What I Learned in Sunday School

Okay, it’s my last night on earth and for some reason you know it — do you accept my invitation to supper? After all, it’s not actually a conveniently timed supper and traffic is really bad, it’s backed up both ways on I-285, in fact all of the major interstates are jammed and the back roads are just as frustrating. You have this supper invitation and it’s my last night on earth, but it’s also during the week, a Thursday. You’ve been working all day and the weather is beautiful. You like me, sure, and you’ll probably miss me a little bit when I’m gone. Not to mention, you’re already going to have to take time out to dress up and show up for my funeral.

But this sit-down supper thing is a hassle, especially when you could just sit on your back porch with a glass of wine and think a few good thoughts for me. Maybe you reason that your kid will be damaged for life if you miss that Thursday night soccer practice. I don’t know it’s my last night on earth, but you do. I get a feeling it’s soon, but you are absolutely certain that I’m going to die the next day. What do you do?

Okay, so never mind me. What if the supper invitation came from someone like, say, Jesus? Would he be worth a little inconvenience? Braving a little traffic on a Thursday night? I think most of us wouldn’t give that invitation a second thought. I refer, of course, to the Maundy Thursday service.

When the disciples showed up for this last-night-on-earth supper, they had no idea, or most of them had no idea, what the next day held. Jesus may have had a pretty good idea that he couldn’t keep defying authority and get away with it. He couldn’t keep standing up against the political and religious powers in the defense of the poor and downtrodden.

I imagine that though this was his last night on earth, he had a few things penciled in on his calendar. Maybe he was going to take a much needed rest after Passover, a few days by the sea. Maybe he wasn’t tired at all and he was making plans for other protests, even bigger things that would turn the whole rotten order of things upside down. I have to think he had something planned, even if it was just a breakfast date at the Waffle House—or some equivalent.

Whatever was on his calendar, whatever he hoped to accomplish in the future, he had a pretty good idea that his days were numbered. And because he knew his time was limited, he gathered his closest and trusted friends for a meal. There were 12.

Forgive me for saying so, but there’s a fuzziness about the resurrection. We bat it back and forth in Sunday School all the time. Was it a physical body floating heaven bound? At what point did the death take on such meaning in Christianity? Who saw what? How do we know? How should we interpret it? What does it mean for us as Christians, and beyond that, how do we apply what it means in our daily lives?

But the last supper? No ambiguity whatsoever. Here’s an excerpt from Patricia’s sermon, picking up where they’re all gathered for the meal and Jesus is worried like a parent about how his children will get along once he’s no longer there to guide them:

He looks around at them with love and affection and grief, with a little frustration thrown in, too. He has tried to teach them so many things. Sometimes they seem to get it; sometimes he wonders if they have understood anything he has said or done at all.

This may be his last chance, his last lesson. How can he get their attention? How can he make them understand the core message of his life?

Suddenly he has an inspiration. He gets up from the table, ties a towel around his waist, pours water into a bowl, kneels on the floor, and begins to wash his friends’ tired and dirty feet.

Predictably, they don’t understand. Peter sputters an objection – “I’m not letting you touch my feet! You can’t do that. That’s a servant’s job.”

“Ah, that’s the point,” Jesus replies. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along. We are here to be servants; we show our love for God by loving and serving God’s people.

“I’ll be leaving you soon,” he tells them. “But my work must continue and live on in you. Follow my example. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

I couldn’t count how many years I missed the Maundy Thursday service in my life. In fact, I asked my brother about it, why we’d never gone as children. “It was too radical,” he said simply. Our grandparents were put off by this unsavory idea of having their feet touched and then, of course, the intimacy of putting your hands on the feet of others.

If I hadn’t said last year that I was planning on doing the whole Holy Week thing, making every service, I might never had showed up for Maundy Thursday. As it happened, though I washed not nor was washed last year, it was the most meaningful and holy service I had ever attended. As I watched the sacred symbolic act repeated with love and humility, everything I ever learned sitting in a pew or reading or in Sunday School all came together in concentrate form, like orange juice or vanilla extract. It was this: Love one another. Serve one another.

All year, I admit, I looked forward to the Maundy Thursday service. I took off work early and got a pedicure so I could wash-and-be-washed as it were. The earthen ware pitchers and bowls were set by two chairs on either side in front of the altar. The little white towels that we used to dry each other’s feet were embroidered with small red crosses. The sermon was wonderful. We had communion. And then there was a reverent silence as the altar was stripped bare. The candles were snuffed out. The choir moved to the back of the sanctuary, soft music, beautiful “Go to dark Gethsemane” was sung.

Like last year, I came away feeling closer to God, no other way to say it. But I was surprised that more people show up for the church barbeque than for this service—I believe there were just three of us attending who were not choir, clergy, altar guild or lectors. And while I’m getting ready to practice my flute for the Easter Sunday service tomorrow, and I’m washing something to wear for Easter Vigil tonight—another beautiful service followed by cake and champagne, I’m a little disappointed.

Easter is great, no doubt. Christmas is pretty wonderful. But if I put it all into a blender, everything I learned in Sunday School, it’s that Christianity is about loving and taking care of each other.

It was Jesus' last and most important commandment before he became the Christ. Here’s the definition:

[From Middle English maunde, ceremony of washing the feet of the poor on this day, from Old French mande, from Latin (novum) mand tum, (new) commandment (from Jesus's words to the Apostles after washing their feet, John 13:34); see mandate.]