Maundy Thursday 2026

Maundy Thursday 2026

Texts: John 13:1-17; 31b-35; Exodus 12:1-14

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Recently, I was going through a collection of poems from the Sufi Muslim mystic and poet Rumi. Rumi was born in medieval Afghanistan and settled in modern day Turkey after many years of nomadic and displaced existence. He is universally beloved for his spiritual poetry, almost universally accepted due to its emphasis on an ecstatic love of God. But Rumi, before he became the great poet of ecstatic joy and love, was a rather sober and dogmatic preacher, people came in by the thousands to hear him speak because of his knowledge. But on the inside, he was feeling rather dry. He felt separated from the same content that he preached on, he did not grasp what it meant to experience the love of God. Instead, he was involved in the struggle for ambition and fame, concerned with titles and knowledge, of being puffed up in the eyes of the world’s powerful at that time. It seemed like he had everything anybody wanted, many of what his rivals wanted, until he met a wandering mystic by the name of Shams Tabrizi. Shams was controversial, he advocated for a liberated expression of spirituality that ran contrary to the clerical elite, he emphasized direct experience of God, and joy and love as some of the essential elements of this experience. Once Rumi met Shams, Rumi’s life completely changed. From famous scholar and preacher, he forsook all for a life of ecstatic spiritual joy, music and poetry. Shams broke open the spiritual experiences of Rumi, to see God as bigger and grander than he had preached on, a God who broke the rigid religious molds. And thus, around the age of 39 or 40, the beloved poet was born. This encounter with God’s love sprung open in Rumi the

vitality of spirit that stills enchants many today. I will read one poem of his dedicated to a Beloved which can be interpreted as being addressed to God:

You wake the dead to life,

you fountain of grace,

you fire in thickets of tangled thought.

Today you arrived beaming with laughter—

that swinging key that unlocks prison doors.

You are hope’s beating heart.

You are a doorway to the sun.

You are the one I seek and the one who seeks me.

Beginning and end.

You greet need with generous hands.

You flood us with spirit,

rising from the heart,

lifting thought.

Rare one, you reveal the pleasure

of wisdom and practice.

Beyond these, what is there

but excuses and deceit?

We lust after the afterlife.

We stew over trinkets.

We stage battles between black and white.

Our ears are plugged with twisted delusions.

You carry the cure…

I could not help but notice in today’s Gospel, the bridge between the poet Rumi’s experience and the disciple’s experience of Jesus as He washed their feet. The “You” of Rumi’s poem might as well be Jesus for us. We could say that the experience of this intimate encounter with God can be marked by the question that Jesus asks the disciples this Maundy Thursday: “Do you know what I have done to you?” Rumi’s

poems reflect such a question, a reflection on recognizing the impact of God’s love on human life, to grapple with the radical change that God’s love provokes in us, indeed, “that swinging key that unlocks the prison doors” of our own ego, that cure that heals our despair, we cannot but become poets to try to understand, inhabit, and find the words that can express the experience of God. The disciples themselves, in response to Jesus’ love, were also radically transformed and sought how best to manifest the love they were gifted.

Jesus asks the disciples the question: “Do you know what I have done to you?” after washing their feet. Many times, throughout His ministry, Jesus did things that completely confounded the disciples, Jesus broke many molds of religious and social expectation, but only after the initial moment had passed, could they understand the life-altering things that happened. But in the moment, they knew a threshold had been crossed. This night where Jesus washes His disciples’ feet, is one of these pivotal moments where the disciples’ understanding of themselves and their reality is radically changed by Jesus. Jesus does something here that for them broke the scripts of what is expected. It was not customary for the teacher to stoop down and wash the feet of his disciples. That was a job reserved for household slaves or those of lower status. Hence, Peter’s initial resistance, he did not want Jesus to lose face, to lower Himself for his sake. Yet, Jesus’ response to Him is direct: “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” In this, Jesus already prefigures the answer to the question He will ask. Jesus is not only giving them an example to live by, to live according to an ethic of loving service, but that in the act of service itself, in loving one another unconditionally for the sake of God, we enter into unity with Christ. We become a part

of Him, as if every act of love channels His presence. It is the reason why this is the great commandment that Jesus leaves to this His disciples before His death. In that humble act of service, in loving one another to the end, as Jesus loved them, they were no longer just disciples. Indeed, they needed to witness to the fact that what was being done to them was altering their whole existence. No longer are they just themselves, no longer was Peter just the same impetuous follower. By imitating Jesus, they were at once one with Him, identifiable in Him through the humble act. By love and service, the disciples manifest the presence of Jesus in their midst. It is no longer just them, God makes Himself present in them through their love. It is why it was so important for them to receive this lesson and accept this transgression of roles. God wanted to make Himself present to all through the love of the disciples.

And therefore, you can imagine what great gift and responsibility is treasured within the heart of the church’s life. As Christians, we are being cruciformed. We are being patterned according to the example of Jesus in His life, death, and resurrection. By our common and mutual striving to be followers and seekers of Christ, we represent to the world the love of God. You as the church, can make God known. Imagine, you in your humble and small acts of love, can set the table for Jesus’ presence to those around you! You never know when your neighbor might meet Jesus because in His name you received them with hospitality. Or perhaps you gave them a comforting smile or embrace, or perhaps it was the words of affirmation you gave them that brought to them the voice of Jesus whispering. It is the gravity of Jesus’ Mandatum, His commandment. You are no longer the same. Something has been done to you, and it is that Jesus has made of You a channel of His love. You are no longer imprisoned to

satisfy your own self, You are being formed according to the image of the Master. And God as Lord of our lives is not one that is afraid to be lowly, to be found in human weakness, He does not have the need to save face among human standards of greatness. It is as a sentence from the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar: “He wanted to sink so low that in the future, all falling would be a falling into Him”. Jesus goes the downward way, preparing to go the way of the cross, to endure the greatest shame, so that all of us may be uplifted in the dignity of God’s all consuming love for us.

You share in that love, Beloved. Your sin, your shortcomings or failures, your weaknesses, are all taken upon by Christ, and it is then unto you, to live according to the incredible gift of being freed, of being made clean, of being made loving to the bone. Indeed, do you know what has been done to you? You have been made the Beloved of God. That is your identity. That is your existence moving forward. That is your greatness. That is how people will know, that Jesus is among us, by how you love and are the Beloved. In that small and humble faith, lived in service and love, is your Christianity made evident to others.

In this Holy Week, we are given the chance again to enter into one spirit with Christ as He undertakes the way of the cross. You and I can be witnesses to Him, sharing His story, sharing His love, manifesting His commandment. We witness with great awe and trembling how our Lord Jesus Christ, does not count the cost, but goes to the lowest rung to raise us up. We stand in reverence unto the mystery that God came down to us, and he washed us, made us part of Himself, prepared a table for us with food and drink, so we are made more alive in Him. No longer are we alone, no longer are we prey to our self-consuming ego. Like the Homemaker that He is, we are invited

to belong with Jesus and with everybody that is rooted in His self-giving life for others. So let us join in prayer as we journey forth with Him: