Maundy Thursday 2021

Maundy Thursday, 2021 | by Pastor Evan McClanahan |

On Maundy Thursday, Jesus instituted a practice and a way of thinking that really would change the world. Inspired by the washing of the disciples’ feet, an ethic of love was deeply ingrained into those who called Christ their Lord and Savior. It was assumed that service and respect towards others must be shown if you claimed the name of Christ for yourself. It became, eventually, part of our way of life and our basic manners. It is at least an offense to not obey the mandate given to us on Maundy Thursday, to love one another. It is still out of fashion to be rude or to not be generous when you have abundance.

This basic truth, and the example given to us by Christ himself during his trial and passion, has been sufficient motivation for generations. Even those who did not consider themselves Christian in any meaningful sense, would agree that the culture that Christianity produced was a good one. One worth adhering to. One worth assuming.

In the past hundred years, that ethic has been questioned. Or re-worked. Or degraded. Or replaced. In the East, we saw dramatic and sweeping replacements in the form of Marxism, perhaps the most destructive economic or political system ever devised. Love was not the core motivating principal. Equality was. Or is it equity? To destabilize the one pattern of all of human history – oppressed by an oppressor – that was the goal of Marxism. People were pitted against one another in such a way that would’ve destroyed the Christian church from ever beginning. The goal may have been the virtue of everyone having the same amount of possessions and living in some kind of harmony. The end result was that everyone was poor and unless you were well-connected, miserable. And, of course, there was no room for Christianity because the state was God and there was no room for the ethic of love in the bureaucracy.

But as good ol’ Yankees, well, we never had much use for Marxism. In fact, we went so far above and beyond trying to keep communists out of our country, that we apparently committed the grave error of McCarthyism! But the Marxists weren’t done. And worst of all, they were patient. It began with the occasional oddball in our academic environment. Then a few more. Then it seeped down to our public educational system. Our government gradually adapted many of the Marxist planks, the planks that were meant to replace the 10 Commandments. Yes, there are 10 of them and no, it is not an accident.

For example, we have graduated income tax is, mandatory public schooling, inheritance taxes, and so many public services they may as well be publicly owned. Slowly and steadily, the ranks of those who assumed the rightness of Marx – perhaps even in the name of Christian love – rose. Of course, few people advocate for actual red, Soviet-style Marxism in America. It’s just that other “greatest goods” have arisen. And the greatest good for us to achieve as a culture is no longer love. It is equality.

This is, to be clear, a competing worldview. A competing claim. An alternative value. Instead of equality being a result of love, or a fruit of love, the minute it became the highest good, it replaced love. Love became optional, even useless. Or love simply got separated from what Christ meant by it when he instituted this mandate on this night. I think we all know that love can be used to define or describe just about anything.

So that is the process of Christian love being removed from the center and replaced, patiently, over many decades. And if we know anything about turning points, we know they happen fast. One day, everything is what you would consider normal. The next day, you are wondering why no one seems to agree with you anymore. Usually, they just call that getting old. But it’s something beyond mere nostalgia. I don’t know if we have reached the tipping point yet, but I’d hate to see it when we do.

Radical equality now is our cultural goal. It is what animates our laws now. It is what is taught at every level of education. And it has – and will – lead to real violence and real persecution.

So those of us who insist on a Christian understanding of love and service, will find ourselves on the outside looking in. “Love” will be an empty word, you see, if it is not accompanied by action. And that is actually quite true in some thing we can agree with. It’s a question of how far we are willing to go with our actions to prove that we really love. Are reparations necessary? Quotas?

But sorry for sounding pessimistic, inequality is a part of life. It is a fact of life. And love is necessary because of inequalities and injustices and unfairness in the world. We can never eradicate those things in a fallen world. But our love can transcend them, heal them, and lessen them.

Maybe that is not radical enough, or not drastic enough. Maybe it is too pessimistic. But it is that commitment to love that has seen the progress we have seen. To take it for granted now, and replace it with an entirely different worldview, will not be good. And because there will never be absolute equality, that game will never end and we are even beginning it without knowing where it could end. But with love, we also don’t know where that will end, but we have a an ultimate good but guides us as we go.

So, as you leave here this evening, what can you leave with? First, I would ask you to listen for language that would substitute equality for love. Beware of the temptation to substitute one for the other. Second, as a church, we must love better. It must be clear in our daily living that our love for Christ has led us to obey his commandment that we love one another. We must continue to be gracious, kind, thoughtful, and patient. Third, keep the faith. Love is the underlying and eternal value that will last. All other substitutes will fail. So we carry on and we pray that the world comes to see that they have been fed a lie: that they can create a better works without Christ than with him.

As another pastor once said, it is Christ or chaos. Whenever our world rejects the mandate of love, chaos will ensue. But love always wins in the end. It must. Because only it is everlasting. Because it is completely of God. Amen.

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Pastor Evan McClanahan

First Lutheran, Houston