Maundy Thursday

The Mocking of Christ, Matthias Grunewald, 1528, the Alte Pinakothek, Munich


I like Maundy Thursday service. Maybe it is the overall atmosphere, that appeals to melancholic people like me. To quote from my church bulletin:

"The word 'Maundy' is derived from the Latin, 'mandatum' which means commandment. In a Maundy Thursday Service, the Church worshipfully remembers that evening Jesus spent with His Disciples at the Last Supper, where He gave them the 'new commandment' in John 13:34. In that evening too, Jesus instituted the Holy Eucharist; washed the feet of His disciples; faced his struggle at Gethsemane; was later betrayed by Judas and abandoned by His disciples.

The liturgy of the Maundy Thursday Service, with the Tenebrae Readings in particular, leads the church to worshipfully re-enter that evening. Tenebrae is the Latin word for 'shadows'. By the Tenebrae Readings, the church is brought to sense for herself, the betrayal, the abandonment and the agony that Jesus endured... This is one of those few significant Services of the Church, where worship is understood to be possible and indeed profound, even when the situation is not joyful or celebrative'"

The message for today was taken from John 13:7-20, and again the pastor delivered an excellent expository teaching on the washing of feet by Jesus. Besides the usual interpretation of servant-leadership as embodied in the act of washing a follower's feet, the pastor says that the fact that the blood of Christ which overflows to the ground on Good Friday is in itself a symbolic act of cleansing that can wash away the sinful filth of believers who avail themselves to 'step' on the blood-stained ground on which Christ is the cornerstone. Hence Christ's subsequent respond to Peter - who wanted his head and hands to be cleaned by Jesus as well - that "the one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean".

Service ended with the traditional recitation of the Tenebrae Readings and the dimming of the lights, until the Church is in darkness, as a way to allow the congregation to worship in a grateful and purposeful manner. Personally, I felt that time kind of suspend itself during this Anglican tradition, and it is quite possible to 'enter' and 'relive' those moments with the Lord on his sense of foreknowledged betrayal.

You know how the Catholic traditions believes in the transubstantiation of the bread during communion; where the bread IS the Christ during the rite? Well, from Baudrillard's perspective, this is as 'real' as it can get when one seeks to inquire the reality of God, and the bread itself is reflective of Baudrillard's 3rd simulation. According to Baudrillard, Man's anxiety and fear that there is an absence of a 'real' entity often forces him to create a deterrence imagery which is neither true nor false. This explains why we have Disneyland, Las Vegas, Merlion and the likes. The fact that we fear that a real fantasy land, a myth or a folklore does not exist compels us to create a hyper real objective imagery that consequently allows to have a self-referential point to tell us that it exists. So even though there are neither indigenous lions nor mermaids in Southeast Asia, the fact that there is a Merlion gives us the possibility of creating new narratives in Singapore's 'ancient' history.

So with regards to transubstantiation, Baudrillard will probably say that Man's fear that God does not really exist compels believers to create and re-create traditions that will turn an absence into a reality. To some extent, I kind of agree with him with regards to the many empty signifiers that we experience in our daily traditions, most pertinently during chinese new year when we must do silly things like 'lao yu sheng' or in the first 12 years of our school life, when we must recite the pledge.

Back to Maundy Thursday...I kind of lost track here... but I think what I want to say is that if Christians, by default, have to believe in the existence of a spiritual world and a God that exists independently (or mutually dependent) of this real, boring and empty secular world, then there is enough legitimacy for Churches to continue certain traditions to help us to 'return' and 're-enter' into the spiritual world, and get some sort of real tangible communion with God. I think sjsm is pretty good in perfecting the art of facilitating deep and meaningful traditions, not so much as to negate the absence of God, but to manifest the reality of God in our lives. Believers can, to some extent, enter into Baudrillard's 4th simulations, where hyperreality takes a life of its own that is independent of reality. Maundy Thursday was quite significant for me not so much because it is a post-modern exercise, but maybe I think in our secular world, there is a growing need to not only remind ourselves, but to re-engage our body, heart, mind and soul into the Grand Narrative of God's reality.