Holy Thursday - 2019

Holy Thursday - 2019

It is puzzling that John, who devoted the whole of chapter 6 of his Gospel to reflecting on the mystery and meaning of the Eucharist, should make no mention of it at all in his account of Jesus’ Last Supper. Instead he described this incident of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. And yet, one does throw light upon the other – and perhaps both make even clearer the meaning of the Eucharist.

The foot washing was obviously a symbolic act. Jesus performed the duty of a servant, a humiliating but helpful duty nevertheless – even though he was not just their peer but, as they themselves preferred to see him, their Lord and Master. Certainly it made Peter feel uneasy. His “Shall you wash my feet?” expresses what many of us feel when we come to receive Communion, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof …”.

Jesus had consistently preached and exemplified the way of mutual love, respect and ready forgiveness of each other as the non-negotiable and only way that humanity could be saved from its otherwise spontaneous competitiveness, mutual fear, raw hostility and destructive violence. He insisted that this attitude expressed the human equivalent of the mercy and love that summed up the very essence of God. But words are only words. Jesus hoped that his tortured and dehumanising death through crucifixion, the price of his refusal to back down from his unshakeable conviction, might eventually convince an otherwise unheeding world. He hoped that, once the blood-lust of the crowd had been satisfied, and people had had time to calm down and to ponder, that they would recognise how their unnoticed and unchecked instincts had led them, then and always, pointlessly to scapegoat and kill a totally innocent victim.

Jesus’ wanted his action of washing the disciples’ feet to symbolise the profound act of practical love and service that he was about to make through his threatening crucifixion. If Peter was unwilling to share that way of love with Jesus, they would effectively have nothing in common with each other. “If I do not wash you, you can have nothing in common with me”.

Jesus profoundly desired that humility and mutual sensitive care should characterise the constant behaviour of all believers. As he said, “You should wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you”. He was not talking about copying the symbol, but of constantly living the message it symbolised.

The other Gospels saw the breaking of the bread at the Eucharist, and our sharing in it, along with our common drinking from the cup of the covenant, likewise as a determined “yes”, or “Amen” to Jesus and to his way of love, as the only way to turn around our violent world. In insisting that we do this, as he said, “in memory of me”, he was not talking about repeating the symbol, but of constantly living the message it symbolised.