Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Maundy Thursday
April 6, 2023
Love one another, as I have loved you.
Simple enough, really. Love is the core ethic, the core value of Christianity. Love is the summary of the Law, love is the summary of the Gospel, love is the commandment that matters most.
But Jesus also makes it plainly clear: the love that we are to show is to be like his love.
Not what passes for love in the world. It needs to be like Jesus’ love to be truly love.
Not what looks like Jesus’ love; it needs to be like Jesus’ love.
Caring and compassionate. Feeling and expressing empathy with all sorts and kinds of people and creatures.
A love that knows its center – that is grounded in God, not warm feelings.
A love that speaks the truth – truth, with love, in love, springing forth from love.
A love that holds ourselves and others accountable. A love that listens.
A love that is active. As the rule of the Order of the Holy Cross says, “Love must act, as light must shine and fire must burn.” Love is more than feeling, it is action, it is living energy.
Love is hard. Love is challenging. Love is the work of a lifetime.
Love has to be shown, practiced, tried.
Love is worth the effort, even if we fail. Maybe when we fail, we learn to love better. We learn how to try again, to apologize, to seek forgiveness, to accept our own frailty and failures with humility, and to accept others.
Love is the fabric of community, and fellowship, and friendship, and communion.
Love is what we see during these three Holy Days.
On Maundy Thursday, Jesus tells us what we are to do: to love one another as he himself has loved us. Not lofty theories of love – no, love the person next to you. Love them enough to wash their feet – and love them enough to let them wash yours.
On Good Friday, we see Jesus’ love poured out, Jesus’ love embracing all of our own pain. We do not see Good Friday as a tragedy that happened to Jesus – Jesus embraced death, embraced crucifixion. All this the savior freely willed, as an ancient hymn goes. Love pours out from the wounded body on the cross – a love that pours out into the chalice at communion to bind up the brokenhearted and knit together the community gathered in Christ’s name.
Holy Saturday we see love buried, we see love keeping vigil with tears, and love going to the depths of creation to redeem it.
And on Easter we tell the story of God’s love throughout history. A love that sets free, a love that liberates all creation from fear of death and despair, a love that overcomes death in the resurrection.
St Julian of Norwich summarizes it well for us. She prayed to understand what the Lord had shown to her, and she was answered in her spirit, “Wouldst thou learn thy Lord’s meaning in this thing? Learn it well: Love was His meaning. Who shewed it thee? Love. What shewed He thee? Love. Wherefore shewed it He? For Love. … Thus was I learned that Love was our Lord’s meaning. And I saw full surely that ere God made us He loved us; which love was never slacked, nor ever shall be. And in this love He hath done all His works; and in this love He hath made all things profitable to us; and in this love our life is everlasting. In our making we had beginning; but the love wherein He made us was in Him from without beginning: in which love we have our beginning. And all this shall we see in God, without end.”
Let us love one another, as Christ has loved us. Amen.