“A new commandment I give unto you that you love one another
even as I have loved you”
“On the night that he was betrayed,” this night, this very night, Jesus gives us a commandment, an institution and an example. He gives us a commandment that is at once established in the institution of the Holy Eucharist, “do this in remembrance of me,” and expressed in the example of the foot-washing, “for I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” Such is the rich fullness of Maundy Thursday, dies mandati, the day of commandment, even a new commandment, novem mandatum, but more than that, the ultimate mandate, ultimatum mandatum. We are accustomed to taking seriously a person’s last will and testament. Here on the eve of his Passion, in the meaning of the events of the Passover, Christ signifies his ultimate will and new testament towards us. Here on this night is the mandate of our Lord’s love, hence Maundy Thursday (from mandatum).
What is the mandate? That you love one another. Why is the mandate given? That you may abide in my love. Where is the mandate given? In Jerusalem, in an upper room. When is the mandate given? At the Last Supper “on the night that he was betrayed,” even as Judas leaves to betray him. To whom is the mandate given? To the disciples gathered at table with him. Through them it has been given to us. “I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.” How is the mandate given to us? In the form of the institution of the Holy Eucharist and by means of the example of humble, loving service. Who gives the mandate? Jesus. “A new commandment I give unto you that you love one another.”
He does not give this as simply from himself but as coming from his being at one with the Father. “I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father.” His new commandment would draw us into the communion of heavenly love.
How can this be said to be “a new commandment”? Because it comes ultimately and manifestly from the love of the Son for the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit. The love that is commanded – mandated – is rooted in the reality of God himself. It is not simply God’s will for us, something externally given; it is also the love that is God. In the Incarnate reality of Christ, this is something radically new.
“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.” The love that is God and that is of God has been enjoined upon us. We are mandated to love “even as I have loved you.”
But how do we know that love? Only through his Passion. Only through the astounding and terrifying events of these holy days, the Triduum Sacrum. It belongs to the purpose of his Passion to make known to us the love of the Father and to gather us into that love; “abide in my love.” “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.” There is a wonderful reciprocity between the divine community of the Trinity and our communion with the God who is Trinity. “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” He loves us who are his own and he loves us even to the bitter end of all our betrayals of his love. “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” That end means the cross, the source of our joy and our sorrow.
The cross is veiled before us because our sins veil the fullness of its meaning from us but it is not so veiled to Christ. It is ever before him in the course of his incarnate life. As Lancelot Andrewes puts it, “Christ and his cross were never parted, but that all his life long was a continual cross.” It belongs to the purpose of his passion to unveil it to us and to fix it before our mind’s eye.
That is the point of the strange events of this night. They belong to the purpose of his passion. The Holy Eucharist provides the instituted and ordained means of our participation in the holy fellowship of the Trinity but only through the Passion of Christ. The pedilavium, the foot-washing, provides a strong and powerful picture, an example of loving service for us to follow in our lives with one another. Christian worship and Christian service arise from the mandate of Christ’s love. And it all belongs to the Passion.
For what is our liturgy except the pageant of saving doctrine into which we enter? It is nothing but an empty parade without reference to the Passion of Christ. Will we hear the mandate of his love proclaimed from the pulpit of cross? Will we receive the mandate of his love sacrificed upon the altar of the cross? Word proclaimed and Sacraments celebrated. Will we live out the mandate of his love in the example of humble service?
The mandate is rooted in the fellowship of God with God in God, the fellowship of the Trinity, which is opened out to us by his commandment, in his institution and through his example. And yet, that holy fellowship can only be achieved through the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ. The Cross is always before us. “Our looking to him here,” on this night when he gives himself into our hands in bread and wine, “is our thinking upon him there” on the cross tomorrow and always, body broken and blood outpoured. The cross, as Andrewes puts it, signals the whole life of Christ. We look upon him “until he be as fast fixed in our hearts as ever he was to his cross, and some impression made in us of him as there was in him for us.” His new commandment is that we should love as he has loved. He has given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice. Here “on the night that he was betrayed,” he gives himself to us in the sacrament of the altar to be the means of our continual abiding in his love.
“A new commandment I give unto you that you love one another even as I have loved you”
Fr. David Curry
Maundy Thursday, ‘09