This week in our Rooted, we’ll take a little detour. Today is Maundy Thursday, one of the holiest nights of the Christian year, and one of my favorite services in church.  We’ll have our Maundy Thursday service tonight at St. Matthew’s at 6:00 p.m. and we’d love you to join us in person, or you can join us online here. 

Maundy comes from the Latin word mandatum, or commandment, reflecting Jesus’ words “I give you a new commandment.  We see these words in John 13: 33-35: 

33 Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ 34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.”

Jesus gives this command – love one another. But He doesn’t give this command only in words, but in action. He shows His disciples he loves them by washing their feet.  Not merely with words, but with action.

He shows His disciples He loves them by giving them a meal, Holy Communion.  This is not merely words, but action.

And after the meal, He will go to the cross.  His ultimate love is that of self-sacrifice to save the soul of man.  He shows us the depth of His love for us in that He gives Himself for us.  He does not merely tell us to love, with no action tied to it. He tells us to love and then shows us what that love looks like.

He shows us that love is an action, not an emotion or a feeling.  He shows us love not in how we feel towards each other, but how we give ourselves to one another. 

And now He tells us that is how the world will know that we are His disciples.  Not in how we speak or post online or even feel. But how we give ourselves away. How we self sacrificially love.  That is how the world will know that we are His.  In how we love.

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