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

11 responses to “We should be wary of declaring martyrs”

Eamonn

08/04/2015

Agree totally. I find myself in a comparable position vis-à-vis the mass canonisations of the ‘martyrs’ of the Spanish Civil War, which assume that all those worthy of commemoration were on the same side.

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Michael Russell

08/04/2015

Anyone killed for professing their faith is a martyr. ISIS is an equal opportunity martyring machine. The various faith communities targeted, including Islamic ones, should build common ground to dismember ISIS. I simply fail to see the point in quibbling about who is a real martyr and who is not.

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1. Kelvin
  
  08/04/2015
  
  Is it your view that someone is a martyr for Christianity because they cannot recite a verse from the Qur’an?
  
  It seems to me that whilst some men and women of violence are being claimed to be martyrs if they should be shot by law enforcement agencies whilst pursuing paths of terror that there’s a huge amount to be gained by determining who is a martyr and who isn’t.
  
  Reply
  1. Bro David
    
    08/04/2015
    
    Not being able to explain a quranic verse was merely a way of discerning if someone was not Muslim. However, is it not just as great a presumption to think they weren’t martyrs, as to think that they were.
    
    The early church seemed to accept that all who were crucified or sent to the lions for their Christianity were martyrs. Perhaps not all did so as a statement of faith, but were nominal Christians caught up with the rest. But the church didn’t seem obliged to footnote who didn’t qualify.
    
    I’m not sure that I understand why your are hesitant. It seems a quibble. I don’t think anyone is leaning toward canonization here, just speaking of them as a whole.
    
    Reply
Jo

08/04/2015

The SEC still keeps the feast of Charles, King and Martyr. I don’t think we get to be too narrow in defining who is or isn’t a martyr.

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1. Kelvin
  
  09/04/2015
  
  Actually, Jo – that’s not quite right. The SEC keeps the commemoration of “Charles I, King, 1649”
  
  There’s no mention of him being a martyr in the calendar (and the current calendar superseded and replaced the one in the prayer book). There are plenty of people who are named as martyrs such as Agnes the week before Charles or indeed “Charles Mackenzie of Central Africa, Bishop, Missionary, Martyr, 1862” the very day after Charles.
  
  It would appear that rather careful thought was given to whether to describe Charles as a martyr and though he is included in the calendar (not least for founding one of our dioceses) any notion of martyrdom is absent.
  
  Reply
  1. Jo
    
    09/04/2015
    
    Thanks for the correction, I hadn’t realised there was that detail of difference between the SEC and CofE.
    
    Reply
Father David

10/04/2015

Of course, King Charles was a Martyr and is commemorated as such on January 31st each year. The trouble is that Anglicans have no real mechanism for declaring people to be saints or martyrs. Having referred to two recent horrific incidents on the African continent where Christians were slaughtered simply for being Christians, I wonder what the Provost of Glasgow thinks about the Ugandan Martyrs of the 19th century and would you personally regard them to be martyrs? As you know 23 Anglicans and 22 Roman Catholics were killed by the Kabaka for refusing to submit to King Mwanga’s corporal intimacies. The Roman Catholics were beatified in 1920 and canonised in 1964 but what of our Anglican Ugandan brothers – where they equally to be regarded as martyrs, or would you deny them that honorific title?

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1. Kelvin
  
  10/04/2015
  
  The Scottish Episcopal Calendar is again very clear: “Charles Lwanga and his companions, 1886, Janani Luwum, Bishop, 1977, Martyrs of Uganda”
  
  I have no idea why anyone would say that the SEC has no means of declaring someone to be a martyr. Not only do we have such a mechanism, we use it.
  
  Reply
Father David

10/04/2015

It would be interesting to know how this mechanism works in the SEC in deciding who is eligible to join the noble army of martyrs? Bishop Edward King of Lincoln is widely regarded as a saint South of the Border. I think it was Archbishop Lang who was asked how it was decided that Bishop King had reached sainthood status and the answer was that he was given a Collect, Epistle and Gospel to commemorate his saint’s day – 8th March, the day of his Heavenly Birthday.

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Harry Campbell

19/04/2015

“We strongly condemn such atrocities, whether they are Ethiopians are not,” the Ethiopian communications minister Redwan Hussein told AFP.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/19/isis-video-purports-to-show-massacre-of-two-groups-of-ethiopian-christians

What a shame the Archbishop couldn’t have said something similarly inclusive about the victims of the Kenyan massacre, and all such massacres, without caring about what their religion affiliation may or may not have been.

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