded by religious leaders from a society with sharp social boundaries. The last supper carried political significance- it affirmed a very different, countercultural vision of society. (Some of this borrowed from The Last Week by Borg and Crossan.)
The body and blood of Jesus in the bread and wine of the Last Supper echoed the killing of the first Passover lamb as the Jews fled Pharaoh and the Egyptian empire- Jesus’ impending death has clear connections to the lamb sacrificed at the first Passover. It is possible that Jesus said the words linking his body and blood to the bread and wine many times at common meals before Maundy Thursday. (From Rabbi Jesus by Bruce Chilton) Why would he have done this? In his radical table fellowship, it would have been a prophetic overlay to the meal; it may have been an in-your-face action against the Jewish temple leaders collaborating with Roman authorities. It made rabbi Jesus a target not only of the Empire, but of those Jewish leaders who’d sold out their own people. But on this evening, the poignancy must have overwhelmed him.
If you’re like me, Maundy Thursday hits hard every year. I really can’t imagine the pathos in Jesus’ heart, nor the reactions of his disciples when they heard him say, “This is my Body, this is my blood poured out for you.” Jesus summed up his passion, confidence, participation and loyalty in and to God in his last love-feast with his friends. Now it falls to us to continue the disciples’ tradition: Come to the table, share the love of God Jesus lived. It is by living the faith of Jesus that his followers were to pass through death to resurrection with Him. And so it is for us followers tonight. Have the faith of Jesus- we’re the ones on whom Jesus depends to live the love God intends for all of God’s children.