Holy Week: Maundy Thursday

NOTE: I am in the midst of moving to a new blog site, but given how slow my technical skills are, there's no guarantee that that will happen before summer!

So, I will try to post a little bit more often between now and then! With this being Holy Week, it seemed that now is the time to start!

John 13:34-35(The Message)

“Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.”

Maundy Thursday comes from the Latin: Mandatum, meaning "command" - from which we get the word, mandate.

We have a lot of things in our life that are mandated: oftentimes by our government. Enough that it is a word that might leave a bitter aftertaste in the mouths of some.

And yet the chief mandate in our lives...

The mandate given by the highest authority to those of us who call ourselves Christian is something much different than what a government can or would mandate.

We are commanded to love.

Love the same way Jesus loved.

Love to the depths of service.

Love to the depths of forgiveness.

Love to the depths of mercy.

Can a command be freeing?

This Holy Week, I find myself having a more than normal bit of stress in my life. I've been having those moments when I think to myself: "Come on...can't I catch a break? It's Holy Week. I don't need any additional stress." 

Aside from the irony of my thinking that the week in which we remember Jesus' marching toward the cross should be a time where I have less stress, or that I should "catch a break," it is ultimately this command that stops me in my tracks.

"In the same way I loved you, you love one another."

It's amazing how love smooths those edges.

Provides balm for the stressors.

Shines light on my own hypocrisy.

Reminds me that Jesus' followers come in all stripes, beliefs, opinions, behaviors, ideas, and feelings. That they also are bearing burdens I know nothing about.

That I don't hold all the cards on suffering.

That it is the mandate of love that binds us together even when we forget about it.

It is the mandate of love that frees us to rise from the other binds that keep us caught up in circles of anger, stress, and sorrow.

We are mandated to love.

And that mandate frees us.

What better day to remember that then Maundy Thursday?

Lord, help me to rise in love. Amen