Jn 13

Banu and I began Lent this year the same way a lot of people around the country did. (That is, after our Ash Wednesday service had ended.) We went to see the Mel Gibson-directed film, The Passion of the Christ. Of course, we’ve been joined by many millions more as the Lenten season has progressed.

Unless you’ve spent these past few weeks under a rock, you’ve heard all about the controversy surrounding the movie. One major concern has been fear of anti-Semitism, based on a perceived favorable portrayal of Pontius Pilate versus the Jewish leaders. (By the way, I find it interesting that anti-Semitic is almost always taken to mean anti-Jewish, since Arabs are also a Semitic people.)

There have also been concerns about the level of gore in the movie. For me, the flogging scene is where it really hits you. By the time we got to the crucifixion, it seemed mild by comparison. Of course, this is a passion play! Gibson has said that he felt he needed to be quite graphic to do justice to the passion narratives of the gospels. Fair enough. We shouldn’t forget that this is the same Mel Gibson of Braveheart and The Patriot—other movies not recommended for children!

Some have wondered, looking at the movie as a work of art, how much of the message of Jesus comes through. That is, amid all the violence that’s portrayed, how well does the film explain the extreme hatred directed at this poor man? Just who is this Jesus? I suppose it’s difficult for those of us who are pretty familiar with…the story line to look at the movie in that way, to remember that not everyone knows the story.

We don’t meet Gibson’s Jesus, played by Jim Cavaziel, until the garden of Gethsemane. By this time, the event that’s at the heart of Maundy Thursday, the Last Supper, has already happened. Jesus has already washed his disciples’ feet in a display of servant leadership. He has already pronounced the words, “this is my body…this is my blood.” The Lord has already spoken to the disciples these words from our scripture reading: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (v. 34).

The meaning of “Maundy” is found in this statement. Coming from the Latin mandatum, it means “mandate” or “commandment.” Maundy Thursday is all about the new mandate given by Jesus: love one another, just as he has loved us. Just as he has loved us. What could that possibly mean?

Well, speaking as an expert on love…let me tell you all about it! It really is a new way of loving, one that people hadn’t seen before. The obligation to love one’s neighbor had long been part of the Jewish consciousness. Please see Leviticus 19:18 for a good example.

But the commandment of Jesus to love is “new.” It’s new, not simply because Jesus expands the definition of “neighbor” to include the poor and the enemy—those who seemingly cannot or will not repay us. It’s a new kind of love, not just a new degree of love. Disciples of Jesus are told to love one another. They are called to this new love because they are part of a new creation.

One way we see Jesus model this new command to love is by the way he selects his inner circle of disciples. First of all, he violates the barriers that forbid the education of women by welcoming Mary Magdalene and the sisters of Lazarus, Martha and Mary. The church’s subsequent embrace of those barriers is a sad refusal to practice this new love of Jesus.

Jesus defies priestly and cultural sensibilities by calling men who are laborers—fishermen—the brothers Simon Peter and Andrew and the sons of Zebedee, James and John. Later, in the book of Acts, after the healing of the “man lame from birth,” Peter and John are brought before the Sanhedrin. And the scripture says that “when they saw the boldness of [the two] and realized that they were uneducated and ordinary men, they were amazed and recognized them as companions of Jesus“ (3:2, 4:13). Now there’s an early statement about the calling of all believers!

Jesus ignores political prejudice by including Matthew the tax collector, viewed as a collaborator with the Romans, along with Simon the Zealot. The Zealots are revolutionaries working for the overthrow of Roman authority. Compared with these two, the differences between Republicans and Democrats today are almost nonexistent. (I’ll spare you my commentary on our two-party system!)

These are the people to whom Jesus gives his new command: love one another. Quite a motley crew! The church has at times, by the grace of God, been able to model this love. In the late second century, Tertullian famously reported a saying among certain pagans, “See how these Christians love one another…and how they are ready to die for one another!”

It is that very witness, that testimony, which Jesus predicts in verse 35: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." Rudolf Bultmann comments on the unusual nature of this new love. He says that it “demonstrates the strangeness of the community within the world, and results in the world calling those who love, the disciples of Jesus.”[1] A new creation within the old creation can’t help but seem strange!

He continues with this stipulation: “But the community itself fulfils its commission to the world only if its agapan [love] remains the response to the love of Jesus, and so long as it does not exchange it for an ergon [work, action] of the world, or for efficacy within world-history. It is not the effect it has on world history that legitimates the Christian faith, but its strangeness within the world; and the strangeness is the bearing [the demeanor] of those whose love for each other is grounded in the divine love.”[2]

To boil this all down, Bultmann is saying that our success or failure is less important than our faithfulness to the new love that Jesus commands. We shouldn’t be surprised if the love of Jesus leads us onto paths that the world disregards. More important than credibility in the old creation is fidelity in the new creation. Love, especially the love of Jesus Christ, has a logic all its own. That doesn’t make it irrational; God isn’t glorified by stupidity. But it is supra-rational. It is above reason.

I’ll mention Thomas Keating’s devotional, My Prayers Rise Like Incense, for the final time during this Lenten season![3] He says, “Love makes us vulnerable. The love of another person (including God) reduces our defense mechanisms. As soon as we trust somebody, we no longer have to be self-protective in their presence and our defenses diminish. Then the faults and limitations that we have never seen or always tried to hide begin to emerge as clear as crystal…Such difficulties generally indicate that our particular ministry or relationship is working well.” How about that: it’s working well!

“Once we learn to accept failure, love grows. We do not grow by thinking about it, but only through the experience of failure.” Friends, as your pastor, as a fellow Christian, as a fellow human being: I can guarantee you one way in which we’ll never fail. We’ll never, never, never fail! By playing it safe; by not taking a step of faith.

I’ll finish as I began: with The Passion of the Christ. As I said, the movie begins in the Garden of Gethsemane. The decision of Jesus to submit to arrest might be described as a sign of faith in God, or obedience to God. Other qualities could be listed. But for me, as I watched the movie, it was his courage that really struck me. Jesus knew his enemies were coming for him, and he knew that he would be treated brutally. I imagine myself in his place, and I suspect that the impulse to run and hide would be overwhelming. But then, I’m a coward, so what are you going to do?

But love gives us courage, even non-heroic, ordinary people like us. That’s the antidote to cowardice! And the new commandment to love—to love each other as Jesus loves us—gives each person here the courage to be a bigger person, to live a bigger life, than we have ever dreamed. That is worth embracing and celebrating. That is why this is Maundy Thursday.

[1] Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1971), 527.

[2] Bultmann, 529.

[3] Thomas Keating, My Prayers Rise Like Incense (St. Louis: Creative Communications for the Parish, 1999), 28.