Affectionate Meals (Maundy Thursday)

Readings, Exodus 12:1-14 and John 13:1-17, 31-35 
Image, Sieger Köder, “The Meal,” from the Lenten veil Hope for the Excluded, 1996

​There is a delightful paradox at work in both our readings. That right on the precipice of the two most dramatic displays of the majesty and power of God, we would have stories replete with tender, quiet affection.
 
The Exodus and the Cross and Resurrection reveal the fundamental nature of God, reveal, that is, what it means when God says I AM WHAT I AM. The mighty acts of exodus and resurrection testify to God’s power, be it over the gods and armies of Pharoah, or over the grasping dominion of Death. These acts give us confidence and hope that we shall not be put to shame or left alone, that God does not abhor the affliction of the afflicted, nor forsake the sorrowful and maligned. God is the one who raised Jesus from the tomb, having first raised the slaves from Egypt. For this we give thanks, in this we take heart, and by this most excellent truth we live.
 
But how do we live? Because such a sense of assurance, trusting in such magnificent displays of divine might, could promote an arrogant life where we live as enclosed selves with nothing to learn. Could shape the posture of a winner, perhaps even a sore winner: where we have the answer, have the light, have the power. And truly many Christians (and many institutions of Christians) have acted just this way and the world which Christ loved and for which he lay down his life is worse for it.
 
But on the precipice of the two most dramatic displays of the majesty and power of God, we take note of the paradox, that these stories are replete with tender, quiet affection. In the instructions for the Passover meal God says, If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbour in obtaining one. The meal celebrating God’s mighty deliverance is one shaped to promote neighbourliness and hospitality. The later instruction, You shall let none of it remain until the morning, is a further a prompt to share, for if you don’t want leftovers, you need more mouths, you need to send more invites, you need to extend a table. The feast remembering and anticipating the mighty acts of God is not one of individual excess, but neighbourliness, aimed at promoting connection and affection between those about to be free.
 
So too our gospel reading. In which we hear some of my favourite words in scripture: Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. Love drenches the whole passage. Jesus washes the feet of his followers, refers to them lovingly as his little children, and entrusts them with a new commandment: love one another.
 
But what precedes all this love and service is vital. In the verse preceding the foot washing, John offers us an insight into Jesus’ feeling: And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. It is in full knowledge of God’s power and glory that Christ takes this moment to kneel at the feet of his friends and tend to them, serve them, love them. Knowing that he had come from and was going to God, that the hour of his glorification was at hand, Christ does not act the gloating monarch, nor the self-assured acolyte, but models to his followers what he yearns to see from them.
 
This is what we learn from the mighty acts of God. This is how we live in the assurance of God’s triumph, and how we exemplify the glory of God: through tender affection, generous love, humble service, and neighbourly care. In both the instructions of the Passover and the example of the Last Supper the memory and anticipation of the mighty acts of God brings people together to share food, tend to bodies, and grow together in faith. All of this is so we may be known as those God has set free, and Christ has loved to the end.