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Maundatum, a Latin word meaning to command or direct, provides the nickname for our Holy Week Thursday. Today Malcolm Guite’s poetic conclusion is so piercing:
And here he shows the full extent of love
To us whose love is always incomplete,
In vain we search the heavens high above,
The God of love is kneeling at our feet.
Though we betray him, though it is the night.
He meets us here and loves us into light.
My Youth Leader’s small group question echoes today in my heart, all those years ago at a Kanuga Conference Center (large Episcopal camp and conference center in western North Carolina): “Quick, if you had one more day to live, where would you choose to be and who would you choose to be with?!” Jesus chose to be away from his family in Nazareth and his familiar, bucolic lakeshore comforts of northern Galilee on the night before he died. He chose to be with his disciples, his best friends, and not coincidentally with the friend who would sell him out for execution. He chose to enjoy a Passover meal with them, to eat and drink with them, but he also chose a shockingly intimate surprise for them! To kneel before them and wash their feet. It must have blown their minds! Jesus then commands his disciples to do these very intimate things to bring him back in person through those we love. Besides doctors the only people to touch my feet so intimately comprise a very short list beginning with my mother and a very few intimates, and…some of you over the years as we recreate this very visceral act every Maundy Thursday. But at root, if Jerusalem is interior, then there is a place within me desperately craving a gentle, peaceable safe touch of someone who loves me unconditionally. A place where I have to trust beyond reason, a place to share the most life-giving elements of life, a place Jesus wants to bring out of darkness into His divine light. He chose to be with them, to do this, on his final night on this earth as a human being. Quick! If you had only one more day to live