Love One Another
Ted Loder, eloquent preacher, fierce advocate for justice, long-time minister of the First United Methodist Church in Germantown, and my beloved step-father, died on Thursday, April 1, 2021. Ted always encouraged us to watch for the “sneakiness of God,” to notice how the mysterious presence of holiness encounters us in our everyday life with one another.
Ted died at 10:15pm on Maundy Thursday, which this year fell on April Fool’s day. Seems something sneaky is going on here; and I imagine he would smile knowing I am trying to write my way through the tears that flow easily now, on Easter morning, to discern the mystery of it. The sun has risen, and he is no longer here to celebrate it with us.
“Maundy” is short for the Latin “mandatum,” which means commandment. So Maundy Thursday, or “Thursday of Mysteries,” which was the day Jesus washed the feet of his of his disciples after celebrating his final Passover meal, recalls this passage from the Gospel of John 13:34:
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”
In reading this passage this Easter morning, I was called back to a moment to which I have regularly returned. It was shortly after I had started college, and ideas were alive to me in new and urgent ways. Ted and I were talking, as we often did, about the deeper meaning of life as…
