The Spiritual and Political Liberation of Maundy Thursday

Maundy Thursday falls on April 6 this year. In its liturgical calendar, the Christian Church remembers this day as that of the Last Supper between Jesus and His disciples. Maundy Thursday then precedes Christians’ observance of Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter itself.

This day holds great theological significance for Christianity. The Last Supper’s context in Jewish Passover, as well as the events that transpired during it, help weave together the Biblical story as one centered around Jesus Christ. It connects God’s previous work of salvation in the book of Exodus to Jesus’ own life, impending death, and glorious resurrection. In this day we see how all Scripture either points forward or looks back on man’s redemption as realized through the incarnation of the Son of God.

The theological significance of this day extends to the political realm, too. As noted, the Last Supper was a Passover meal, itself memorializing God’s liberation of the Hebrew people from their Egyptian bondage. Christianity rightly has seen in that liberation from bondage a picture of humanity’s slavery to sin and freedom from it in Christ. But we must not forget that the slavery recorded in Exodus was not a mere spiritual metaphor. The Hebrews experienced physical enslavement for four centuries. Their liberation, then, was at least partly political.

As slavery to sin is an evil, so was slavery to the Egyptians. In fact, the Egyptians’ own slavery to sin was the cause of their oppression of the Hebrews. A healthy political community involves mutual trust among those comprising a polity. To be in such a community requires a common view of the good pursued through institutions and laws. This commonality presupposes that a community will respect the humanity of all its members. Yet the Egyptians instituted slavery because they did not trust the Hebrews. Without that trust, they rejected cooperation in favor of coercion. This fear was as malicious as it was manipulative. The Egyptians made the Hebrews’ lives “bitter with hard service” (Exodus 1:14) and benefited socially and economically from the resulting labor. They reduced the descendants of Jacob to means for the Egyptians’ good, not partners in a greater good. And in fear, the Egyptians’ further disregarded the Hebrews' humanity and murdered all newborn males (Exodus 1:15-22). The practice of slavery sustains itself not only on fear but also on pride (most notably in the character of Pharaoh).

Yet as liberation from sin is a blessing, so was liberation from the Egyptians. God breaks Pharaoh’s despotic rule over the Hebrew people, replacing it with His kingship.

Gone is rule grounded in fear. God instead commands out of love.

Gone were the taskmasters who tortured the people of Israel to make bricks without straw. Instead, God provides them with water, manna, and quail.

Gone, finally, was a regime propped up by murdering the innocent. Instead, God protects His people from judgment in the Passover and from their slaveholders at the Red Sea. The systems of political and economic exploitation are destroyed, and in their place, God gives his people a law on Mt. Sinai ordered toward His people’s good.

These truths are restated in the Last Supper, though with the spiritual component emphasized. There, Jesus washes His disciples’ feet (John 13:1-17) and instituted Holy Communion (Luke 22:14-35). In the foot-washing, we see God Himself taking the role of a servant, exercising His rule for the good of His people. Jesus tells the disciples that He so acted in part to model how they ought to serve others, not themselves. This principle applies to both God’s servants as ministers of the Church and His servants as ministers of the state: they both serve God when serving those whom He created. Thus, they must not rule as the Egyptians cruelly did but imitate God’s love and obey His commands.

But here we must also see the unique rule of God in deeds of liberation. When Peter protests against Jesus washing his feet, Jesus replies, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me,” and adds, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.” Coupled with instituting the Eucharist, we see in the foot-washing a deeper, fuller Passover.

As the Hebrews were saved from the Egyptians’ oppression, so by God we will be from sin’s dominion. As they were clean from the stain of servitude, so we can be cleaned from the indwelling of evil. As the Israelites were protected from the judgment of physical death, so we shall be saved from the scourge of spiritual death. As they were so saved by the blood of lambs on their doorpost, so we are saved by the body and blood of the Lamb given for us on the cross.

In Maundy Thursday, we don’t need to choose between two liberations — one spiritual and one political. God’s promise of freedom is a complete salvation of both soul and body. For thousands of years, these promises have sustained those in times of trial and tribulation — whether in the bondage of spiritual oppression or political servitude to human tyrants.