It is Maundy Thursday. The name of the Christian holiday comes from Jesus instructions to his followers about how they are to live with each other and with their neighbors. The name Maundy Thursday, more specifically, comes from the Latin word for Jesus mandate: “mandatum.” The new mandate, delivered by Jesus to his followers on the night of his arrest and the eve of his crucifixion, is to love one another. In the Church, we often tell the story of another detail of that night, the words of institution for the sacrament of Holy Communion: “This is my body . . . remember me.” “This is my blood . . . remember me.” However, for some reason, we don’t always tell the story of Jesus instructions to the disciples about loving one another. Specifically, we have been invited to love one another as Jesus has loved us.

Jesus love for his disciples was complex, to say the least. He showed little interest in the biases of the prevailing culture. He demonstrated love to people who were often marginalized by popular society. He demonstrated love to those who were politically unpopular. He demonstrated love beyond the traditional definition of his own religion of birth. Then he invited his followers to love as he loved.

Very quickly after Jesus’ death and resurrection, the church interpreted this love as being multi-generational. Jesus’s mandate applies not only to the first generation of those who follow him, but to every generation. Jesus love is not restricted to those who were alive when he was carrying out his earthy ministry, but apples to every generation. At a bare minimum, Christians who practice the observances of the church in our time must understand that Jesus’ love has no end and that the mandate is to love not only those with whom we share the same time on this earth, but with all people in every generation.

The mandate is to love the children of the future - those who will inherit the earth after our time has passed - with the same love that we apply to those of our own generation. We often don’t seem to take this mandate seriously. We continue to use the precious resources of this planet at an alarming rate - as if a single generation has the right to all of the resources without sharing. We have used fossil fuels to keep us warm, to light our nights, and to travel across the globe. And yet, we also know that our rate of consumption of these resources threatens to destroy all human life. Cities and farms are plagued by hot, unstable weather, coast lands and islands are inundated. Famine creeps across the land with increased desertification. All of this is the result of choices we are making in our generation.

Already there are those who suffer. Already there are wars fought over who has the right to control the limited resources of this planet. Already millions have become refugees in the struggle.

Maundy Thursday is often seen by Christians as a day of lament and grief. We connect with the grief experienced by Jesus’ first disciples as they went through a farewell meal and final instructions before witnessing the arrest of Jesus. We express our own grief over the losses of loved ones and changes in the way we understand the world. We lament the injustice of this world even as we confess that we have participated in creating that injustice.

Today we must add to that grief and lament, our grief over the rapid changes in our planet. We mourn the loss of the glaciers in the high country and the ice at the polar caps. We grieve over the devastating effects of flooding in so many low-lying areas of the planet. We cry with the refugees of violence and glimpse how that violence is connected to our own over consumption of the resources of this earth.

When we are honest with ourselves, we grieve our own failure to be faithful to the mandate to love one another - we have not loved the future days of our children and their children and their children. We have not loved as Jesus loved.

It is a holy day in the midst of a holy week. It is an invitation to repentance - to turning in a new direction - toward demonstrating our love for one another in ways we have so far failed to do.

Today as we go about our solemn services, may we remember the depth of the mandate to love one another. When we witness the washing of feet and the holiness of every drop of water, may we remember the dry lake beds and empty streams and rivers of global drought caused by our greed. When we read the sacred texts may we hear the commandment to love as Jesus loved. When we light the candles and walk the labyrinth, may our footsteps remind us of the fleeing footsteps of refugees. When we taste the bread and cup of Holy Communion may we be reminded of the shortages of food and drink that plague too many of the people whom we were commanded to love.

May this day be about the beginnings of change for us. May we join our sisters and brothers to pray together the words of Archbishop Oscar Romero:

“It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetimes only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

“This is what we are about: We plant seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and do it well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.

“We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own. Amen.”