(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “From M.T. to Empty”, originally shared on April 1, 2026. It was the 406th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
The Gospel of John in the Bible spends over 50% of his gospel on the last week of Jesus’ life. Today, we’re going to find out why.
The grandmother said, “Netflix
used to come in the mail!”
The granddaughter replied,
“Sure grandma. Let’s get you to bed.” 😊
When people say to me, “Age is
just a number,” I just say, “Yes, but I’m getting to a big number!” I’m
not bothered by that number, but every once in a while something happens that
drives it home.
Sally and I took my car to the
dealership for maintenance last week. While we were talking with the service
agent, I mentioned that we had bought Sally’s car from the same dealership.
I said that we had traded-in my
milk caramel-colored Ford Explorer, but that it was hard to let it go. I had
driven that car for so long that the steering wheel was worn to the shape of my
hands!
We keep our cars until they are
falling apart, and that one had a cracked engine block and was burning so much
coolant that I had to top it off after every time we used the car.
Still, I said, when we took the
Explorer in for the trade-in, I felt like I was taking Old Yeller back behind
the barn.
She stared blankly and smiled
politely. I realized that she had no idea what I was talking about. Age comes,
and death. But, for Jesus, death came at a small number. He was 33 years old.
This week is Holy Week, marking
the last week of Jesus life on earth. It’s a big deal. It’s about a death. And
the life that it brings.
Maundy Thursday is the day in
Holy Week in which we see the Last Supper, Jesus last meal with his disciples
with the Institution of Holy Communion, Jesus washing the feet of his
disciples, Jesus’ commandment to love each other has he has loved them, and
Jesus being betrayed by one of his disciples to his death.
There’s a lot going on this
Thursday! 😊
Though, some churches have
given up on foot washing, when the pastor removes his or her robe and members
of the congregation who wish come forward and the pastor washes their feet,
which I did for my 41 years of parish ministry before my retirement.
I understand that it’s not
being done in some places. It might seem too personal to some. I mean, when
Isaiah writes, in Isaiah 52:7a, “7 How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,
who brings good news,” he certainly never saw my
feet. 😊
Maundy Thursday ends with
Jesus’ praying so intensely in the Garden of Gethsemane that he literally
sweats blood. He prays for a way out, for another way other than being tortured
and crucified to restore the living relationship with God for which humanity
was created.
But, he says, he would follow
God’s will. He would empty himself. He would become a servant.
The word “maundy” is an Old
English word from the Latin word “mandatum”, in modern English word
“commandment”, as in the “new commandment” that Jesus gives to his disciples.
But hold on! Can love be
commanded? Jesus thought so. But how can that be?
Jewish people will be
celebrating a seder meal during their season of Passover, which lasts from
April 1st to April 9th this year. It will overlap Holy
Week this year, as it usually does. The seder meal at its center commemorates
their liberation from slavery in Egypt.
That seder supper was not
celebrated in its current form until many years after Jesus’ death and
resurrection. But the Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples was held
during Passover in Jesus’ time, and it had many references to liberation from
slavery, including the bread and wine presented as Jesus body and blood.
As well as to the last plague,
the blood of the spotless lamb that was painted over the doors of all the
households of the people of God in slavery in Egypt. The angel of death visited
every home at night, and the first-born son died, except in those homes where
the blood of the lamb was painted over the entryway. Those homes were passed
over. Hence, Passover.
Only, Jesus is the Lamb of
God, and we are freed from sin, death, and the forces of the devil by his
blood freely given on the cross. Those references make the Last Supper the
first celebration of Holy Communion, on the night in which Jesus was betrayed.
The washing of the feet of the disciples by Jesus was a witness to serve one
another as we have been served by Jesus Christ. The giving of a new commandment
by Jesus is an expression of what the Christian life is: we love sacrificially
because God first loved us.
“Maundy” is an Old
English word rooted in the Latin word “mandatum”, which means
“commandment”, or “mandate”. That new commandment comes from who we are,
and who we are comes from whose we are.
The whole text is in John
13:1-17, 31b-35, but Jesus gives the new commandment at the end, in verses
34-35,
34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have
loved you, you also should love one another. 35 By
this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one
another.”
We cannot be commanded to love.
That love would be meaningless. It would be like those Chatty Cathy dolls you
might remember from years ago that were programmed to speak to you, like with a
primitive artificial intelligence, I suppose.
My sister had one. She’d pull
the ring attached to a string on the back of the doll’s neck and it would say
things like, “I love you.”
But did it love you?
No. It had no choice. It had no
agency.
Fun fact: that’s why God gave
Adam and Eve the ability to say “no” to God. And they did. And we do. And
that’s why evil entered and continues to enter the world.
We think that the world
revolves around us, and it gets us every time.
Years ago, there was a
restaurant/drive-through in San Dimas called “Bravo Burgers”. There’s still one
in Pomona, but I still miss it being close-by.
Most of their food packaging
had “Phil 4:13” written on it. Philippians 4:13 says,
I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
The owner said that he put that
verse on his packaging out of gratitude to God.
But, he said, “There isn’t a
day that goes by when someone doesn’t come in and ask, ‘Who’s Phil?”
Philippians 4:13 is
often seen and quoted as meaning that, in anything I want to do or don’t want
to do, God strengthens me. But that’s not what it says at all.
Here’s the context of that
verse, in Philippians 4:11-13,
11 Not that I am referring to being in need; for I have learned to be
content with whatever I have. 12 I know what it is
to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all
circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry,
of having plenty and of being in need. 13 I can do
all things through him who strengthens me.
Paul is writing to the Church
at Philippi to answer their concern for him by saying that serving Jesus Christ
is all that matters. Our personal need or lack of need is not relevant to our
service in Jesus Christ.
How can that be?
It’s because Christian behavior
is not rooted in the requirements of the law, but in the new Creation we have
been made to be in Jesus Christ. Our new selves are rooted in the love for one
another that comes from our love for God. Our love for one another is an
expression of our new selves.
The mandate of which we
are reminded on Maundy Thursday is that we live in love to serve one another,
as Jesus came to serve us.
It’s at the very core of what
it means to be a Christian. Paul nailed this down in an earlier part of his
letter to the church at Philippi in Philippians 2:2-8, from a
passage we read last Sunday,
4 Let each of you look not to your
own interests, but to the interests of others. 5 Let the same mind be in you that was in
Christ Jesus,
6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
Can love be commanded? Yes, not
in our behavior alone, but because we have been fundamentally transformed
by the love of God in Jesus Christ demonstrated on the cross, the love that
shapes us in the Holy Spirit, the streams of living water within us, and the
love of the Church, the Body of Christ, expressed through us.
On Maundy Thursday, Jesus
removed his outer robe and washed the feet of his disciples, the job of the
lowest servant in the household, the job that nobody could mess up.
He modeled who he is and what
his disciples are to be to one another, and Judas went out to betray Jesus to
the authorities.
The only way to go where Jesus
is going is obedience to God in response to and through Jesus Christ. That
is the work of the Holy Spirit within us, it is not our wisdom.
Every religion has its wisdom
and its wisdom traditions. They are everything in some other religions. They
are the least important thing in Christianity.
C.S. Lewis wrote, in his book
“Mere Christianity”, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the
really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus
as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the
one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of
things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a
lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he
would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and
is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up
for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his
feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing
nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to
us. He did not intend to.”
The way of Jesus is the way of
the cross. Selfless and sacrificial love. It is lived in us as an outcome of a
living relationship with the one true living God. It is the relationship for
which we were created.
It is our worldview:
God made us for a living
relationship but without making us to be simple robots. We needed to be able to
say “no” to that relationship in order for our “yes” to mean something. The
first people disobeyed God. They said “no”, and evil entered the world.
People only came back to God
when they needed something. So, God set them free by coming to them, in the
form of Jesus Christ, fully God and fully human being, to show His love by
suffering and dying for us on the cross, so that we might know the abundant
eternal life for which we were created in the beginning.
What does that life as the
disciples of Christ look like? How do we make sense of what we believe
to the world? How do we love one another in obedience to the command of
Jesus? How do we serve one another sacrificially as Jesus did on the
cross?
Paul says, in Galatians 5:6b,
“the only thing that counts is faith working through love.”
That’s the message of Maundy
Thursday.
Maundy Thursday reminds us of
Jesus’ mandate, Jesus’ command, “that you love one another. Just as I have
loved you, you also should love one another.”
The world thinks that it’s
impossible to compel someone to love you, or to compel someone to love someone
else, because we first and primarily think of love as something romantic, or
maybe patriotic, or directed toward our family or friends, or, most commonly,
about us.
But the love that Jesus
commands is something entirely different: it’s selfless, it’s a kind of love
that can only come from God.
And it does come, and it
is who we are because it comes as the result of whose we are. We are saints
and sinners, and we are God’s new creation!
We are not the people we want
to be. But, by God’s grace, we are not the people we were.
On Maundy Thursday we see how
we can be commanded to love by becoming who we were always created to
be.
On Maundy Thursday Jesus is
both preparing us for his death on the cross and showing us how to live in
response to it. Our power comes from his love.
Gas is unbelievably expensive
today. It’s around $6.00 a gallon for regular where I live.
I remember in the 70’s, though,
when there were gas shortages twice in that decade, both also stemming
from conflicts in the Middle East! There were long lines of cars at the gas
stations, and some cars would run out of gas waiting in line and drivers would
get out of their cars to help the driver with the empty tank up to the
pump.
We are running on fumes
ourselves, more or less, today.
The last week of Jesus’ life,
Holy Week, is the climax of the story of our salvation. That’s why it takes so
much of John’s gospel.
Jesus emptied himself.
He was fully human being and fully God, and he washed feet, he commanded us to
love as he loves, and he demonstrated that he came as our servant and our
friend from M.T. (Maundy Thursday) to empty.
On this Good Friday, we will see the fullness of that selfless love poured out. For us.
