This service is full of commemorations. In it we re-enact, or have dramatic remembrances of some of the things Jesus did ‘on the night when he was betrayed’.

We are familiar with two elements of the Last Supper, his taking the bread and the wine and giving them a new significance as tokens of all that we can mean by his body and his blood. Some would go further and say that in a mystical sense they even become his body and blood. Some stop short of that and refer to them as highly charged symbols that convey the spirit of all that Jesus is and was and that in him we can and will be. For some they are a fellowship meal, a piece of bread and a sip of wine to remember Jesus by.

Whichever one of those speaks to us, and it could be they speak very deeply indeed, to a level where the others may be repellant, there is a point where we all stand on common ground. The common ground is that in this commemorative meal, this Eucharist, we bring something from the past, from the Last Supper, and make it mean something to us today. We do that with elements taken from today - bread and wine. What it means, when we strip away the layers of unprovable doctrine, is to do with Jesus Christ and living as one of his disciples. That goes for the real presence, the symbolic token and the fellowship meal.

For what it is worth I tend more towards the symbolic token school than the real presence school of thought. I tend towards that because I see symbols as having a power and a force to them that can become a real vehicle of what they symbolize. This is what some have referred to as transignification rather than transubstantiation. In other words it is the significance of these elements that is changed in the Eucharistic Prayer. A change in their substance is based on medieval thought forms that I just don’t share in the same way. But they are not as far apart as we might imagine. In fact I think what I clumsily label transignification may well be a contemporary reworking of the same thing.

I don’t see inanimate objects having an inner spirit, so I don’t see them as being something that can be inhabited by good or evil. This is a philosophy that lies behind transubstantiation and I just don’t approach the world from this angle. But I do see the power of what things stand for and of the psychological and even spiritual force of ritual and how our actions and words affect us. I just wonder if this begins to say something very similar just in a different century.

This means that Christian ritual and satanic ritual are both real events and change us. There is evidence that watching endless pornography is not harmless because it changes the way we see people: we see objects of our fantasy rather than people for relationships. There is evidence that messing around with occultic practices changes the way we understand ourselves and affects our mental stability. One of the dangers of witchcraft is not that we become possessed by devils but that we try to impose our will on the world rather than seek to draw on God’s will. A subtle difference and that is open to all sorts of delusions and the Christian tradition over the centuries has been very alert to this, and it has to be said has fallen foul of it too when it has tried to dress up the will of men as the will of God! Some of those reporting demon possession actually turn out to have some very real and traumatic causes and some have to do with giving the wrong emotions and fears too much play.

So I am convinced that we tap into much more in this Eucharistic celebration than mere tokens, but I don’t see the world through medieval eyes so don’t find medieval ways of talking about these things very helpful. If we look at the events we commemorate on Maundy Thursday through eyes that look for the significance to be changed, what do we see?

We see the man who made a kingly statement by riding into Jerusalem, albeit on a donkey rather than a military stallion, doing the job of someone you wouldn’t even ask their name. Washing feet is the lowest job. Jesus had his own feet washed by a woman of doubtful moral standing and had them dried by her hair. A lewd act. This was a come on and he didn’t brush her away. The shock factor of that would get him straight onto the front pages of the News of the World.

Feet washing is fine as a commemoration, but what does it mean to wash feet? We all wear socks and stout shoes. We don’t wear sandals. It means that there is no job too low for us. Nothing is beneath us. It means that mutuality, where we each muscle in and take our share of the burden of corporate living, is the way of sustainable community. This is the opposite of pornography, which looks at others as objects of our gratification with nothing being given in return. It is the opposite of witchcraft which seeks to harness power for its own ends and feet washing is about giving service for someone else to use if they wish. The significance is that service is at the heart of who we are, individually and corporately. In a world of power, that is radical.

All of us are called to this, not just vicars. That is why the 12 of us who will re-enact this, who will provide the dramatic remembrance of it, will wash one another’s feet rather than the vicar washing 12 parishioners feet. We are all called to follow Jesus in this act, to be changed by the significance of this memorial, not just me! But me included no less!

We will end the service in the Watch in the garden. Well, in the side chapel. Before we get there, there is no formal procession to conclude this service. We just scatter like the disciples did. We strip the altar and the church of all trappings and hangings. The cross which has been so visible all week, because this week journeys to it, suddenly is not merely veiled it is taken away. The force and power of that imagery is sudden and dramatic. There is no gradual diminution. We have no symbols of anything. For a theology of transignification this is dramatic. The consequences of what we are entering into is the death of all meaning. It is to court oblivion. It is to stand on the threshold of hell, of a place where we have turned our backs on God. The stripping of the altar and the next few days should disturb us. The absence of everything has a sacramental quality to it because this is what humanity would do to itself and what God’s grace and mercy rescues us from. There is a real presence in this ritual absence.

Those are three of the events we commemorate tonight. The washing of feet and its sacramental significance of the power of self-giving, other-serving love, of mutuality and giving. The Eucharistic elements and their supreme commemoration of Jesus, of the power of symbolism and being changed by the changed significances. The Watch and stripping of the altar with its courting absence and our being brought back from the threshold of hell. If you wish you can use part of the Watch to play around with this approach to the other events - denial, betrayal, a hostile court trial, Pilate’s capitulation, witch hunts - the servant girl’s ‘he’s one too’, the Watch of Prayer itself. How are we changed by this commemoration? How does God in Christ feed us internally that we may live externally to his glory?

© Ian Black 2003

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