Meditation for Holy Thursday Vespers

Upside Down yet Rightside Up: Holy Thursday
by Rev. Lance Armstrong O’Donnell, Pastor
St. Philip Lutheran Church and School
Chicago, Illinois

Holy Thursday
1 April, A.D. 2010
Ex 12.1-14; 1 Cor 11.23-32; Jn 13.1-17, 31b-35

What happens in the Upper Room on the night of Christ’s betrayal is fascinating to behold, for this account so powerfully reveals the grace and love of Christ. He knows that in one way or another all the disciples will betray Him. He knows that He will soon suffer the full wrath of God on behalf of that which He so lovingly created. Still He feeds them. Still, He loves them. Of course, this is all a part of what He is trying to teach. True love--agape--does what is right for the other, even in the face of negative consequences.

Thus, after receiving the forgiveness of Christ in The Supper, our lives, in the words of the classic post-communion prayer, are to be lives of “faith toward [God] and ... fervent love toward one another.”

Yes, we are saved by the faith alone, in Christ alone, by grace alone. That Biblical teaching must be adequately distinguished, but the Scriptures make clear that faith does not exist in a vacuum. Luther writes about this in his wonderful Genesis commentary, written some time in the late 1530s:

We know indeed that faith is never alone but brings with it love and other manifold gifts. For he who believes in God and is sure that God is graciously inclined toward us, since He gave His Son and with His Son the hope of eternal life, how could he not love God with all his heart? How could he not revere Him? How could he not strive to display a grateful heart for such great blessings and to obey God while bearing hardships?

Thus faith brings with it a multitude of the most beautiful virtues and is never alone. But matters must not be confused on this account, and what is characteristic of faith alone should not be attributed to other virtues.

Faith is the mother, so to speak, from whom that crop of virtues springs. If faith is not there first, you would look in vain for those virtues. If faith has not embraced the promises concerning Christ, no love and no other virtues will be there, even if for a time hypocrites were to paint what seem to be likenesses of them. --Martin Luther, vol. 3, Luther's Works, Vol. 3  : Lectures on Genesis: Chapters 15-20, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald and Helmut T. Lehmann, Luther's Works (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999, c1961), 3:25.>

Of course, Jesus says it much more simply. After the humble and unsavory work of washing dirty first-century feet He tells His disciples: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another." (John 13:34, ESV)