Eucharist and Sign Value Crisis

Maundy Thursday March 28, 2024
Ex. 12:1-14a Ps. 78:14-20, 23-25
1 Cor 11:23-32 John 13:1-15

Lectionary Link

On Maundy Thursday, many Christian churches host "agape" meals as the context for the celebration of the institution of one of the chief sacraments of the Christian Church, the Holy Eucharist.

At such a meal, participants might observe that they are eating real food, as opposed to the "unreal" food that is the normal fare of Holy Eucharist.   We are starkly aware of how divorced the regular practice of Eucharist is from actual home cooked meals, or restaurant eating.

On Maundy Thursday, we bring out the quaint custom of washing feet.  In most of our lives "foot-washing" is not a real social function, it is a once a year liturgical ritual and not without shock factor of seeing leaders acting out humility in washing the feet of another person with a "so-called" lower and different station in life.

The challenge for us on Maundy Thursday is to over come the sign value gap between what is done in liturgy and what we actually do in life.

Part of the problem has been created by the historical success of the Christian movement, to the place of reverse fortunes.  The Christian movement was once an underground and hidden movement within the Roman Empire.  It became the preferred religion of the Roman Empire and subsequent Empires in the world.  It went from being but a few members to becoming automatic cultural membership whereby every born child was passively assimilated into this gigantic culturally tacit paradigm.  The automatic status of being Christian, culturally Christian was noted by the protesting Kierkegaard when he complained, "All of the dogs in Denmark have faith."

The challenge for us today has to do with reinvigorating the connection with chief Christ-like values of what we do in church, but more importantly with what we do when we are outside the church liturgical environment.

Why do we commemorate Maundy Thursday?  We do so because the nascent Jesus Movement thought it necessary to proclaim two prominent values of Jesus Christ, on which the community was founded and through which it would be endlessly perpetuated.

These two values of Maundy Thursday must be connected with life values which are practiced outside of the Maundy Thursday liturgy, and outside all liturgies of the church.

The two values are food for people, and service to one another.

Ponder the great imagination involved in the process of Christ being all and in all.  Jesus took bread and said, my life, my presence does not end at my epidermis, "This is my body and body," he said as he identified his presence with food and drink.  The food and drink is a Christly omnipresence for the life of the people of the world.  And why repeat and remember these words within community?  So to publicly verified that everyone in the community is taken care of in body and soul.  The Eucharistic gathering of the church is the social reality of the church and in face to face gathering people take note that care is given to all present.  One can appreciate how important this was in oppressed and poor communities, namely, seeing that all were having enough to eat.

Along with the hospitality of food provided in a public gathering, the very engine of the survival of the community is exemplified, namely, the continuous reciprocal service of people for each other, no matter what one's social or economic status is.   This is the value that is proclaimed in the "foot-washing" event.  The church, family, and society does not survive without the "ego-checking" service that each person provides for the lives of the members of the community.  As societies become pyramid expressions of lower tiered people serving the greedy and the powerful; the loss of the egalitarian sacrificial service is reduced to be the poor wages given to poor laborers to serve the lives of the powerful, the wealthy, and the greedy.  The foot-washing Jesus Movement proclaims a different kind of value

What do we need most in the churches tonight on this night of Maundy Thursday?  We need the liminal events of the enlightening and empowering Dismissal.  Let us go forth!

The way in which we add authentic connection of the values of our liturgy is when we are empowered to sew these values into the fabric of our lives outside our liturgies.  When we can make sure that the body of Christ is the ample food for everyone who needs food in our world, then we can come to achieve authenticity with our Eucharistic values.   When we can sew sacrificial service for each other into the every day fabric of our lives, then the foot washing liturgy will attain its full sign value.

Let tonight's dismissal send us forth to feed our world, and to spread sacrificial reciprocal service as the true Christly values of Maundy Thursday.  Amen.