The word ”Maundy” comes from the Latin Mandatum Novum, meaning “new commandment.” Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.”
Jesus did another revolutionary thing on this night, He gathered with his closest followers to eat the Passover with them, but he added to the traditional blessings. He took the bread and wine and said, “This is my body; this is my blood. Do this for the remembrance of me.” The root of the word translated as “remembrance” is anamnesis, literally an un-forgetting, an un-amnesia. The Eucharist, from the Greek for “thanksgiving,” is an unforgetting, a remembering, a special way of calling the risen Jesus into our midst.
Most shocking of all, he washed the apostles’ feet. He said that he was among us as one who serves, but when he rolled up his sleeves and knelt down on the floor and acted like a slave, a servant, it was too much for Peter. He couldn’t stand to see our Lord, our King, acting like that.
But Jesus tells Peter and us that we have to let him serve us. We have to let him wash our feet. If we don’t let go of all our illusions of power and control and trust him to serve us and help us and cleanse us and heal us, he says, we will have no part in him. We will not be one with him. We will not be allowing him to live in us and we will be closing ourselves off from being alive in him, because we have to trust him with our lives. We have to let him lead us. We have to turn ourselves over to his infinitely loving and wise leading.
Our God comes among us and washes our feet, and we feel so close to him and to each other. Not only our feet, Lord, but our hands and our head, our every action and every thought, cleanse us and heal us, lead us and guide us, O Lord.
Filed under: Reverend Janet Brown, Sermons | Tagged: anamnesis, Mandatum Novum |
Grace Episcopal Church (Sheldon, VT) 