What We Celebrate On Maundy Thursday

On Maundy Thursday, we remember the 'mandate' our Lord gave us: to love one another as Christ has loved us. Jesus also gave us the way that we do this: by consuming his body and blood in Holy Communion, and by serving one another, symbolized by washing each other's feet.

Foot washing was, back then, a menial everyday job that a servant or slave would perform for anyone who walked into a house. Roads were dusty and everyone wore open shoes, so feet had to be washed with a similar regularity with which we wash our hands. Jesus's washing of his disciples' feet was not so much an act of intimacy but of service. It would be like walking into work and seeing the CEO of the company working the coat check, or the restaurant owner bussing tables. Jesus displayed that his Kingdom would not be a place where people in authority 'lorded it over' those who were not. Instead, his followers should be eager to serve one another, and those in spiritual authority were to be the first ones to "be among you as one who serves."

The intimacy with Jesus comes at the institution of the Body and Blood. Jesus takes bread and wine and declares that it is his body and blood to be eaten and drunk often. This is surprising but it makes sense in connection to the Cross. The New Testament consistently refers to Jesus's atoning death on the cross as a "perfect sacrifice" fulfilling the ancient sacrificial system of the Mosaic Law. Among those sacrifices, the priests and sometimes the offerers would eat the roasted flesh of the sacrifice, though never the blood. Blood was considered the part of the animal that belonged to God, since "the life was in the blood." The idea was that the flesh of the animal could be used for food but the 'life' of the animal belonged only to God. Jesus's command "to drink his blood" then is a dramatic change. God, taking on flesh, offers his own life to his people in this sacrifice. HIs body and blood, broken and shed on the Cross, can be taken in under the form of bread wine.

Taken together, communion and service are the ingredients of love. The Church is to be a community of love. The word 'love' is assigned a lot of meanings today, but Jesus showed us what it means: his own example. Being intimate with him at Communion fills us with his life, and commits us to serving one another at the expense of ourselve, and not serving ourselves at the expense of others.