The meal which we celebrate here tonight has not simply been celebrated annually on this Maundy Thursday for the past twenty or fifty years, like many church customs. In fact, unlike even the more stable of church traditions, it has not simply been observed since the beginning of the Christian Era - but it has been celebrated far back into the distant reaches of history, back even further than Moses and the Exodus from Egypt.

In a sense, the celebration of this meal, which is linked to the blood covenants of ancient peoples, possibly goes back to the very beginning of the human race. Until the last century, the observance of a blood covenant was common among primitive peoples in Africa, Southeast Asia and even the remote islands of the various oceans. The fact that this practice was so wi…