Ancient to Old to New
Today is known as Maundy Thursday, Mandate Thursday, or the day in which the Last Supper is commemorated. Then further back, it is about the remembering and honoring of the Passover meal.
In this remembering, there is an incredible movement for us to glean from.
From Ancient… to Old… to New.
In the book of Exodus, chapter 12, there is the account of what is known as The Passover. In this ancient story, the Hebrew people have been rescued from their bondage in Egypt, and they are now to participate in a ritual festival and meal. This as a practice of remembering their rescue and freedom. The ritual likely strikes many of us as barbaric. Animal sacrifice, really? And that is but one element of the story which also includes the potential death of more first born animals and humans! And this story also takes us further back, to a story of a guy named Abraham, and his story of nearly sacrificingof his only son Isaac.
Riding around the edges of the Bible are stories of human sacrifice? Yes. And yikes.
Then we move forward some thousand years, to Jesus and his twelve students, who sit around a table to commemorate the Passover ritual meal. And here, Jesus highlights the picture of the bread as his body given for the life of the world. And the cup of wine as a picture of his blood, poured out for the cleansing of the world. And within this ritual meal, Jesus undresses and takes a towel to wash each of his student’s feet.
“Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.”
There is a profound movement within all of this, a tremendous gift for us, here, today. In a culture in which human sacrifice was normal, we see the Biblical story guide us forward in our thinking and being. There will be no sacrifice of the beloved child, because the Divine is our forever provision. Then we move to Jesus teaching the way of serving as the way of leading. He takes the ritual of animal sacrifice and pins it to himself.
But he does this not to go backward, but to once again guide us forward.
It is sacrificing the ego, the inflated self, which Jesus depicts in how the empire of the day holds power over the people in order to keep the people held down. Jesus models love by sacrificial serving and giving, which in doing so, he also reveals the end of the entire system of animal sacrifice.
And even today, we often miss the larger point of the surrendering of our bloated ego, by simply giving up meat on Friday, or chocolate or coffee or accumulating for the season of Lent. If that alerts and awakens one to the letting go of ego in order to more fully love others, then that is fantastic. But if it is just another ritual, then it is an adventure in missing the point.
On this day, Maundy Thursday, we are offered the stunning teaching of how Love Gives. And how Love is gift, it is not wielding the dagger of manipulation and payback, but it pours out as a cleansing balm. Love is free of the strings of deserving and earning, winning and lording over.
Love serves and gives, even to the one who will betray, because Love is that big and bold.
What a lesson to not simply quote the Ancient in order to justify the present, but to learn from and let go of the Old in order to grow into the New.
The arc of the Bible is the move from Ancient… to Old… to New. That’s what Love does, it invites us to grow.
