Commandment Thursday

Prepared message given as part of Three Rivers worship on Zoom, 17 April 2025.

Good morning Friends. I feel welcomed. It's so good to see you all here. I have a new appreciation for tech hosting and want to thank you, David. I spent yesterday afternoon at my work wrestling with one of those those Owl cameras that connects to the computer and shows you a panorama of the whole room.

And I couldn't manage to get it set up in a way that didn't just show like between the navel and the neck of the person who was speaking. I couldn't, I couldn't get it to see their head. So thank you tech hosts for making this worship time seem seamless for us.

I was wrestling with the Owl because I work at a Presbyterian church, and they're getting ready for their worship this evening, which is Maundy Thursday. I've been also hanging out with an interfaith group of folks who is putting together an interfaith worship for the stations of the cross. An invitation to not just kind of reenact distant history, but really to participate in an embodied living prayer through the streets of Boston.

So I've been sitting with this time, this earth time, this earth moment we are in, as well as with the centuries of overlay of this being Holy Week in the Christian tradition. And we talk about being a Queer Christian meeting and of reinterpreting this practice for our present time. So it's probably no surprise that I'm going to talk about Maundy Thursday for us today. Because across, really, the globe, communities are going to gather to remember this thing called Maundy Thursday. And the word "maundy" comes from the Latin mandatum, which means commandment. So it's really commandment Thursday. Scripturally or in the story of Jesus' life, it's the final night that Jesus spent with his disciples before his arrest. It's the night of foot washing, of quiet but radical breaking open of a new way. And at the heart of the commandment part of Commandment Thursday, Maundy Thursday, is this part of John's gospel, and I'm just going to read it to you. It's from John chapter 13, verses 34 and 35.

I give you a new commandment that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another. By this, by this love, everyone will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

This isn't just a sentimental invitation to love. This is a promise, a covenant, and a refounding of a community of people. It's rooted in Jesus's own boundary-breaking, justice-seeking love. A love that in that same evening when he invites his friends and enemies alike to dinner, a love that gets on its knees to serve and wash the feet of those who've gathered. A love that resists violence without replicating it, and a love that chooses communion over control.

Early Friends tried to live into this love too, a love that wasn't sentimental, but a living testimony. George Fox wrote of the power that took them out of the world into a new life, rooted in mutuality and integrity and in the spirit.

In this first century time of fear, violence, and betrayal, Jesus centers love. Bold, embodied, and liberating, he says, this is how people will know you. As Friends in 2025, not the first century, it feels like this commandment couldn't be more urgent. In a time of rising authoritarianism, growing polarization, policies that devalue human life, it's tempting to pull back, to protect ourselves and to be quiet.

But Maundy Thursday. Commandment Thursday, calls us to something bolder. Not a love that's nice or neutral, but a love that is resistance. That feeds the hungry, that defends the vulnerable, and that refuses to cooperate. Love that doesn't wait for the world to be safe, but shows up with a wash bowl and a towel. As Quakers, we've always carried this thread of refusing empire, whether it is the work of abolition, of refusing to go to war and pick up arms, or aligning with the marginalized, Quakers let their lives speak.

But Jesus does not command burnout, and he doesn't call us to pour into that basin from an empty vessel. He shows us that love isn't just work, it's also presence and balance and abiding in the spirit. Even he took time to rest, pray, to gain strength before facing what was ahead.

So, along with that invitation to live into a bold love that is resistance and hope and solidarity, you're also invited to pace yourself. Find rhythm in that resistance. Practice a bold love that sustains not just others but yourself too, because we are part of the one another that we are commanded to love.

So on this Maundy Thursday, under the shadow of our own empire, let's remember an ancient tradition, not as dead words on a page, but as a living invitation to step into a love that doesn't know boundaries.

I have some queries for you to bring into small groups. They are this. What does love require of us right now? Who needs their feet washed, not just literally, but in the form of care, solidarity or presence. How might we show up? Not with superiority, but with humility and courage, and how will you pace yourself in the struggle?