“Love One Another” – meditation
Speaker Notes
“Love One Another” – meditation
A MEDITATION GIVEN BY THE REV’D JÜRGEN W. LIIAS
THE CHURCH OF THE ADVENT
MAUNDY THURSDAY + MARCH 28, 1991
This is Maundy Thursday. Maundy from the Latin word Mandatum – commandment. This is a night of commandment.
A new commandment I give to you.
Love one another
as I have loved you.
This is my body broken for you.
Do this in remembrance
of me.
If I have washed your feet,
you also ought to wash
one another’s feet.
This is love.
Bodies broken
Blood poured out
Feet washed
I have given you an example,
that you also should do as
I have done to you.
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In the days before the existence of blood banks, a small boy whose sister was desperately ill was found to be the only member of his family with the type of blood that might save his sister’s life. The boy was asked if he would give a blood transfusion for his sister. Without hesitation, his answer was yes. When he was placed on the table for the transfusion, looking up at the nurse with eyes filled with wonder and fear, he asked:
“Nurse, how soon will I die?”
This is my blood shed for you.
A new commandment I give to you.
Love one another
As I have loved you.
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Ted Johnson was one of my dearest friends in the Young Peoples’ Fellowship at our Church – full of laughter, full of energy, full of devotion to his friends.
When I went away to college, he went off to the army and then to Vietnam. His platoon was stationed outside Danang in a small village. The small group of soldiers was gathered together eating their midday rations. Suddenly a hand grenade was thrown into their midst.
In that split second of horror and impending disaster, Ted threw his body upon the grenade. His body was blown apart; his comrades were saved.
This is my body broken for you.
A new commandment I give to you.
Love one another
As I have loved you.
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In the catastrophic earthquake in Armenia a few years ago, a young mother and her three year old daughter were trapped beneath the rubble of their home for eight days. The child would have died of dehydration, but the mother kept her daughter alive during those eight days by cutting her hand and letting her daughter drink the blood.
The mother died. The daughter was saved.
This is my blood poured out for you.
A new commandment I give to you.
Love one another
As I have loved you.
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A Letter from Sister Maura Clarke, a Maryknoll nun in El Salvador:
“What is happening here is impossible – but happening. The endurance of the poor and their faith through this terrible pain is constantly pulling me to a deeper faith. My fear of death is being challenged constantly as children, lovely little girls, and old people are being shot and some cut up with machetes and bodies thrown by the road and people prohibited from burying them. I want to stay on now … I am beginning to see death in a new way … for all these precious men, women, and children struggling or laying down their lives as victims, it is surely a passageway to life … our loving Father can’t possibly have other than a new life of which we have little glimpses which will be full of total joy and oneness.”
A week later she was raped, tortured, mutilated, and murdered by the American-armed military of El Salvador.
This is my body broken for you.
A new commandment I give to you.
Love one another
As I have loved you.
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A hospital chaplain reports some moments with a young couple who have just discovered their newborn child is mentally retarded.
“I sat with this family in silence as they awaited the arrival of the pediatrician. It had been an easy delivery, but all was not well with the newborn. The doctor spoke few words: ‘Your baby is afflicted with Downs Syndrome, mongoloidism. I had expected this, but things were too far along before I could say for sure.’
‘Is the baby healthy?’ the mother asked.
‘That’s what I wanted to discuss with you’ the doctor replied. ‘The baby is healthy except for the problem. However, it does have a slight and rather common respiratory ailment. My advice is that you let me take it off the respirator. That might solve things; at least, it’s a possibility.’
‘It’s not a possibility for us,’ the parents said together.
‘I know how you feel,’ the doctor said, ‘but you need to think about what you are doing. You already have two beautiful kids. Statistics show that people who keep these babies risk a higher incidence of marital stress and family problems. Is it fair to do this to the children you already have? Is it right to bring this suffering into their family?’
At the mention of suffering I saw the mother’s face brighten, as if the doctor were finally making sense.
‘Suffering’ she said quietly. ‘We appreciate your concern, but we’re Christians. God suffered for us, and we will try to suffer for the baby if we must.’”
This is my blood poured out for you.
A new commandment I give to you.
Love one another
As I have loved you.
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From Beginning to Pray by Archbishop Anthony Bloom:
“In the years of the Civil War when the opposing armies were contending for power, conquering and losing ground in the course of three years, a small town fell into the hands of the red army which had been held by the remnants of the Imperial troops. A woman found herself there with her two small children, four and five years of age, in danger of death because her husband belonged to the opposite camp. She hid in an abandoned house hoping that the time would come when she would be able to escape. One evening a young woman, Natalie, of her own age, in the early twenties, knocked at the door and asked whether she was so-and-so. When the mother said she was, the young woman warned her that she had been discovered and would be fetched that very night in order to be shot. The young woman added, ‘You must escape at once.’ The mother looked at the children and said, ‘How could I?’ The young woman, who thus far had been nothing but a physical neighbor, became at that moment the neighbor of the Gospel. She said, ‘You can, because I will stay behind and call myself by your name when they come to fetch you.’ ‘But you will be shot,’ said the mother. ‘Yes, but I have no children.’ And she stayed behind.
We can imagine what happened then. We can see the night coming, wrapping in darkness, in gloom, in cold and damp, this cottage. We can see there a woman who was waiting for her death to come and we can remember the Garden of Gethsemane. We can imagine Natalie asking that this cup should pass her by and being met like Christ by divine silence. We can imagine her turning in intention towards those who might have supported her, but who were out of reach. The disciples of Christ slept; and she could turn to no one without betraying. We can imagine that more than once she prayed that at least her sacrifice should not be in vain. Natalie probably asked herself more than once what would happen to the mother and the children when she was dead, and there was no reply except the word of Christ, ‘No one has greater love than he who lays down his life for his friend.’
Probably she thought more than once that in one minute she could be secure! It was enough to open the door and the moment she was in the street she no longer was that woman, she became herself again. It was enough to deny her false, her shared identity. But she died, shot. The mother and the children escaped.”
This is my body broken for you.
For I have given you an example,
that you also should do
as I have done to you.
Blessed are you, if you do!
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