Today is called Maundy Thursday because traditionally on this day the church has reflected on the final “mandate” that Jesus left his followers. (“Mandate” is where the word “Maundy” originates. You can hear the similarity: “Mandate”...“Maundy.”) A simpler way to think about Maundy Thursday is that it is Jesus’ last lesson. The last “mandates” he gives to his disciples. Typically on Maundy Thursday we read the story of the Last Supper, where Jesus issues several instructions, or “mandates.” Such as when he gets on his own knees and washes his followers’ feet and tells them to do the same. Or when he says “Love one another as I have loved you” (cf. John 13).
But the Narrative Lectionary, the scripture calendar we’re following, invites us this year to read a different set of mandates. Tonight, instead of reading about the Last Supper, we read about Jesus’ last words on the cross. While this breaks with longstanding tradition, it is not entirely without reason. If Maundy Thursday is meant to be about Jesus’ last lesson, his final mandates, then we might indeed look to the cross. Death often reveals the truest character of a person’s life. On the cross, Jesus is not serenely reading from a script. He’s not following a lesson plan he drew up the night before. On the cross, we see Jesus’ most natural reflexes.
When on the cross Jesus beholds his mother and the disciple whom he loves, two of his most cherished companions, he sees beyond the despair of the present moment to the new family that God is creating, a family defined not by blood but by love. And so he says, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” Which is another way of saying, “In the kingdom of God, we all belong to one another. Like family.” It is not a coincidence that the earliest Christ-followers were frequently accused of living a promiscuous lifestyle. Outsiders could not otherwise understand how it was that people from such different backgrounds of race and class and occupation could regularly come together and care for each other. They could not understand this new family.
Jesus next “last word” is in fact a single “word” in the Greek: “I thirst.” It is a remarkable thing to me, that as Jesus dies, he does not despair of his incredible pain and wish for a quicker death. Instead, he clings on desperately to life, even as he knows it will soon be gone. “I thirst” is a way for Jesus to say—despite all the evil he has encountered, despite all the pain: “I want to live. Life is good. I want more of it!” And is it any surprise that Jesus would say this? He could never conceal his love for this life. When he told stories, all he could talk about was this life: the serenity of birds, the beauty of wild flowers, the sun and the rain that fall on us all; children who dance and play flutes, brothers and bridesmaids, weddings and feasts. On the cross, Jesus was not looking forward to heaven. He was insisting that heaven had come to earth—was this not his life’s prayer? (Matt 6:10). He was insisting, despite all appearances, that this life already contains all the goodness of God’s love.
Jesus’ final “word”—“It is finished”—should be heard in the same register as an artist pronouncing the completion of his masterpiece, or a composer declaring her satisfaction upon writing down the final note of her song. In other words, “it is finished” is Jesus’ defiant pronouncement that this death is not about defeat and suffering. Rather it is the ultimate act or deed in his life’s work—the finishing touch to his masterpiece. It is the capstone, the final achievement, completing and fulfilling all that has preceded it. Popular theology has frequently made the cross out to be part of some sacrificial equation, which stipulates that Jesus must die so we can live. This leaves us with some disturbing implications, such as a God who demands the blood of his own child, which in our world we would call “child abuse.” But what I read in this passage is not the outworking of some complicated sacrificial equation. The cross is a symbol not of mortal suffering but of an immortal love. As Jesus himself put it earlier in the gospel: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).
The word “mandate” literally means something like “given into one’s hands.” To give a mandate is effectively to say, “It’s in your hands now. I have done what is mine to do, but I cannot do what is yours.” If that sounds rather bleak and lonely, well—I suppose that’s how Jesus’ followers felt when they saw Jesus on the cross. I suppose it’s how we all feel from time to time when it seems we are up against it all on our own. Maybe we feel this loneliness when a loved one or we ourselves receive a troubling prognosis. Or when we see injustice and suffering in our world. Or when our own plans fall to pieces and we can’t see a way forward. Is this difficulty and grief ours alone to bear? Is Maundy Thursday saying it’s all in our hands now, it’s all up to us?
Far from it. Jesus’ last words—his final lesson—are not without hope. First, he gives us to one another, reminding us of our divine heritage and that we are all brothers and sisters in God’s family. We do not walk alone. No burden is ours to bear alone when we live in God’s family. Next, he affirms the goodness of life no matter how dark things get, inviting us to see God’s gracious hand in all creation and to treasure life’s many gifts and to “thirst” for what is good. And lastly, he insists that the cross is not his passive defeat, but in fact the crowning demonstration of his love, the final touch to his masterpiece of a life, a witness to the way God works in the world—not by overpowering force, but by a love that endures to the end.
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