Year A: Maundy Thursday | John 13:1-7, 31b-35
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
April 2, 2026
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page (available for three weeks after the date of streaming).
“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” – John 13:35[1]
My first encounter with Maundy Thursday took place at a tiny Lutheran Church in South Carolina. Having grown up Baptist, we never paid much attention to Church holidays apart from Christmas and Easter. I was familiar with Palm Sunday and Good Friday, but I had never heard of this other oddly named day during Holy Week. I don’t remember if they did foot washing—probably not, as that would have been something totally new (and strange) to me as well. But I fell in love with the celebration itself. Coming from my Separatist background, setting aside an entire day to focus on Christ’s commandment to love one another, to embrace this singular mission of unity and peace, was strange and beautiful.
More than two decades later, that first encounter still colors my love for Maundy Thursday, the name of which comes from a contracted version of the Latin word for “command.” Unfortunately, I feel like we in the Episcopal Church often try to scoot past the “Maundy” aspect so we can get all moody and solemn for Good Friday. But this is a special day in its own right, and tonight I’d like to allow our thoughts to linger on the wonder of this celebration, on the joy and simplicity of Jesus’ “new commandment.”
Of course, first we need to recognize what kind of “love” Jesus is even asking of us. The word Jesus uses in our text is agape, a relatively uncommon term outside the New Testament. Agape appears to be a verb form of the word agathos, which means “good” or “useful.” The idea of agape, then, is essentially an embodied or incarnate form of goodness. It’s usefulness—kindness, helpfulness, respect, self-giving—put into action.
Jesus never tells anyone they have to be friends with their enemies—that’s a different word entirely. And that’s good, because the love associated with friendship is something that can only happen naturally as people get to know one another. But with agape, there’s a choice, and that’s the kind of love Jesus demands of his followers. You don’t have to like one another. You don’t have to agree with one another. But no matter the situation, you can choose to operate under and with this sort of love. The truth is, even within the Church we may not always like each other, but for the sake of Jesus we, as a family, choose to do good and to help one another—to adapt to changes as necessary and to seek the good of the whole, not simply our own preferences. We let go of the hierarchy of power—of self-seeking and self-promotion—that society beats into our minds from childhood. Instead, we choose to set aside our individual differences and desires. As we talked about on Sunday, we unite ourselves in following Jesus—by taking on the form of a servant—so we can act and move forward spreading the Good News of God’s same agape love as one body.
We, as the Church, ought not run under practices or illusions of top-down authority. We shouldn’t try to force others to comply with our desires or interfere with others attempting to serve the people to whom God has called them. We need to learn to embrace the hierarchy of service that Jesus so clearly demonstrated in the foot washing we read about—even giving one last chance to Judas, despite realizing he had been plotting against him. Only as we give of ourselves in the form of a servant, only as we compromise our desires or even set them aside for the good of those around us, as we physically reach out to help and support one another—only then can we live, can we truly love, as Jesus so plainly and simply commands us.
“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for”—if you’re helpful, if you literally and practically incarnate goodness toward—“one another.”
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSVue unless otherwise noted.