Maundy — Mandatum ("Commandment")

A Reflection for Maundy Thursday

In Jerusalem

This is my first time, too

Jerusalem

Don't think I could get used to living in such a big city

The crowd was surprising

Kept wondering where all of those people were coming from

Then I remembered we were in Jerusalem, imagine that!

Pass the… what did he just say?

        this is my body?             broken…

Did he say "broken"?     Yes, he does seem different in some way, 

       quieter, maybe…    

focused

Hasn't been laughing as much as usual…         just yesterday, wait, 

               he's making a toast….                        

My blood shed for you...

That's what I remember….

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The poem puts us inside the room — not as theologians, not as people who already know how the week ends, but as someone still adjusting to the size of the city.

This is my first time, too. That "too" is doing something quiet and important. Someone else has just admitted it, and our speaker joins them — wide-eyed, a little overwhelmed, the crowd outside still a surprise even though, yes, of course, this is Jerusalem. Imagine that. We are somewhere between the ordinary and the enormous, and we have not yet sorted out which is which.

The meal they are sitting down to is not new. Exodus places us at its origin: a night of haste and terror and deliverance, the lamb slaughtered, the blood painted on the doorposts, families eating with sandals on because they are leaving before morning. The Passover was always a meal that held two things at once — the bitterness of what had been, and the urgency of what was coming. Every year after, the people would eat it again and say: this is what happened. This is what God did. This is who we are. Memory made present. The past refusing to stay past.

And then, at this particular table, on this particular night, the bread and the cup become something more. Paul hands us the words with the same gravity with which he received them: on the night when he was betrayed. That phrase alone — the ordinariness of a meal, the treachery already somewhere in the room, and still the bread is broken, still the cup is raised. This is my body. This is my blood. The Psalmist had lifted the cup of salvation in thanksgiving; now the one who is salvation lifts it toward us.

Pass the — what did he just say?

The poem arrests right there, in the gap between a familiar gesture and the word that changes everything. He does seem different. Quieter. Focused. Hasn't been laughing as much as usual. Something is already in motion that the speaker can feel but not yet name.

But before the meal, something else happened — something John alone records. Jesus got up from the table, tied a towel around himself, and began to wash his disciples' feet. It is perhaps more shocking even than the words over the bread and cup, because it is so entirely physical, so deliberately lowly. Peter can barely stand it. And when it is done, the word comes: I have given you an example. Do as I have done to you.

This is the Maundy of Maundy Thursday — from the Latin mandatum, commandment. Love one another as I have loved you. Not as an abstraction. As a practice. On your knees, with a towel, in the posture of a servant.

My blood shed for you. 

That's what the speaker remembers. So do we — and the towel, and the basin, and the commandment that comes with them. We have been here before. We are, always, here for the first time.

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The scriptures for this evening: Exodus 12:1–14 | Psalm 116:1–2, 12–19 | 1 Corinthians 11:23–26 | John 13:1–17, 31b–35