Lectionary Commentaries for April 17, 2025
Maundy Thursday

Anyone who has experienced the fraught dynamics of a middle-school lunchroom can intuit the social, political, and even existential importance of these meals—perhaps the very mention of it stirs a bitter memory in your gut.

The middle-school lunchroom is a microcosm of the world, with all of its complexities and hierarchies on display through the dynamic negotiations contained within. Who eats with whom—and who’s excluded? What is gossiped about or discussed, and what is eaten? (Regular meal? A la carte? Free or reduced lunch? Lunch bag? Nothing?) Ultimately, these meals reveal and inscribe which relationships and communities hold the power, and how that power is exercised. Will it be in exclusion and diminishment, or in love and empowerment? God be with the new student forced to navigate these challenges on day one, and with those already at the table!

In not dissimilar ways, communal meals in Greek and Roman antiquity were tools of power that displayed and reinscribed the social, political, and existential values of their time. Roman imperial private banquets were famous affairs, calculated spectacles of extravagant wealth and power and replete with exotic food, luxurious tableware, and impressive entertainment, intended to keep friends close and enemies closer.

Domitian, the imperial “Lord and God” (see also John 20:28) who ruled when the Gospel of John was likely being composed, put a macabre spin on dinner in his infamous “Black Banquet.”¹ Cloaking the room and slaves in black and serving black-dyed funerary food, Domitian arranged his guests next to personalized tombstones while they nervously anticipated summons to execution. Though ultimately a prank (the guests left with gifts, including slave boys), the message of absolute imperial power could not have been more serious. Even accounting for slanderous bias in the Roman sources, this meal (along with others) was a damning display of “power dining.”

How different is this meal in the Gospel of John with Jesus, cast in this book as the supreme rival to the “ruler of the world” (12:31). Notably, in John this last supper is not a Passover meal (contra the Synoptics and lectionary pairing with Exodus 12), so a different interpretive lens is needed. First-century audiences would understand the references to Jesus “rising up” (13:4) and to the group “reclining” during the dinner (13:23, 25) as suggesting a Roman-style banquet room (triclinium), a U-shaped table where guests recline on couches. What type of banquet is this, though, and what message (or messages) does it perform?

The banquet is introduced as a power meal (13:3), asserting that God had given all things into Jesus’ hands. The emphasis is not fear, but love: Jesus’ love for his own (13:1), and the commandment for his disciples to love one another in emulation of Jesus (13:34–35). These framing references to love invite us to read all that transpires within the dinner as actions of Jesus’ authority and (countercultural) power performed under the auspices of love.

Noticeably absent from the description of the meal are depictions of the room, the identification of the patron, or the sumptuousness of the meal—these are not characteristics of the nature of Jesus’ powerful movement. The only “fashion” mentioned is Jesus’ outer garment, and his girding of himself in a towel in the manner of servants and workers (as seen in clay objects). Simply put, Jesus dresses like a slave, and then acts like one in the singularly emphasized main program of the banquet: Jesus’ washing of the disciples’ feet. This humble act, typically performed by a slave upon the arrival of guests to dinner, is unusually shifted to the middle of the meal in John’s account (13:4–5), the place typically reserved for entertainment or discussion, making it “the main event.”

This action and teaching turn the typical imperial “power meal” on its head, transforming hierarchies of power by depicting Jesus engaged in low-status service to his disciples, despite (or because of) the Father having put all things into Jesus’ power. The exemplary character of this act is explicit: “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you” (13:14–15).

In essence, Jesus exemplifies his “Lordship” precisely through this humble act of loving devotion. How notable it is that the hands that hold “all things” are used to wash the feet of the lower-status disciples—even the heel that is lifted against Jesus (13:18). One could scarcely imagine Domitian washing the feet of his dinner guests, highlighting the ways in which Jesus’ movement threatens the nature of Roman imperial values and power.

The lectionary reading culminates with another exhortation to emulation, the commandment (mandatum in Latin, from which “Maundy Thursday” derives) to love one another, just as Jesus has loved them (13:34). The countercultural nature of this love is revealed by the focus on two specific disciples in the passage: Judas and Peter. Together, these two disciples represent various failures of faithfulness, yet by focusing on them, we get a sense of the scandalous, unmerited character of Jesus’ love for “his own” (13:1), which extends even to the fallen and the fearful.

In horrifying knowledge of what is to come (and regarding Judas, without whitewashing the evil nature of his betrayal), Jesus nonetheless washes the feet of both, and exhorts his disciples (then and now) to exercise the same love. The textual variant in 13:2, which places the footwashing after dinner (and hence after Judas’s departure [13:30]), reveals scribal discomfort with this unseemly love—a discomfort likely shared by some in the church today.

Thus, the challenge remains: Are we known today by our love for one another—even for the deniers and betrayers? What would it look like if we, like Jesus, were so rooted in God as our origin and our destiny that we had the freedom and power to direct our love to empower and liberate one another (13:3)? The passage doesn’t note how the other disciples responded to the footwashing and the command to love one another, whether they sought out Judas after he left, or offered a bed to Peter after he denied Jesus; that response is to be written by us. Among those in our lives, whose feet and their stony paths could use some hands-on love and tenderness?

Notes

1. Cassius Dio, Roman History 67.9.1–3

These verses, the institution of the Passover, are the appointed lectionary Old Testament text for Maundy Thursday each year. As such, they are likely seldom the object of focused preaching—getting lost in the other days of the Holy Triduum or playing “backup” to the Lord’s Supper. These verses may also seem an unlikely place from which to mine a sermon; they read more like a segment from Leviticus, with focus on proper preparation, sacrifice, and ritual. And they interrupt the much more compelling plague narrative right at its highest crescendo in the battle between YHWH and Pharaoh, with the announcement of the final plague: the death of the firstborn.

Brevard Childs writes about this text that “God’s redemption is not simply a political liberation from an Egyptian tyrant, but involves the struggle with sin and evil, and the transformation of life.”¹ Both avenues are important and vital in considering this formative and foundational story.

Memory in a meal

Both Israel’s liberation from bondage in Egypt and Jesus’ journey to the cross begin with a meal—a startlingly simple meal deeply concerned that all could participate. Provision is even made for the poor and for smaller households, which are commanded to join with one’s neighbor and share the sacrifice (verse 12). So, too, at Christ’s table all are welcome.

This odd bit of interjected liturgy concludes with these words: “This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD; throughout your generations, you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.” Passover, then, is more than mere past event; it is a liturgical moment to be experienced time and again, from generation to generation. It is a participatory event for the worshiping community throughout the ages, remembering and celebrating how God continues to work liberation. Still to this day, in Jewish liturgy of the Passover, they remember and celebrate that “God brought us out of Egypt.”

So, too, is the institution of the Lord’s Supper tied up with memory and the worshiping community’s participation in a past event with enduring promises in the present and implications for the future (Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:23–26).

New beginnings for a new community

The liturgical moment of the Passover marks a decisive new beginning for God’s people. The Lord instructs Moses and Aaron, “This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you” (verse 2). It becomes the event that establishes the cadence by which God’s people will mark time as they recall God’s mighty act of deliverance. Everything will be based on this moment. While the Egyptians marked their calendars by the sun and moon’s appearance, the Israelites mark their calendars with this story. Passover births the people Israel.

Passover also begins to cast its glance toward the future, anticipating the ways God’s salvation will continue to shape Israel-as-slaves into Israel as a holy, liberated community. Again, the instruction to join houses together in acquiring the sacrificial animal begins to knit together a community that can rely on one another. Moreover, the admonition that there are to be no morning leftovers—“You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn with fire”—anticipates God’s provision of manna and quail in the wilderness, where, likewise, none was to be left until morning and only what one needed was to be gathered (Exodus 16:13–21, especially verse 19). The specifics of the first Passover begin to establish Israel’s absolute reliance on and trust in God.

The ongoing, unsettling work of liberation

The work of Passover is intimately bound up with resisting oppressive empires. For the Israelites, it was the slave-driving empire of Egypt; for the disciples gathered at the Lord’s Supper, it was the cruel Roman Empire, which would soon crucify Jesus.

Just as Passover is not a one-time past occurrence, neither is the work of liberation just a past event, but is always in process, needing to be proclaimed and pursued again and again for each generation.

But there is a deeply unsettling aspect to this celebration of liberation: It comes only, finally, through the death of the firstborn. How can we “celebrate” Passover “as a festival to the LORD” (verse 14) when it is shot through with such barbarity? When Jesus enjoins us, “Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:27–28)?

Maintaining that it is God, and not the Israelites, who carry out this dreadful act does not mitigate its horror. Indeed, rabbinic writings from the third century CE cautioned Israel against celebrating Passover with exuberance at the fate of the Egyptians. A midrash on the drowning of the Egyptian army in the Red Sea sees God chastise the rejoicing angels in heaven, saying, “Are you to sing while my children are destroyed?” And still today, when Jews celebrate the Passover seder, they remove a single drop of wine from their glass as each plague is mentioned, acknowledging that their liberation came at great cost to their oppressors.

This dialectic continues to be incredibly challenging to balance. It is not difficult to identify present-day situations in which the innocent suffer more than any other for the sins and hardened hearts of their leaders. How might we read such a story in light of recent events, including forced migrations that undo the work of liberation, returning others to bondage from which they are trying to escape (or have already escaped)?

Perhaps the most helpful takeaway is to recognize that the command to keep the Passover alive in the memory of the faith community means we are called to continue to enact, to practice Passover (read: liberation) still today, drawing attention to and working to dismantle any and all systems that enslave or oppress. The work of Passover continues to be much-needed today.

Jesus the Passover Lamb

Space precludes a fuller treatment of this topic, though much has been rightly made of the New Testament’s appropriation of the Passover as prefiguring the saving, liberating work of Christ. The final meal Jesus celebrates with his disciples in the upper room is a Passover meal (Matthew 26:17–29; Mark 14:12–25; Luke 22:7–28).

John’s gospel is unique in placing the meal on the day before Passover, even more intentionally making the important theological linkage between Jesus and the Passover sacrifices. Christ then becomes the ultimate paschal sacrifice whose blood sets us free (John 1:29, 36; 1 Corinthians 5:7; 1 Peter 1:18–19; 2:22; Revelation 7:14; 12:11). In the Christian reimagining of Passover, it is God’s firstborn Son who becomes the sacrifice; the suffering of others in the work of liberation becomes God’s own suffering. In Christ, it is God who does not withhold God’s own firstborn.

The menu, then, for the Last Supper of bread and wine (unleavened bread is mentioned in Exodus 13) is similar to that of Passover when Christ is viewed as the sacrificial Lamb. This, too, inaugurates a new community of faith that continues to remember and share in this sacred meal together until the day Christ comes again.

Notes

1. Brevard S. Childs, The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary, Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1974), 213.

At first glance, a psalm of thanksgiving may seem like an ill-suited choice for Maundy Thursday.¹

How does the victorious and celebratory tone of thanksgiving fit into our commemoration of those final tender moments of Jesus with his disciples before his death—the last supper together, the identification of Jesus’ betrayer, Jesus washing of the disciples’ feet? For those who know what is coming, Maundy Thursday is a day full of pathos and intimacy with our beloved Savior, not a day for hallelujahs.

Amid the solemn remembrance of these Maundy Thursday events, however, we would do well to make space for thanksgiving. For in the shadow of the cross, on the night before his death, Jesus shared the bread and the cup with his disciples, interpreting his imminent suffering and death not as an end but as a beginning, not as a tragedy but as a victory, not as a time for sorrow but as a time for eucharistia, “thanksgiving.” Among other things, then, today is a time for giving thanks, joining our voices with the psalmist in gratitude for God’s mercy toward us in bringing about our salvation and restoring us to life.

The psalm opens with the genuine and sincere profession “I love the LORD, because he has heard my voice and my supplications” (Psalm 116:1). It is the heartfelt response of one who is overcome with God’s mercy toward him, mercy which has fostered in him not just gratitude but the deeper, more sustained posture of love. The psalmist’s story is now intimately bound up with God’s. He had been in the grip of death (verse 3); his life, by ordinary standards, was finished. But having heard his cry, the Lord saved him and brought him back from the land of the dead (verses 4, 8).

As with all psalms of thanksgiving, the connection here between God’s saving act and the psalmist’s gratitude is significant. The gratitude of the psalmist flows out of the keen awareness of what God has done for him, hearing and answering his cries for help. While the lectionary omits verses 3–11 from our reading today, rehearsing the story of his distress and God’s divine intervention on his behalf is central to his confession. It is the awareness that he needed help and that God indeed saved him that cultivates in him a posture of thanksgiving and deepens his love for the Lord.

In the final section of the psalm, verses 12–19, the psalmist vows to offer up public expressions of gratitude in the house of the Lord, so full is his heart with thanksgiving for what God has done. He will lift up the cup of salvation, call on the name of the Lord, and offer up a sacrifice of thanksgiving (Leviticus 7:11–15) so that everyone will know what God has done and join the psalmist in giving God praise. The expression “cup of salvation” in verse 13 is found only here, and its meaning is unclear. It may refer to a drink offering that often accompanied temple sacrifices (Numbers 15:8–10; 28:1–26), or it may be a figurative expression for drinking in the benefits and blessings of God’s salvation.

Read in the context of the passion of Christ, the psalmist’s “cup of salvation” calls to mind another cup, the cup that is poured out for us as the new covenant in Jesus’ blood (Luke 22:21). Here, at an annual Passover meal with his disciples, while remembering and rehearsing God’s mighty act in delivering Israel from slavery in Egypt, Jesus lifts up the cup and proclaims that in him, God is bringing about something new, a new redemptive work for all people.

While ours is not a political liberation like the exodus nor a healing from sickness like the psalmist’s experience, both of these images are helpful metaphors for understanding what Christ has done for us.

Sin is like a brutal taskmaster, controlling our wills and enslaving us to the selfish and evil inclinations of our own hearts. Who can deny that we do what we do not want to do, and that what we do not want to do, we do? Often we act in ways that damage relationships, dehumanize ourselves, and destroy shalom. Similarly, sin is like an untreated sickness that poisons our life as individuals and as communities. It robs people of the life of blessing and human flourishing that God intended for them and leads to death.

Lifting the cup, Jesus announces that the reign of sin is over. In him, there is forgiveness for sin, freedom from guilt, and a new covenant whereby we are restored to new life as God’s kingdom-people. In Christ, the old has passed away; the new has come. Redemption and restoration are ours as all are now invited to drink in the benefits and blessings of the cup poured out, Jesus’ blood shed for us.

The significance of Psalm 116 for Maundy Thursday, then, is that it invites us to remember and rehearse how we too have been “delivered from death” by the death of our Lord and Savior, and cultivates in us a posture of thanksgiving and praise for all God’s goodness to us. For on this night, as is the case whenever we celebrate the Lord’s supper, Christ holds out to us the cup that is poured out as a new covenant in his blood, inviting us to drink in the benefits and blessings of his sacrifice, to say with grateful hearts yes to God, yes to salvation, yes to dying to sin, and yes to our new life as God’s kingdom-people in Jesus Christ.

On Maundy Thursday, then, in the shadow of the cross, let us profess with the psalmist: We love you Lord, for you have heard our voice and our cry for mercy. You have delivered us from death, our eyes from tears, our feet from stumbling. Praise the Lord!

Notes

1. Commentary previously published on this website for March 24, 2016.

This holy day, Maundy Thursday, marks the beginning of the most consequential moments in our tradition. On the evening of this day Jesus and his first followers share the meal—the Passover meal in the Synoptic tradition—we call the “Last Supper” before going to Gethsemane, where Jesus is arrested. 

The “Lord’s Supper” and divisions among Corinthian believers

Quite soon after Jesus’ resurrection, as his followers carried forward God’s good news in Jesus’ name, they began reenacting this Last Supper so that it became the primary ritual and act of worship that they shared regularly together. When Paul wrote this letter to Corinthian believers in the early 50s of the first century, he could remind them of what he’d already taught them about the ritual (verse 23). Thus we learn that observance of the “Lord’s Supper” (see 11:20) was likely established practice among believers just 20 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Paul wasn’t, however, writing instructions to Corinthian believers because they’d forgotten the proper observance of the Supper. Nor was he writing a theology textbook regarding any of the issues he discussed with them, including the Lord’s Supper. He was addressing their practice in a letter that he wrote in a world where writing materials were expensive, most people couldn’t read, and no postal service existed. Consequently, there had to be a critically important reason to go to the expense and trouble of creating a letter and getting it to Corinth, where it would be read aloud to believers. Paul tells us the good reason for this letter in 1:10—the Corinthian believers were badly divided.

Division among them actually isn’t surprising. The first-century Mediterranean world under Roman rule was strictly divided along racial/ethnic, class, and gender lines, which was most clearly demonstrated in their table practices: People only ate with others like themselves. But believers, following Jesus who “ate with tax collectors and sinners,” welcomed “Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female” into the faith community and declared they were “all one in Christ Jesus” (see Galatians 3:28). Oneness, however, was easier proclaimed than practiced.

Just prior to the lectionary reading for today, Paul has reprimanded wealthier Corinthian believers for their observance of the Lord’s Supper (11:17–22). To understand why he was so disturbed we must remember there were no church buildings at this time. Believers gathered in small groups in homes (house churches) throughout the city. Apparently, one of the higher-status believers hosted the whole community at times, probably because his house had space for all of them. But this host also seems to have invited other high-status believers to his home for a sumptuous supper prior to the arrival of everyone else. 

These believers may not have thought they were doing anything problematic. They probably weren’t mean people and didn’t intend to be hurtful. In fact, they may have thought that issuing an invitation to poorer members would be insulting for those who wouldn’t have been able to reciprocate, given that such reciprocity was expected of honorable people in this culture. So their earlier, separate meal may have seemed “normal” for them. 

But Jesus’ movement challenged what had been “normal” precisely because of what happened next. When the other believers arrived, some of whom were so poor that they were hungry, they experienced the humiliation of being “not worthy” of a place at the table yet again (see 11:21–22). No wonder Paul declared they were not eating “the Lord’s Supper” (11:20; emphasis mine).

Paul’s instructions in this moment

Paul responded to this situation by calling to mind what they were to remember when they shared the Lord’s Supper: Jesus gave himself “for you” (verse 24). While we often assume that Paul refers to Jesus dying for our sins, in the divided Corinthian context he may be pointing believers toward Jesus’ practice of including everyone at his table as a primary reason that Rome broke his body and shed his blood. In an intentionally segregated world, his table practice was revolutionary. As New Testament scholar Robert Karris once said, Jesus basically died because of how he ate. 

Such a perspective fits Paul’s assertion that sharing the Supper enables us “to proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (verse 26). Jesus declared that God’s kingdom has drawn near (not future tense) and believers share in it now. And when it comes in its fullness, then people “will come from east and west, north and south” to sit together at God’s table (see Luke 13:29), as many of us say in our Eucharist liturgies today. Thus, when “Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female” sit together to share bread and wine, they reenact Jesus’ transforming practice of welcoming and valuing everyone while they look forward to God’s ultimate gathering of all people to share God’s feast (see Isaiah 25:6–8).

Such a perspective also fits with Paul’s following claim that “all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves” (11:29). Let’s note his concern for “discerning the body” and then observe that Paul will address at length the church as the “body of Christ” in the following chapter (1 Corinthians 12). Among many nuggets of wisdom in that text is his stress on the “one Spirit” who gives all gifts for the purpose of building up the one body of Christ (12:4–7, 12–13), all of which means our diversity is necessary if we would be the body of Christ (12:14–17). Furthermore, if we hope to function as a healthy body, then the body’s different members must work together and care for one another (12:25–26).

How, then, might Paul answer if we asked, “When you said ‘discern the body,’ did you mean that the Corinthian believers should remember that the bread they share evokes the broken body of Jesus who gave himself for others? Or did you mean that the believers should remember that they belong to the ‘body of Christ’ so that how they treat others matters greatly?” I suspect his answer would simply be, “Yes.” Eating the “body of Christ” and being the “body of Christ” were intertwined for Paul and should be for us. This teaching seems particularly relevant as white supremacy and the scapegoating of immigrants are on the rise in the United States.