Holy Thursday 2020
Throughout the 20th century worked a famous anthropologist, Margaret Mead. It is hard to imagine another anthropologist who has taught us as much about the nature of human community. Mead was once asked what sign we had about when civilisation began. The expectation was that her reply would concern the discovery of some ancient artefact such as a tool, or a weapon, or a segment of art. Instead, she simply replied, “a healed femur.”
A healed femur bone is the sign we have of the beginnings of civilisation.
Why did this famous anthropologist claim this? She claimed this because for the first time we had an indication that a community had cared for someone. Previously, there would be no evidence of a healed femur, for the person who had experienced a broken femur would be left to die.
There comes a point in human history, however, when someone with a broken femur is cared for. Since a broken femur takes many months to heal, the person whose healed bone was discovered would have been cared for consistently for a good length of time. Their every need would have required attention. And for Margaret Mead the indication of this attention was the sure sign of the beginning of human civilisation. Human civilisation begins as the culture of care is evidenced, a culture in which human beings give themselves over to one another in care for each other.
If this be so for human civilisation, then divine civilisation, itself, becomes apparent on this evening. It does not begin on this evening but on this occasion, it is given transparency. It becomes apparent in the simple gesture of Jesus own care of his friends. He washes their feet. In Jesus, God becomes absorbed in service of us and in his attention to the most humble part of ourselves.
The divine civilisation, revealed and enacted in Jesus, attends to us. God is attention without distraction, declared the great mystic of the 1930s, Simone Weil.[1] This divine attention is brought to bear on all that we consider all too-human for God to become involved in:
- In the social and economic uncertainty that we experience at this current time of pandemic;
- The ambiguous ways in which we search for love in our life;
- The uncertainties we have about our identity and our future;
- The angst that consumes us about our children and that keeps us awake at night;
- Our fears about our partners and how we can maintain them in the bonds of relationship;
- In the helplessness we feel in the face of the demise of someone we love but feel powerless to assist;
- In the memories that haunt us;
- In the failures and mistakes of our life that continue to subvert our best aspirations;
- In our struggle to believe, to hope and to trust.
If Jesus washes the feet of his friends, it is these all-too human experiences, too, with which he involves himself. It is to these experiences of our life, and more, that he attends. As he says to Peter, he says to us, “if I do not find you there in those experiences in which you discover the weight of your humanity, you cannot understand me.”
As God washes our feet, we wash each others. Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention,” wrote Simone Weil[2] For her, attention was the key that opens the door to compassion for those suffering. It is an action requiring sensitivity, courage and sacrifice–a detachment from self and complete focus on the other person. It is what was required millennia ago to heal a broken femur.
It is what is required of us now even in the physical distancing required of us. As Pope Francis reminded us earlier this week, many are those whose feet need washing through these exceptional circumstances – “the liveliness of children and young people who cannot go out, attend school, live their lives, those who have a loved one who is sick, people who are alone and for whom it is more difficult to face these moments, the elderly, those in financial straits and are worried about work and the future.”
And to these and more, as he invites us, “let us be generous; let us help those in our neighbourhood; let us look for the loneliest people perhaps by telephone or social networks.” Because, as the pope says, “even if we are isolated, thought and spirit can go far with the creativity of love. This is what we need today: the creativity of love. This is what is needed today: the creativity of love.”
In the example of the One who washes our feet, who becomes so intimately involved with our humanity, let each of us consider how best we can exercise this creativity of love. For it is this creativity that will inaugurate that new world on the other side of this experience of pandemic for which we most deeply aspire. As civilisation begins with a healed femur, may the new world into which we are being drawn by circumstances, begin with the creativity of our care.[4]
[1] Simone Weil, “The Need for Roots,” (1943), published in Simone Weil, The Need for Roots, translated by Arthur Wills, (New York: Harper and Row, 1952).
[2] Simone Weil, S. (1941b), “Reflections on the right Use of School Studies with a View to love of God,” (1941), from Simone Weil Essays On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God, translated by Richard Rees, (London: Oxford University Press,) in Panichas, G. A. (1977). The Simone Weil Reader, New York: David McKay Co., 1977), 44-52.
[3] Simone Weil, “The Love of God and Affliction” (1942), in G. A. Panichas, The Simone Weil Reader, (New York: David McKay Co., 1977), 313-339.
[4] Pope Francis, Message for Holy Week 2020, https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2020-04/pope-francis-holy-week-2020-message-coronavirus.html
