You Have Loosed My Bonds

That's when I'm gonna stand up / Take my people with me / Together we are going /
To a brand new home / Far across the river / Can you hear freedom calling?

Songwriters: Cynthia Chinasaokwuo Echeumuna-Erivo and Joshuah Brian Campbell
“Stand Up” lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

“I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord” (Psalm 116:13 NRSV). That has to be it. That’s why this psalm was chosen as the text for Maundy Thursday, don’t you think? The meal of remembrance is the center of this service, after all. It is what we reenact year after year so that every time we receive this sacrament we are reminded of this moment. We are taken back into the upper room and hear those words about body and blood. We might not fully grasp what is going on here, but we have a sense of presence as we partake. The bread is more than bread; the juice not just juice. No, we aren’t leaning into what others call transubstantiation where the bread becomes the literal flesh of Jesus. We don’t have to go that far to have a sense of something beyond the physical element and embrace the spiritual presence in the eating of the bread and the drinking from the cup. The real presence, we call it. That’s what this day is about: this meal and that presence.

Or is it? If the center of the Maundy Thursday experience is the meal, why do we turn to the Gospel of John for this day? John’s telling of this event doesn’t include anything about the meal. Well, there is some action around the giving and receiving of bread, but it isn’t the sacrament of Communion as we observe it or as the other gospel writers and Paul want to pass it on. And we have to fill in with the verse that the lectionary reading skips over to get it.

In fact, if the center of the event is the meal, then why do we call it Maundy Thursday at all? Maundy comes from the Latin mandatum, which translates as command. Some understand this to mean that the real observance for this day during holy week is the washing of feet. That is the ritual Jesus performs as an act of service in the upper room. That is the startling revelation of the kind of leadership that Jesus was looking for, hoping for, from his followers, then and now. And that was what was overlooked in the normal act of hospitality around the meal when families and friends would gather together. Paying attention to hospitality is important. Jesus leans into it as he instructs his negligent disciples around the table.

Acts of service: that’s the model that’s being given here. And washing of feet is both humbling and transforming when it is performed in the context of worship. There is an invitation to live into the self-sacrificial service that Jesus models when we gather for worship. It is hard not to feel something of the demands of the life of service when engaging in this ritual. Perhaps there are some who might give witness to the impact of the experience by sharing these thoughts with the congregation.

Certainly, the psalm text encourages this shift in emphasis from meal to service. We read that the response to the gift of salvation the psalmist speaks of, of being heard by the God to whom many supplications have been given, is to be a servant. Service is central to understanding the life of the redeemed—not, of course, to earn that redemption, but as a response to it. Not because of what is now owed, however. “I will pay my vows” is not a transactional response to faith. But the generosity of spirit, the life of service comes from gratitude and joy and from the constant awareness that one dwells with God or that God dwells with us. There is joy in that presence, in that relationship.

Sacrament and service are the themes of this Maundy Thursday. But we ask, “Is that the ‘mandate’ from this Maundy Thursday? To eat bread and wash feet?” These are powerful, symbolic acts— maybe even more than mere symbols. But to truly capture the spirit behind the acts that we do in worship this evening, we have to go a little further in the story. After the incident with the bread, and the company is now reduced by one, Jesus identifies the commandment from which this day takes its name. Verse 34:

“I give you a new commandment, that you should love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another.”

We can argue, as some do, whether this command to love is universal or within the fellowship of the body. Some argue that Jesus was trying to get his group of gathered followers to recognize that they could continue on only if they did it together. They could represent the life of a disciple only in relationship with the encouragement and support of others who have claimed this faith and who have committed themselves to this way of living and being. Jesus was asking them to take care of one another, serve one another, and love one another.

Others argue that this was a commandment that was to shape every encounter and every relationship everywhere at every moment. Certainly, the one who invited us to love our enemies wouldn’t hesitate to invite us to love everyone. Certainly, the one who invited us to see everyone in need as our neighbor, and then remind us that the greatest commandment was to love God and love neighbor – two sides of the same coin; one rule with two manifestations. “We’re gonna stand up and take our people with us on our way home” — all people, any people, people in need, people under oppression, are our people. That’s what it means when he said in that upper room on the night before he suffered and died that we are commanded – commanded remember – to love one another.

We’re not very good at it. That’s the hard truth behind our observance. We find loving others hard. We’re afraid. We’re hesitant. We prefer drawing lines, identifying enemies, and keeping our distance. We like scapegoats. We are afraid that loving is too risky, too uncomfortable, too challenging to the way we like to imagine the world around us.

In the end, that is why we come to this table of grace. That is why we need to be healed and forgiven and why we need to model service in humbling kinds of ways. So, as we kneel before our friends and family here in the community of faith, we begin to imagine a different world—one of acceptance and grace, one where God’s will may be done on earth as in heaven. For that, we will stand up.