I can’t ever hear today’s official name of today and not think of this song. Sorry…not the point, but maybe it’s slightly connected because today is not as famous of a Christian holy day as Christmas or Easter. It is, though, as equally important. Most Protestants don’t even realize it happens, but from the start of a more organized Christian experience, around the 4th-5th centuries, the celebration of Holy Week took a shape that included this day.
The name “Maundy Thursday” comes from the Latin Dias Mandatum, which is the “day of the new commandment,” (maundy being a shortened form of mandatum, which means “command.”)the new commandment being that Christians should love one another, just as Christ has loved them. The celebration falling on Thursday is in reference to that being the day when Jesus celebrated the Last Supper with his disciples.
Command? Well, it was here that Jesus told his disciples, and by extension, anyone else who would choose to follow Him and bear His name (Christian, a somewhat mocking term used in the years after the Resurrection to slur the followers as “little Christs”), that He had a new commandment.
So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.
As his follower John writes in his history of the moment, Jesus had already given a living analogy, a snapshot of what this looks like by actually washing each of his followers feet. (see John 13:3-5). He was going to give them an even more stark picture of this by willingly going to the Roman cruxifixction cross to die as an innocent man. This level of sacrifice would certainly raise the bar for what love looks like.
As many others have noted, what our world needs these days is love. I would offer to other Christians, what the world needs to experience is the type of love that Jesus was talking about. That means not you expecting someone else to do for you, to make way for you, to protect your point of view, but rather you living and loving as Jesus did. Yes, that may mean that someone takes advantage of you, that someone may sit back and watch you sacrifice. OK…that’s the entire point.
I get it that the world in 2017 is seemingly anti-Christian. It’s certainly a post-Christian world here in the USA, with the “nones” growing fast throughout the country. You may actually be afraid of what the country will look like, or you are determined to fight for your country, for the old moral views we used to hold (at least as how you understand that history). I get all of that…and at times, feel the same way. But Jesus didn’t give us a command to run from that world or a command to go to war with that world. Instead, he commanded that you show love. And yes, I realize the sacrificial love of John 13:33-34 is actually aimed INSIDE the church, to one another. Still, if we are known by our love for one another, a love that sacrifices, surely others on the outside, the nones or otherwise, will see that.
If nothing else, you’ve claimed His name, if you are a Christian. You are someone now under His command…and He has commanded. Let’s go!!
[Oh…if you want to hear that song referenced in line one…here it is]: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h81Ojd3d2rY]