Maundy Thursday

"Der Judaskuss," Hans Breinlinger

The “mandate” of “Maundy” Thursday is love—not “Love God!,” but “Love one another.” Love’s symbols? Today they include God the Body honoring God the o/Other in the other’s body. They include God the Body praying and hoping, desiring that, truly, we might become One. They include the one yielding power-over relinquishing power-over, (Christ scrubbing feet!) washing, bowing, kneeling down. Power dissolved into new community. 

Water. Bread. Cup. 

Disciples —> “friends.” 

A mandate? To love! And symbols? Camaraderie. 

Com-pan-ions (those with whom we share bread). 

A community. Everyone eats. And sets a table. 

The lowly are lifted. The powerful brought down. 

A prayerful desire: a becoming of a new and loving One. 

These: the mandate and symbols given on the night in which God the Body is betrayed. 

These: the cross, the caesar, the chief, the kaiser desire to arrest, to torture, to kill. 

And so the Body is betrayed. 

And so the Body is betrayed:

In hoarding food, in hiding wealth. 

In corrupt, in oppressive power-over. 

In camps and cages. 

In steel, economic, physical and symbolical walls. 

God the Body: 

handed over to death by we who eat the bread, 

saying “This is the Body!,” tasting no pain of the Body imprisoned, hungry, tortured, 

beaten all around. 

God the Body: 

betrayed, as we drink the cup, saying “This is the Blood!,” tasting no compassion,

the blood of God pouring through the streets outside the narthex, untouched by hallowed grounds. 

The Body, betrayed. 

For silver? For less than silver.