Maybe you saw the study recently in the New York Times about what Catholics believe about the eucharist. Like many surveys of Catholics, it disturbed a great many people. It reported that more than 60% of Catholics said that Jesus was not really present in the eucharist as the body of Christ, but that the bread and wine were really more like a symbolic reminder of him and his life.
Many people saw this and wondered what it is that’s wrong with people in the church, with the way we teach people, or maybe about how we do liturgy, that accounts for the fact that people no longer believe that this bread and wine become for us the body and blood of Christ.
Tonight is a good night to think about this. Holy Thursday is traditionally the time when we remember Jesus’ institution of the eucharist at his last Passover meal with his disciples, and we are never in closer touch with this gift to us than we are tonight. And yet tonight is a night that tells us some things about the eucharist we usually forget. By long tradition, we hear the one gospel of the four that says nothing about bread, or wine, or the words of institution.
In John’s gospel, the story of the last supper, we hear instead about a commandment.
In Jesus’ day only two kinds of people washed feet, women and slaves. After Jesus’ time, and following his example, washing feet became in the Christian tradition the sign of people who completely put aside their usual roles, who follow this example of Jesus in not seeming to care anything about who they are and who the other person is. This ritual has a long history that makes its real meaning even clearer. It was long the practice at monasteries for abbots to wash the feet of every visitor, and of every monk under his authority; in fact in some places, the washing of feet focuses on those who are poor, who usually have no place at the table.
In a way it is an act of service that makes no sense, that isn’t practical, that doesn’t really help anyone who is in need; all it does is reverse the roles that life usually gives us, it puts those in authority, those who think they know things, in positions of service, and means that whose who have nothing are treated as welcome guests. It has no significance at all, except that we know that it’s the way things ought to be, people serving one another without regard to whether it is rewarding or even sensible, and without regard to who ought to be serving whom.
In a way, it is a lot like what we want so much to believe about the eucharist, that something ordinary becomes completely unordinary, something far more significant than what it appears.
The washing of feet is not a sacrament, but it helps us understand the one we celebrate tonight. It is our reminder that the sign of the real presence of Jesus in the eucharist will only ever be apparent through the people who share in that eucharist and in what they do. People will know that Jesus is present in our eucharist if they see Jesus present in us.