The magnificence of the ordinary
Commentary
Our arrival at Thursday in the week we call holy brings us face to face with the core of our faith. Over the next few days all that is essential for Christianity will unfold to the eyes of faith. They are, even in their tragedy, the most spectacular days of the church year.
Yet the events of this evening are so ordinary. The lessons tell about meals and feet and bathing. Yet the meaning behind these ordinary elements is so dramatic that a new community becomes formed around them and a new time begins. The community in the new time is called to live by a set of values that run counter to the former time in which the rest of the world lives.
Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10) 11-14
The priestly ritual for the observance of Passover is the content of our pericope. The narrative that explains the necessity of the ritual precedes our lesson and occupies all of chapter 11. Ever since the fifth chapter God had been working through Moses and Aaron to make the Pharaoh of Egypt allow the people of Israel to leave the land of their bondage. God had used one plague after another. The life-giving Nile teemed with blood; frogs jumped all over the kitchen cabinets and in the beds; gnats swarmed at every possible turn. Anyone who has seen the movie The Ten Commandments knows all the plagues the Lord sent against Egypt. By the time we get to the three-day darkness in chapter 10, nothing has really happened. In addition, we would have to admit, the Lord has been kind. Not a single Egyptian has died.
Then comes the final plague: the slaughter of all the firstborn of the Egyptians. It is not the Lord's plague of choice. In fact, it is the last resort. Now people will die.
The ritual for Passover describes proceedings of one of the major festivals of the year. Its strange practice of smearing the blood of a lamb on the doorposts in order to protect the children of Israel from the plague might have originated in a nomadic culture. One can imagine that such a practice could have served as the means of protecting the young of the families as they embarked on the dangerous trek of moving families and flocks from winter grazing ground to summer pastures and vice versa. Perhaps it was even known as a departure rite.
No matter what the actual origin, the Passover became for Israel the means by which they celebrated the once and for all departure from the land of Egypt as the people embarked on their forty-year-long journey to the Promised Land. Their freedom to leave the land of their slavery was the salvation event by which Jewish people of every generation share in that salvation experience. They eat the meal as families, and in so doing they identity with the community that came out of the land of Egypt when the Lord passed over their blood-coated doorposts and finally convinced the Pharaoh to "let my people go."
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
Paul introduces the words of institution by stating unabashedly that he is here simply passing on the tradition he himself had received. It is a device Paul will use again at 15:3 where he summarizes the gospel about the death and resurrection, along with resurrection appearances as the body of faith tradition he himself received. In our pericope he states the source of this revelation: the Lord.
The device Paul uses here is instructive for the church of every generation. What the church teaches and preaches is not an invention of human origin but a tradition which has defined the church from one century to the next and has its origin in Jesus himself. The sacrament of the Lord's Supper is clearly, then, a profound gift which Jesus Christ left to the church so that through these words, spoken along with eating and drinking as a community, the believing community might continue to know the benefits the tradition brings to those who participate.
The words that Paul reports here are similar, of course, to the words the Synoptic Gospels reported, but they are not identical. The words occur at Matthew 26:26-29; Mark 14:22-25; and Luke 22:15-20. Luke's version differs from the other two, above all, by (1) mentioning it is a Passover meal and (2) reversing the order of bread/body and cup/blood. Some of the differences between Paul's version reported here and the Mark/Matthew accounts are as follows: (1) The Gospels report that as Jesus passed the bread to the disciple, he said, "Take," or "Take, eat," prior to identifying the bread as his body. (2) Paul adds the words, "Do this in remembrance of me." (3) Matthew adds the words, "Drink of it, all of you," prior to the words about the cup. (4) Where Paul reports, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood," Matthew and Mark record, "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many" (Matthew adds "for the forgiveness of sins"). (5) Paul adds, "Do this in remembrance of me," both in regard to the bread and the cup. (6) While Matthew, Mark, and Luke report Jesus' saying about not drinking again from the cup until he drinks it new in the kingdom of God, Paul uses a different "until" saying: "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes."
In spite of such differences, there are such obvious similarities among all four versions that we are able to conclude the basic elements of the words have their origin in Jesus. Above all, there is in Paul, Matthew, and Mark a connection between the cup and the covenant. Paul speaks of "the new covenant in my blood" (v. 25). The terminology about a new covenant brings to the mind of the reader the prophecy of the new covenant in Jeremiah 31:31-34. That passage conveys the Lord's promise that in the kingdom to come ("The days are surely coming") the Lord will make a new covenant in which God will write the law on the hearts rather than on stones, and the result will be a new and unending relationship between the Lord and the people of Israel -- one of intimacy and one based on forgiveness. The establishment of the "new covenant" in the words of Jesus is one way of indicating that the death of Jesus is the dawning of that new kingdom. While Paul does not specifically mention the benefit of forgiveness as part of this new covenant, Paul elsewhere understands the blood of Jesus to be the means by which justification, redemption, and atonement are achieved (see Romans 3:25; 5:9). The use of blood and the anticipated results of the new covenant reflect the forgiveness of sins that will mark the relationship between God and people in the kingdom.
Strikingly, the connection between blood and covenant making is rare in the Old Testament. At the foot of Sinai God made a covenant with the people of Israel through the ritual of throwing the blood of a sacrificed animal on the altar of the Lord and on the people; even the words "the blood of the covenant" appear there (Exodus 24:8). Apparently the Lord had that event in mind when he promised freeing the prisoners from the waterless pit "because of the blood of my covenant" (Zechariah 9:11). The only time the expression becomes one made "in my blood" is at Matthew 26:28, Mark 14:24, and here when Jesus speaks of his impending death. This startling statement has no parallel in the Old Testament. It points directly to the uniqueness of what is about to transpire and to its consequences.
Eating this bread and drinking this cup are the means by which the Lord's death is proclaimed until he comes again. Those words provide the means by which the church of Jesus Christ can continue to focus on the heart of the gospel and to reap its benefits. They also indicate the promise that the Lord will come again, and we have the meal to prove it.
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
The opening verse provides the context for all the material that follows in chapters 13 through 19. First, the event takes place immediately prior to the festival of Passover and thus will allow the interpretation that when the lambs are being led to the slaughter, Jesus will be led to the cross for his death. Second, the awareness of Jesus that "his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father" places all the rest of the material into this departure mode.
Our pericope begins the departure activity known as the farewell discourse. The initial activity was not talk but a surprising event. Jesus rose from the table, took off his outer robe, and covered himself with a towel. Then with a basin he had filled, he washed the feet of the disciples and dried them with the towel. Peter, usually the one to stick his foot into his mouth, does it again rather than put his feet into the bowl. However, Peter was appropriately shocked by Jesus' behavior. Foot washing in the first century was far more unpleasant than when we do it today. In those days people walked barefoot through the streets where dogs and cats and rats had gone before. When people showed up at the home of their host for a dinner, even if they had bathed prior to leaving their own home, their feet would be outrageously dirty and smelly. The host provided a slave or a lowly servant (not the ones preparing and serving the food) to wash the guests' feet as they arrived.
That Jesus would perform the act of a slave was nothing short of turning upside down the social graces of the day. He was dishonoring himself because the social practice allowed the slaves to play their honorable role in society by washing feet, and the guests' honor would be maintained by such an act on the part of the host. Jesus, however, was the Teacher, the Rabbi, the Leader of the group, and Peter could not tolerate this upsetting of the proper social procedure. Jesus' insistence on washing the feet of all twelve indicated that his was a value system which was willing to fly blatantly in the face of social expectations.
That Jesus would perform this act not at the arrival of the disciples but "during supper" throws another light on the act. More specifically, Jesus prepared the basin "knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God." The coming and going sounds like a departure or exodus theme, the salvation event the Jewish people would celebrate the following day. Somehow his own imminent saving departure paved the way for his act of washing their feet. Some New Testament scholars suggest the washing was an act of forgiving their sins. The notion is tempting, particularly because this cleansing prior to his death would bond the disciples, even Judas, to himself and to one another.
When Jesus donned his robe and returned to the table, he told them that what he did was to serve as an example of the way they are to relate to one another. If Jesus, the one they call Lord and Teacher, willingly acts like a slave in order to care for others, then the disciples who call him Lord will act in the same way: "wash one another's feet." That example will provide one of the ways the little community can stand together when Jesus is no longer with them to explain that his ways are not the ways of the world. Jesus is here creating a community of social rebels, indeed rebels with a cause.
When the pericope resumes at verses 31-35, that same theme is reintroduced. Jesus repeats the inevitable departure that he will undergo: "Where I am going, you cannot come." With the community bereft of its leader, what could possibly hold it together? Jesus answers that question by giving them a new commandment: "that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another." Just as Jesus' washing their feet (and forgiving them?) provides the model by which they are also to act, so now Jesus' love establishes the basis and model for the way they are to love one another. This commandment is new, because until now the primary relationship which Jesus talked about was that of the disciples to him. Now, because of his departure, the new commandment is that they bind themselves in love to one another. Yet, this love is defined quite specifically, and to make it so specific Jesus appears to repeat himself: "Just as I have loved you, so you also should love one another." The tense of the verb describing Jesus' love is the aorist, signaling a once and for all act, a specific event of love. That event, of course, is the cross. The love with which Jesus loved the disciples is sacrificial, and that is the model of the love the little community of disciples is to have for one another. That love will hold them together even after Jesus' departure to that place to which they cannot go.
That sacrificial loving of one another will be the evidence to those on the outside that this motley crew is really Jesus' band of disciples. Throughout the Old Testament, particularly in the narratives about the plagues and the exodus, the refrain "then they will know" follows divine promises of judgment or salvation. The Egyptians will know who the Lord is when they experience plagues and when their soldiers are drowned in the sea. In the Book of Ezekiel both Israel's knowledge of the Lord and that of the nations round about would come when the Lord returned the exiled people to their own land. Now, according to Jesus, "everyone will know" the disciples belong to Jesus if they love one another with the same love Jesus demonstrated for them in the act by which the world was saved.
When all this takes place, indeed even as it unfolds, the Son of man is glorified and God has been glorified in him. Jesus uttered those words as soon as Judas left the room to put the whole plan of God in motion. The words remind us that the ultimate purpose of this passion, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension is the glory of God (recall Philippians 2:10-11). Jesus had come for this purpose and for this purpose he will leave.
What he leaves behind is a community of believers called to love one another, a community made to model his expressions of love and forgiveness even when they buck the tide of our contemporary society, a community that lives out its life from generation to generation bearing its witness and doing its daily work to the glory of God. All that it takes to be part of a community like that is a good bath.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10) 11-14
The gospels tell us that on the night that he was betrayed, our Lord first celebrated the Passover with his disciples. Thus it is important for us to go back in Exodus to the founding of the Passover celebration and its meaning.
There have been numerous scholarly speculations about the origin of Passover. Some have thought it was originally a semi-
nomadic spring celebration that petitioned the deity's favor and protection during the migration of flocks from one pasture to another. Others have connected it with ancient Near Eastern New Year festivals. However that may be, the scriptures are clear about the origins of the festival for Israel. It formed the prelude and preparation for Israel's deliverance out of slavery in Egypt in the thirteenth century B.C.
God was about to redeem his enslaved people, to set them free from their bondage, to form them into a people and adopt them as his son (cf. Hosea 11:1), and to deliver them into the beginning of "the glorious liberty of the children of God," pointed toward a promised land to call their own. Exodus 12 gives us the liturgical preparation and explanation (vv. 21-23) for that saving exodus event. It is the prelude to God's "redemption," which signifies "buying back" out of slavery (cf. Leviticus 25:47-49).
Each Israelite family was to roast a lamb of goat or sheep on the evening of the fourteenth day of the month of Abib (March-
April). Passover was and is always a family affair, or if the family was poor, it was to be shared with a neighbor. The lamb was to be without blemish (cf. John 19:36), a year old, and eaten with bitter herbs and unleavened bread. Some of the blood of the lamb was to be daubed on the doorposts and lintels of the house. If any of the meat was left, it was to be burned in the morning. But this first Passover was not a leisurely feast. It was to be eaten hastily, with the Israelites prepared for flight. For on the next day, the Lord would "pass over" the houses marked with blood to execute his wrath on the enslaving Egyptians and to set Israel free from her bondage.
Thus from the time of Moses on, Israel has celebrated the Passover in commemoration of the Lord's act of redeeming her out of slavery in Egypt. While originally the Passover in Exodus 12 looked forward to that redemption, in the years following, Israel's celebration looked back to the deliverance from bondage.
The exodus which Passover celebrates is the central redemptive act of God in the Old Testament, an act that is recalled in most of the Old Testament's books. It forms the supreme revelation, for the chosen people, of God's mercy toward the helpless (cf. Exodus 3:7-8), of his love for the folk he has adopted as his own, and of his power over empire, other gods (cf. Exodus 12:12), and nature. It is no accident, therefore, that the exodus in the Old Testament forms the parallel to the crucifixion of our Lord in the New Testament. Indeed, when Jesus talks about his death in Luke 9:31, he speaks of it as his "exodus" (in the Greek; RSV translates "departure"). Jesus' death on the cross brings our "redemption," our deliverance from slavery to sin and death. It manifests God's mercy toward all of us who are helpless in our captivity to our sin. It is the supreme manifestation of God's love (cf. Romans 5:8). And in the resurrection that follows, God's power over empire and evil and nature is manifested.
It is entirely fitting, therefore, that at this Maundy Thursday celebration of the Lord's Supper, we read the accounts of the Passover in Old Testament and New, for the Lord's Supper remembers the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ. "We do show forth his death until he comes." We remember that we too have been redeemed from our slavery to sin and death, as Israel was redeemed from her slavery in Egypt. And at this supper, we are bound together with all the faithful, past and present and future, as the one united people of God.
This supper that we celebrate is not merely a remembrance of things past, however. When Israel celebrates the Passover in the centuries after Moses up to the present day, she not only looks back to a past event. Rather, the past becomes her present. That is the function of such liturgy. It makes events that have happened in the past the events that are happening in the present. Every individual and family finds itself redeemed from slavery in the present. The Lord "spared our houses," the Israelite father can say to his son (v. 27). "The Lord heard our voice, and saw our affliction, our toil and our oppression; and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand..." (Deuteronomy 26:7-8). We are there. We are redeemed this day. We are delivered.
So it is, too, at the Lord's Supper that we celebrate now, is it not? We are there, sitting at table with our Lord on the night that one of us will betray him. He washes our feet (John's account) and bids us be servants to one another. He gives us the bread and the cup of the new covenant in his blood (1 Corinthians 11:23-26; the synoptic gospels). And we are redeemed and set free once again from our slavery to sin and death and reaffirmed as the beloved children of our God. The past to which we look back becomes our present in which we are set free to enjoy once more a foretaste and promise of "the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Romans 8:21). It is like the Negro spiritual says, good Christians, "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" Oh yes, indeed, we were there. And "sometimes it causes me to tremble." But this supper, here, now, means that we are redeemed from our sin.
In our Old Testament lesson, Moses explains aforetime what will happen on the night of Israel's redemption. The liturgy precedes the event. So too in the Gospel according to John, Jesus is the host at the supper, explaining to his disciples ahead of time what is going to happen when he is crucified and raised from the dead.
But here, now, for us, the event has taken place, hasn't it? The cross has been raised. Explanation and event are joined. As we read of the Supper and participate in it, all the power and mercy and love of God are poured out upon us. And you and I are delivered from our slaveries, and we can go out from this place a new people, a redeemed people, God's own beloved community.
Yet the events of this evening are so ordinary. The lessons tell about meals and feet and bathing. Yet the meaning behind these ordinary elements is so dramatic that a new community becomes formed around them and a new time begins. The community in the new time is called to live by a set of values that run counter to the former time in which the rest of the world lives.
Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10) 11-14
The priestly ritual for the observance of Passover is the content of our pericope. The narrative that explains the necessity of the ritual precedes our lesson and occupies all of chapter 11. Ever since the fifth chapter God had been working through Moses and Aaron to make the Pharaoh of Egypt allow the people of Israel to leave the land of their bondage. God had used one plague after another. The life-giving Nile teemed with blood; frogs jumped all over the kitchen cabinets and in the beds; gnats swarmed at every possible turn. Anyone who has seen the movie The Ten Commandments knows all the plagues the Lord sent against Egypt. By the time we get to the three-day darkness in chapter 10, nothing has really happened. In addition, we would have to admit, the Lord has been kind. Not a single Egyptian has died.
Then comes the final plague: the slaughter of all the firstborn of the Egyptians. It is not the Lord's plague of choice. In fact, it is the last resort. Now people will die.
The ritual for Passover describes proceedings of one of the major festivals of the year. Its strange practice of smearing the blood of a lamb on the doorposts in order to protect the children of Israel from the plague might have originated in a nomadic culture. One can imagine that such a practice could have served as the means of protecting the young of the families as they embarked on the dangerous trek of moving families and flocks from winter grazing ground to summer pastures and vice versa. Perhaps it was even known as a departure rite.
No matter what the actual origin, the Passover became for Israel the means by which they celebrated the once and for all departure from the land of Egypt as the people embarked on their forty-year-long journey to the Promised Land. Their freedom to leave the land of their slavery was the salvation event by which Jewish people of every generation share in that salvation experience. They eat the meal as families, and in so doing they identity with the community that came out of the land of Egypt when the Lord passed over their blood-coated doorposts and finally convinced the Pharaoh to "let my people go."
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
Paul introduces the words of institution by stating unabashedly that he is here simply passing on the tradition he himself had received. It is a device Paul will use again at 15:3 where he summarizes the gospel about the death and resurrection, along with resurrection appearances as the body of faith tradition he himself received. In our pericope he states the source of this revelation: the Lord.
The device Paul uses here is instructive for the church of every generation. What the church teaches and preaches is not an invention of human origin but a tradition which has defined the church from one century to the next and has its origin in Jesus himself. The sacrament of the Lord's Supper is clearly, then, a profound gift which Jesus Christ left to the church so that through these words, spoken along with eating and drinking as a community, the believing community might continue to know the benefits the tradition brings to those who participate.
The words that Paul reports here are similar, of course, to the words the Synoptic Gospels reported, but they are not identical. The words occur at Matthew 26:26-29; Mark 14:22-25; and Luke 22:15-20. Luke's version differs from the other two, above all, by (1) mentioning it is a Passover meal and (2) reversing the order of bread/body and cup/blood. Some of the differences between Paul's version reported here and the Mark/Matthew accounts are as follows: (1) The Gospels report that as Jesus passed the bread to the disciple, he said, "Take," or "Take, eat," prior to identifying the bread as his body. (2) Paul adds the words, "Do this in remembrance of me." (3) Matthew adds the words, "Drink of it, all of you," prior to the words about the cup. (4) Where Paul reports, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood," Matthew and Mark record, "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many" (Matthew adds "for the forgiveness of sins"). (5) Paul adds, "Do this in remembrance of me," both in regard to the bread and the cup. (6) While Matthew, Mark, and Luke report Jesus' saying about not drinking again from the cup until he drinks it new in the kingdom of God, Paul uses a different "until" saying: "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes."
In spite of such differences, there are such obvious similarities among all four versions that we are able to conclude the basic elements of the words have their origin in Jesus. Above all, there is in Paul, Matthew, and Mark a connection between the cup and the covenant. Paul speaks of "the new covenant in my blood" (v. 25). The terminology about a new covenant brings to the mind of the reader the prophecy of the new covenant in Jeremiah 31:31-34. That passage conveys the Lord's promise that in the kingdom to come ("The days are surely coming") the Lord will make a new covenant in which God will write the law on the hearts rather than on stones, and the result will be a new and unending relationship between the Lord and the people of Israel -- one of intimacy and one based on forgiveness. The establishment of the "new covenant" in the words of Jesus is one way of indicating that the death of Jesus is the dawning of that new kingdom. While Paul does not specifically mention the benefit of forgiveness as part of this new covenant, Paul elsewhere understands the blood of Jesus to be the means by which justification, redemption, and atonement are achieved (see Romans 3:25; 5:9). The use of blood and the anticipated results of the new covenant reflect the forgiveness of sins that will mark the relationship between God and people in the kingdom.
Strikingly, the connection between blood and covenant making is rare in the Old Testament. At the foot of Sinai God made a covenant with the people of Israel through the ritual of throwing the blood of a sacrificed animal on the altar of the Lord and on the people; even the words "the blood of the covenant" appear there (Exodus 24:8). Apparently the Lord had that event in mind when he promised freeing the prisoners from the waterless pit "because of the blood of my covenant" (Zechariah 9:11). The only time the expression becomes one made "in my blood" is at Matthew 26:28, Mark 14:24, and here when Jesus speaks of his impending death. This startling statement has no parallel in the Old Testament. It points directly to the uniqueness of what is about to transpire and to its consequences.
Eating this bread and drinking this cup are the means by which the Lord's death is proclaimed until he comes again. Those words provide the means by which the church of Jesus Christ can continue to focus on the heart of the gospel and to reap its benefits. They also indicate the promise that the Lord will come again, and we have the meal to prove it.
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
The opening verse provides the context for all the material that follows in chapters 13 through 19. First, the event takes place immediately prior to the festival of Passover and thus will allow the interpretation that when the lambs are being led to the slaughter, Jesus will be led to the cross for his death. Second, the awareness of Jesus that "his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father" places all the rest of the material into this departure mode.
Our pericope begins the departure activity known as the farewell discourse. The initial activity was not talk but a surprising event. Jesus rose from the table, took off his outer robe, and covered himself with a towel. Then with a basin he had filled, he washed the feet of the disciples and dried them with the towel. Peter, usually the one to stick his foot into his mouth, does it again rather than put his feet into the bowl. However, Peter was appropriately shocked by Jesus' behavior. Foot washing in the first century was far more unpleasant than when we do it today. In those days people walked barefoot through the streets where dogs and cats and rats had gone before. When people showed up at the home of their host for a dinner, even if they had bathed prior to leaving their own home, their feet would be outrageously dirty and smelly. The host provided a slave or a lowly servant (not the ones preparing and serving the food) to wash the guests' feet as they arrived.
That Jesus would perform the act of a slave was nothing short of turning upside down the social graces of the day. He was dishonoring himself because the social practice allowed the slaves to play their honorable role in society by washing feet, and the guests' honor would be maintained by such an act on the part of the host. Jesus, however, was the Teacher, the Rabbi, the Leader of the group, and Peter could not tolerate this upsetting of the proper social procedure. Jesus' insistence on washing the feet of all twelve indicated that his was a value system which was willing to fly blatantly in the face of social expectations.
That Jesus would perform this act not at the arrival of the disciples but "during supper" throws another light on the act. More specifically, Jesus prepared the basin "knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God." The coming and going sounds like a departure or exodus theme, the salvation event the Jewish people would celebrate the following day. Somehow his own imminent saving departure paved the way for his act of washing their feet. Some New Testament scholars suggest the washing was an act of forgiving their sins. The notion is tempting, particularly because this cleansing prior to his death would bond the disciples, even Judas, to himself and to one another.
When Jesus donned his robe and returned to the table, he told them that what he did was to serve as an example of the way they are to relate to one another. If Jesus, the one they call Lord and Teacher, willingly acts like a slave in order to care for others, then the disciples who call him Lord will act in the same way: "wash one another's feet." That example will provide one of the ways the little community can stand together when Jesus is no longer with them to explain that his ways are not the ways of the world. Jesus is here creating a community of social rebels, indeed rebels with a cause.
When the pericope resumes at verses 31-35, that same theme is reintroduced. Jesus repeats the inevitable departure that he will undergo: "Where I am going, you cannot come." With the community bereft of its leader, what could possibly hold it together? Jesus answers that question by giving them a new commandment: "that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another." Just as Jesus' washing their feet (and forgiving them?) provides the model by which they are also to act, so now Jesus' love establishes the basis and model for the way they are to love one another. This commandment is new, because until now the primary relationship which Jesus talked about was that of the disciples to him. Now, because of his departure, the new commandment is that they bind themselves in love to one another. Yet, this love is defined quite specifically, and to make it so specific Jesus appears to repeat himself: "Just as I have loved you, so you also should love one another." The tense of the verb describing Jesus' love is the aorist, signaling a once and for all act, a specific event of love. That event, of course, is the cross. The love with which Jesus loved the disciples is sacrificial, and that is the model of the love the little community of disciples is to have for one another. That love will hold them together even after Jesus' departure to that place to which they cannot go.
That sacrificial loving of one another will be the evidence to those on the outside that this motley crew is really Jesus' band of disciples. Throughout the Old Testament, particularly in the narratives about the plagues and the exodus, the refrain "then they will know" follows divine promises of judgment or salvation. The Egyptians will know who the Lord is when they experience plagues and when their soldiers are drowned in the sea. In the Book of Ezekiel both Israel's knowledge of the Lord and that of the nations round about would come when the Lord returned the exiled people to their own land. Now, according to Jesus, "everyone will know" the disciples belong to Jesus if they love one another with the same love Jesus demonstrated for them in the act by which the world was saved.
When all this takes place, indeed even as it unfolds, the Son of man is glorified and God has been glorified in him. Jesus uttered those words as soon as Judas left the room to put the whole plan of God in motion. The words remind us that the ultimate purpose of this passion, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension is the glory of God (recall Philippians 2:10-11). Jesus had come for this purpose and for this purpose he will leave.
What he leaves behind is a community of believers called to love one another, a community made to model his expressions of love and forgiveness even when they buck the tide of our contemporary society, a community that lives out its life from generation to generation bearing its witness and doing its daily work to the glory of God. All that it takes to be part of a community like that is a good bath.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10) 11-14
The gospels tell us that on the night that he was betrayed, our Lord first celebrated the Passover with his disciples. Thus it is important for us to go back in Exodus to the founding of the Passover celebration and its meaning.
There have been numerous scholarly speculations about the origin of Passover. Some have thought it was originally a semi-
nomadic spring celebration that petitioned the deity's favor and protection during the migration of flocks from one pasture to another. Others have connected it with ancient Near Eastern New Year festivals. However that may be, the scriptures are clear about the origins of the festival for Israel. It formed the prelude and preparation for Israel's deliverance out of slavery in Egypt in the thirteenth century B.C.
God was about to redeem his enslaved people, to set them free from their bondage, to form them into a people and adopt them as his son (cf. Hosea 11:1), and to deliver them into the beginning of "the glorious liberty of the children of God," pointed toward a promised land to call their own. Exodus 12 gives us the liturgical preparation and explanation (vv. 21-23) for that saving exodus event. It is the prelude to God's "redemption," which signifies "buying back" out of slavery (cf. Leviticus 25:47-49).
Each Israelite family was to roast a lamb of goat or sheep on the evening of the fourteenth day of the month of Abib (March-
April). Passover was and is always a family affair, or if the family was poor, it was to be shared with a neighbor. The lamb was to be without blemish (cf. John 19:36), a year old, and eaten with bitter herbs and unleavened bread. Some of the blood of the lamb was to be daubed on the doorposts and lintels of the house. If any of the meat was left, it was to be burned in the morning. But this first Passover was not a leisurely feast. It was to be eaten hastily, with the Israelites prepared for flight. For on the next day, the Lord would "pass over" the houses marked with blood to execute his wrath on the enslaving Egyptians and to set Israel free from her bondage.
Thus from the time of Moses on, Israel has celebrated the Passover in commemoration of the Lord's act of redeeming her out of slavery in Egypt. While originally the Passover in Exodus 12 looked forward to that redemption, in the years following, Israel's celebration looked back to the deliverance from bondage.
The exodus which Passover celebrates is the central redemptive act of God in the Old Testament, an act that is recalled in most of the Old Testament's books. It forms the supreme revelation, for the chosen people, of God's mercy toward the helpless (cf. Exodus 3:7-8), of his love for the folk he has adopted as his own, and of his power over empire, other gods (cf. Exodus 12:12), and nature. It is no accident, therefore, that the exodus in the Old Testament forms the parallel to the crucifixion of our Lord in the New Testament. Indeed, when Jesus talks about his death in Luke 9:31, he speaks of it as his "exodus" (in the Greek; RSV translates "departure"). Jesus' death on the cross brings our "redemption," our deliverance from slavery to sin and death. It manifests God's mercy toward all of us who are helpless in our captivity to our sin. It is the supreme manifestation of God's love (cf. Romans 5:8). And in the resurrection that follows, God's power over empire and evil and nature is manifested.
It is entirely fitting, therefore, that at this Maundy Thursday celebration of the Lord's Supper, we read the accounts of the Passover in Old Testament and New, for the Lord's Supper remembers the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ. "We do show forth his death until he comes." We remember that we too have been redeemed from our slavery to sin and death, as Israel was redeemed from her slavery in Egypt. And at this supper, we are bound together with all the faithful, past and present and future, as the one united people of God.
This supper that we celebrate is not merely a remembrance of things past, however. When Israel celebrates the Passover in the centuries after Moses up to the present day, she not only looks back to a past event. Rather, the past becomes her present. That is the function of such liturgy. It makes events that have happened in the past the events that are happening in the present. Every individual and family finds itself redeemed from slavery in the present. The Lord "spared our houses," the Israelite father can say to his son (v. 27). "The Lord heard our voice, and saw our affliction, our toil and our oppression; and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand..." (Deuteronomy 26:7-8). We are there. We are redeemed this day. We are delivered.
So it is, too, at the Lord's Supper that we celebrate now, is it not? We are there, sitting at table with our Lord on the night that one of us will betray him. He washes our feet (John's account) and bids us be servants to one another. He gives us the bread and the cup of the new covenant in his blood (1 Corinthians 11:23-26; the synoptic gospels). And we are redeemed and set free once again from our slavery to sin and death and reaffirmed as the beloved children of our God. The past to which we look back becomes our present in which we are set free to enjoy once more a foretaste and promise of "the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Romans 8:21). It is like the Negro spiritual says, good Christians, "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" Oh yes, indeed, we were there. And "sometimes it causes me to tremble." But this supper, here, now, means that we are redeemed from our sin.
In our Old Testament lesson, Moses explains aforetime what will happen on the night of Israel's redemption. The liturgy precedes the event. So too in the Gospel according to John, Jesus is the host at the supper, explaining to his disciples ahead of time what is going to happen when he is crucified and raised from the dead.
But here, now, for us, the event has taken place, hasn't it? The cross has been raised. Explanation and event are joined. As we read of the Supper and participate in it, all the power and mercy and love of God are poured out upon us. And you and I are delivered from our slaveries, and we can go out from this place a new people, a redeemed people, God's own beloved community.
