Perhaps the most essential tool for a busboy is not the bin for plates and utensils, it is your towel.  Damp enough to clean, but not so wet you leave streaks.  Regularly replaced so as to not leave any elements from a prior table.  Large enough to cover much area and not so large as to be cumbersome.  In ecclesiastical terms, you could say it was the preeminent symbol of our craft.

    I am wondering if it is not the true primary symbol of the Christian faith.

    Jesus knows things are getting dark. He has been warned about his life many times and nothing seen in Jerusalem this week has changed that sensibility.  He sees the bristle in the eyes of those at the Temple and the shifting glances of others.  He wonders how many more times he can slip out of a mob wishing his demise.  How many more nights will he get to sit at table with his friends?

    And so on this night he decides to do something different.  Amid his words he is led to show them what he has been trying to say.  He goes into another room, looks around and sees it: the towel.  Removing his usual cloak he is dressed like a busboy, a servant.  He begins washing their feet. 

    Was he thinking of Mary's gesture to him, maybe not in a burial preparation sense, but the intimacy of attending to another's feet?  Was he recalling how deeply touched he was by her attention to him?  Was he thinking of some of the excess of the temple, things that perhaps held a certain 'siren song' even for him?  Maybe he recalled how the angels had come to him in the wilderness.  Perhaps it was the consolation of God found on many a dark night.  Was he simply out of words; knowing there was only so much the words could convey?  See this towel?  It is what you need.

    How different might the church be if instead of using the cross as our processional calling card, we used a towel?

Blessed Maundy Thursday

Todd Donatelli