April 13, 2006
Call to Worship
We love the Lord because God has heard our voices.
When the snares of death wrapped around us, God heard our cries.
What shall we return to the Lord?
We will lift up the cup of salvation, and call on the name of the Lord.
We will offer to God a thanksgiving sacrifice, and call on the name of the Lord.
Welcome
“Maundy” means “mandate.” The commandment to love one another, to serve one another, is a mandate from God. Just as Jesus Christ is the servant Messiah, we too are to serve one another, not seeking glory or fame, but seeking to follow Christ’s example. If Christ is willing to wash the disciples’ feet, to humble himself to the position of a household slave, then we are also to live our faith out in this way.
If we were to wash each other’s feet tonight, we would need to be down on our knees to do so. Being on our knees symbolizes humble service. Effective parents understand this when they get down on their knees to play with their children. We tie a disabled person’s shoelaces on our knees. We get down on our knees to clean up spilled milk. When we fall down on our knees, we demonstrate to God and to our neighbors that we ready to serve.
Christianity is not equated with holding first-class tickets on the plane or the best seats in the house for a play. The Pharisees and scribes and rabbis interpreted God this way that knowing the law gave them special privileges. This is not the new commandment that Jesus brings us. We are to love and serve one another, to humble ourselves as Christ did.
The words of the Last Supper further illustrate the servanthood of Jesus. He gives us his body, his blood. He gave up his life. Jesus got down on his knees to be human like us and died on the cross so that we may get down on our knees to pray to him and to seek his forgiveness for the things that we have done wrong.
We remember this sacrifice with pieces of bread and small cups of grape juice but we often take this sacrifice for granted. Do we really understand what it means for someone to give their life for us, to take our sin upon him? Tonight we go back to where it all began, on this holiest of night as Jesus gives his final instructions and gives a foreshadowing of what he was about to go through.
Let us pray.
Wonderful God, as Jesus has washed our feet, so we turn and serve one another. Strengthen our community of faith as a servant body. Bind us together in your love, as night draws on, and the darkness overtakes us. As the night of betrayal, denial, despair and desperation comes upon us, help us to ponder the depth of our own need our own complicity, our own guilt in the betrayal of our best friend. How often have we impatiently tried to force your hand? How often have we drawn swords in anger and fear? How often have we remained silent, when we could have prevented betrayal? How often have we fled into the darkness?
Gracious God, stay with us, as we nod off when we try to pray, lose interest and grow weary even in our best intentions. Stay with us when we fail to concentrate. Stay with us in your healing and reconciling power as the terror of this night, the deep disappointment, and the fear, envelop us. Keep fresh in our mouths the taste of the wine, the texture of the bread, the reminders of your steadfastness even in the face of our denial and failure. Stay with us, Lord, we pray in the name of the One who offered himself. Amen.
Benediction
This is the hour when we remembered Christ’s mandate:
You shall love one another, as I have loved you.
Remember that Jesus washed the disciples’ feet.
In covenant with Christ, let us go and serve in a world that need’s God’s peace.