What is in Kelvin's Head?

On Footwashing

24/03/2016

During tonight’s Maundy Thursday service at St Mary’s we don’t have a sermon. Well, not a spoken one anyway. In the middle of the service we set up some chairs and get out some bowls and wash feet. It isn’t so much that we don’t have a sermon is it more that the washing of feet is the sermon.

It is something that puts some people off though it is only every an opt in thing. No-one coming tonight has to have their feet washed.

It seems to me to be important to do it though and it is worth thinking about what’s going on.

Most people who write about footwashing seem to make a big deal about it being about a reversal of power roles. There’s always news about whose feet that bigwig clergy are going to wash. The first time Pope Francis washed feet as pope, he included female feet in and that, rather bizarrely became the story.

This year, there’s been a ruling from someone in the Vatican that washing women’s feet is not in fact a requirement. This seems to me to be making the story even more bizarre. Does anyone really believe that senior clerics are going to be led into temptation by the turn of a woman’s ankle? And in any case, is the implication of all this that no male cleric was ever attracted by a male foot?

Notwithstanding that though, there is no doubt something about footwashing that is very intimate. To let someone wash your feet is a very close physical act.

I find that when I do it, it is more about the intimacy and relationship between the washer and the washee as it is about any reversal of power roles.

It is worth bearing in mind that the last supper only includes bread and wine in three of the four gospels. John’s gospel records footwashing rather than breadsharing.

I always think at this time of the year about the kind of church that might have resulted if things were reversed and we shared bread and wine once a year and washed feet on the other days.

The controversies of the church might look altogether different…

Where is the best place to get towels of the correct liturgical colour sequence?
Can a gay person wash the feet of a straight person?
Are children holy enough to have clean feet?

The invitation at St Mary’s is very much St Mary’s. Anyone is welcome to bring their feet for washing. Just as anyone is welcome to receive the bread and wine at the table.

Oh, and by the way, the foot in the picture is a Muslim foot. Don’t forget that washing feet is a ritual that unites religious people across surprising boundaries.

footwashing

5 responses to “Tanzania”

Raspberry Rabbit

31/01/2007

A bit picky, yes. Idris will no doubt correct them when he’s there.

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Simon Sarmiento

01/02/2007

Umm. So Northern Ireland is part of Britain is it?
Four churches in the UK maybe.

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kelvin

01/02/2007

Well Simon, you are correct in your assumption that I was thinking of the Church of Ireland in Northern Ireland, rather than perhaps the Church of Rockall.

People who are being picky deserve to be picked up for slack talk. However, speaking as I do from the Second City of Empire, I hide behind this quote on the website for Number 10 Downing Street:

http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page823.asp

“The United Kingdom is made up of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Its full name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Great Britain, however, comprises only England, Scotland and Wales. Great Britain is the largest island of the British Isles. Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic form the second largest island.

The UK is just under 1,000 km long from the south coast of England to the extreme north of Scotland, and is 500 km across at its widest point. It shares a single land border with the Irish Republic. Despite its relatively small size the UK boasts incredibly varied and often very beautiful scenery.

The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are not part of the United Kingdom. They are largely self-governing with their own legislative assemblies and systems of law. But the British Government is responsible for their defence and international relations.

On this site the term ‘Britain’ is used informally to mean the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”

I’d also refer interested parties to the Wikipedia page on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Isles_naming_dispute

I offer this topic as a free gift to Bishop David.

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Bishop David

03/02/2007

As you would expect, I am all knotted up on this one. I am a citizen of Ireland – or the Irish Republic – or the Republic of Ireland. Nor Eire – or, as many of my parishioners in Portadown would have called it [never having moved on from 1922], the ‘Free State’. Meanwhile President Mary MacAleese is often termed President of Ireland which seems to me to be as notable a piece of ‘overlooking’ as when Ian Paisley refers to the ‘people of Ulster’ [which means some of the Protestant/Unionist population of Northern Ireland] and Gerry Adams refers to the ‘Irish People’ [which means not the Protestant/Unionist population of Northern Ireland]. I like Wiki’s rather coy description of Ireland as ‘currently split’ – meaning just the most recent 85 years. Which in the context of thousands of years of British misrule in Ireland is but a blink. And finally one comes to the interesting use of the term ‘mainland’ …

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steg

04/02/2007

Must admit when I saw you were writing about primates in Tanzania I thought your blog was going to be about ape conservation………………….

In my experience people from outwith the UK confuse Britain and England a lot. And they have a point. Do you always refer to the Netherlands or sometimes to Holland even when you are refering to the non Holland bits of the Netherlands? And how do you think that makes the Friesian’s feel? And so on.

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