Years ago, I served as a spiritual director on a Cursillo Team in the Diocese of Western Michigan. A special evening meal was being served for those attending the weekend, but I was involved in a pastoral situation that delayed my participation. The room was nicely decorated and candlelit when I was finally able to join the event. It took some time for my eyes to adjust to the darkened room, but I finally spotted a chair at the end of one of the tables. It was throne-like. I remember thinking that it didn’t seem appropriate to seat a spiritual director in such a chair.
Shortly after I sat down, I was approached by someone who spoke in a hushed breath. “That’s eees’s ...”. “What?” I replied. “That’s eees’s chair.” Look, I can be slow on the uptake, but this was not all my fault. “What?” I queried. Like Peter, it took me three times to comprehend the moment and the missing consonant. “That’s Jesus’ chair.” Of course, it was a throne. The person was trying to politely tell me to move: I was sitting in Jesus’ chair! I’m uncomfortably aware that Jesus told a story about people who sit in the wrong chair at a banquet. Thank God, it wasn’t Advent when we are consciously expecting his arrival. Nonetheless I looked up at the person and replied, “If Jesus was here, he’d be serving the meal.”
We are in the midst of Holy Week. The average Episcopalian is old enough to remember when we read from Luke’s gospel on Maundy Thursday. Luke’s narrative is set as a Passover meal; and we taught about the institution of the Lord’s Supper. We focused on bread and wine. We imagined having an intimate dinner with Jesus; very much like the Cursillo meal that I was telling you about, well decorated, cozy, and candlelit. Sometimes our concentration was so intense that we neglected to discern the body.
Today, when we observe Maundy Thursday, we read from John’s gospel (John 13:1-17, 31b-35) and it doesn’t feel the same. First of all, it is not a Passover meal, and John doesn’t talk about bread and wine. More importantly, however, Jesus isn’t seated at the table. His place is empty. Even as Peter protests, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet. It is his mandatum: “love one another.”
I have often wondered if our church would be different if we had only known John’s gospel. Would we wash feet every Sunday to remind us of eees’s command? Would we develop new traditions that would make the process less messy or more efficient? Would foot washing end up looking like a shoeshine? Would we still concentrate on Average Sunday Attendance as a metric of congregational vitality, or would we recognize that our places of repose should frequently be empty? Would we gain a deeper appreciation of Jesus’ response to the disciples when he told them that he had food that they didn’t know about?
The mandatum to love sharpens our hearing and adds clarity to our life of discipleship. Mark, the evangelist, tells us that James and John were still looking for a place to sit down even though Jesus had repeatedly told them that discipleship required more than they could imagine. While worship and devotion play important roles in our spiritual lives, the apostle Paul understood that without love we would always be asking, “What?” The evangelist, Luke, possibly because he was a companion of Paul, knew that this mandatum is about acting like a neighbor to everyone.
It is imperative that we remember that Jesus’ commandment was not new. It lived in Deuteronomy’s summary of the Law and the prophet Micah wrote about mandatum eight hundred years before Jesus. He just didn’t use the same words.
‘He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?’ Micah 6:8
Micah helps us understand Peter’s response to Jesus once his pride was challenged. Humility opens our hearts to mandatum not only as direct objects, but as subjects. Who would have guessed that middle school English grammar would be theologically impactful?
"Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!"
—The Rev. Dr. Mark Story
St. Mary’s Episcopal Church