Maundy Thursday: Love One Another
By the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Ph.D ’13
Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in the Faculty of Divinity
Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church
(The following is a transcript of the service audio, April 17, 2025)
In the name of God, our maker, our savior, and our companion. Amen. Please be seated. Welcome to our Maundy Thursday service tonight and to the beginning of the three holiest observances in the church calendar. I noted this at morning prayers yesterday, but Maundy Thursday is my favorite liturgy of the year for lots of reasons. Commemorates the Last Supper Holy Communion, which is devotionally special to me, theologically important. I'm teaching a class on it now and I see some folks from that class here. There's also the drama of the stripping of the altar and the darkening of the church at the end of our service. In other churches I've served, we followed that up with an overnight watch. We stay up all night in the church to watch with Christ. Maybe someday here.
I also love the awkwardness of foot washing, which will follow this sermon. The vulnerability and humility of people who know each other washing one another's feet, but most of all, I love it for the end of the lesson we just read for that last commandment. Jesus' commandment to us. The word Maundy, I think I say this or somebody says it every year, the word Maundy comes from the Latin “mandatum.” It means commandment. "Love one another as I have loved you." It's commandment day, and this is the command. "Love one another as I have loved you." But how has he loved us? That's the question. It's important that he's saying this to his disciples before Friday and Saturday, and Sunday. He's talking about something else when he says, "As I have loved you." The foot washing is a clue.
Foot washing is this act of vulnerability and humility. Depending upon the historical source you read, some sources say that only slaves could be made to wash another person's feet because of the humiliation involved. Other sources say not even slaves could be forced to wash another person's feet, and Jesus is kneeling and washing his disciples' feet, is this profound act, but I don't think humility is how Jesus has loved us. I think making too much of that as the form of love we're meant to emulate could cause some problems and make us valorize certain forms of humility that we ought not to. Jesus was other things than humble, and yet I still think this is the example we're meant to follow.
There's a line at the end of this lesson right at the end. Actually, the attribution in the bulletins is wrong. There's a bunch of verses that are skipped. It goes through the foot washing and skips some verses, and it gets to the very end, and when Jesus says, "Now I have been glorified." I talked about this too at morning prayers yesterday because it was yesterday's reading at morning prayers. I'm going to repeat some of that. At the Last Supper, after he's washed their feet, Jesus says, "Now I have been glorified." Why now? I think if you ask the average Christian, what is the chief moment of Jesus's glory? Very few people would say, "Oh, right at the end of the Last Supper." Most people would say, "Sunday, Easter, the resurrection."
Others, like me, might say the crucifixion. Others would say, "A miracle, walking on water, feeding 5,000, standing up and speaking truth to power before Pilate." Why is this the moment when Jesus says he has been glorified? It actually depends upon all those verses that were excised and that we read yesterday at morning prayers. The now that Jesus is referring to is what happens during those excised verses, and what happens is one of the disciples leans to Jesus and says, "Hey, who's going to betray you?" And he says, "The one I give this piece of bread to." And he gives a piece of bread to Judas and that's it. That's what Jesus says glorifies him.
What is it about that that glorifies him? What does that reveal about his glory? What does that reveal about the nature of God? It's so important in the Gospel of John too, the other Gospels given account of the meal. John doesn't talk about the meal except for this. The only eating that happens in the Gospel of John is this, the feeding of Judas, bread for Judas, communion for Judas. This is what happens in this moment. Jesus says to him, to the one who will betray him, "Do what you must. I will still love you. My communion with you doesn't depend upon your faithfulness to me. I just love you. Whatever you must do, I must love you."
And this is the glory of God, this love without condition. It's not the insurmountable power of new life. It's not the immense capacity to endure a sacrificial suffering. It's not any other miracle or power or deed. Just this. To love us as we are, even in our wandering, even in our waywardness, even in our betrayal and violence and sin. But it's not just about Judas either. We want an antagonist in the stories we tell. We want a bad guy. It's too easy to make a villain of Judas. Look at everybody else at this dinner.
Thomas in a week and a half will doubt him. Peter tomorrow morning will deny him. Every single one of them will abandon him and he washes all their feet. He shares supper with every one of them. It's also important to say that Jesus hasn't been duped. It's not like he thinks Peter's going to pull through tomorrow morning and stand up for him. It's not like he's hoping that Judas will change his mind on the way to the high priests. He just refuses to place a condition upon his love. His love is not a reward for their good behavior. That's not what love does. That's not what love is. That's not what Jesus does. It's not who he is.
He just loves them. Loves Thomas, who will doubt him, loves Peter, who will betray him. Loves Judas. Peter, who will deny him. Loves Judas, who will betray him, loves all of them, all of us who will abandon him, who will let him down and run away and turn aside when it matters most. He washes all their feet. He feeds everyone. He serves them all. We humans can be unreliable and fickle, and sometimes we are scoundrels, and Jesus has no illusions about that, and he loves us beyond all of it. That is his glory and the glory of God.
I stopped there yesterday at morning prayers because morning prayers are shorter, but also because there's more to say tonight, because yesterday was about that revelation about that glory. Today is not just about the glory, it's also about the commandment. "Love one another as I have loved you." We know now what that looks like, and the command we have been given is to love in that way as well. To be clear, a love like this is not sentimental and private. It is public and it is political. Jesus didn't come to us just to tell us how much God loves us.
He came to bring his kingdom. He came and asked us to help him build his kingdom. We are commanded this night to build up our lives and our church and our world on a love like this, and that means no one is excluded, no one is banished. No one is outcast. No one is beneath human dignity or beyond the reach of God's love. I fear even that is too abstract, too apolitical, so I'll put a final point on things. It means we don't cut off funding for tuberculosis research and force millions around the world who are poor and sick to suffer.
It means we do not punish institutions that support trans kids. It means we don't send Maryland fathers on valid papers to torture an El Salvador. But here's the thing. It also means we don't send anybody to torture in El Salvador. Whatever organization they belong to, however unsavory or offensive we may find them, it means that we may have to reconsider our whole system of justice, our whole system of government if we are to build this kingdom, because today it seems that our government is built upon a system of favor in return for fealty. And if it is built that way, then it is our job to build something else, something new. It is our job to love our neighbor and our stranger and our immigrant and our enemy. It means we start today, tonight, and love one another as we have been loved so we will.
We, in this church, this night, are going to take Jesus literally. We are going to wash your feet. Whoever you are, whatever your ethnicity or your politics or your gender identity or your history or your immigration status, you are a child of God and we are going to do our best to love you as we have been loved. Whoever you are, we are going to share this table with you because you are a child of God and we are going to try to love you as we have been loved. Tonight, we are going to do as we have been told. We're going to do our best to love. And tonight we're also going to pray that we will have the courage to love tomorrow too and every day in the struggle to come.