Sensing Lent 38: Feet

Sermon for Maundy Thursday. 

Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.

What does it mean to wash one another’s feet today? Foot washing is popular at this time of year in church services and is practised at some Ordination services.

In 2003 Dr Rowan Williams revived the ancient custom of foot washing at a Maundy Thursday service at Canterbury – it was reported on by The Guardian newspaper.

Apparently every British sovereign had offered foot washing until the 1730s when the ruling Hanoverians decided it was beneath their dignity. But the symbolic power of a very senior cleric agreeing to wash other people’s feet, had obviously made an impression on the Guardian reporter, who wrote:

‘Many bishops and other priests in Britain now perform the feet-washing ceremony, known in Latin as the pedilavium. Dr Williams had traditionally performed the task in his previous role as a bishop and archbishop in Wales.
But Thursday night was the first time, at least since the Reformation, that an archbishop of Canterbury has stooped so low.

The 12 parishioners chosen to have their feet washed on Thursday night were aged from nine to 72 and represented a cross-section of church membership. Dr Williams hoisted his sleeves and rinsed their feet before patting them dry with an individual white towel.
Some of the younger ones giggled slightly with the archbishop looking up, smiling encouragingly at them as he finished the job.
"I was a bit nervous and excited," said Annalisa Flood, 13, daughter of the cathedral choirmaster. "I washed my feet first specially."’

The fact that this little girl had felt the need to wash her feet first rather detracts from the power of the ritual, and perhaps highlights the limitations of lifting a culturally powerful ritual out of its initial setting and transposing it to another, where, generally speaking, we all wear closed shoes, walk on tarmac, and wash our own feet in the shower.

Much as we might admire those whose spirituality leads them to wash other people’s feet, even previously cleaned ones; it leaves us with the question: what is a 21^st Century equivalent of foot washing which we can practice towards each other?

Because we do need to find ways to be serving and loving each other, as we follow Christ’s example this Holy Week.
I wonder what you would come up with, if asked to think of a culturally appropriate way of showing love and service to other people in Christ’s name?

An image that first came into my mind was of the late Princess Diana, shaking hands with AIDS patients.
When she opened Britain’s first purpose built ward for HIV/Aids patients in 1987, she was the first public figure to be seen shaking hands with someone suffering from a disease then feared and derided as a ‘gay plague’.
Beforehand she had faced criticism for putting her children at risk by rejecting advice to wear protective clothing to avoid germs.

Her caring gestures and simple handshakes with AIDS sufferers spoke volumes about love and acceptance and helped break down fear and prejudice about the disease. The photographs of her doing this, the juxtaposition of a glamorous and famous princess sitting talking almost cozily with a gaunt young man, intensified the power of the gesture.

But perhaps even that’s not exactly the right image for us to take away this Maundy Thursday, living as we are, 27 years further on...
And so an image I suggest we might take away is of listening as a form of loving service.
In our increasingly noisy world, Julian Treasure, a speaker on the TED talks forum (see handout) has said that we are losing our listening.

I’m sure he has a point.
Everyone is so busy broadcasting, advertising or defending their own truth positions, our lives are full of voices and words, even if only in the forms of 100s of emails, we are in danger of forgetting how to listen.
The world is very noisy: our lives are very busy.

When someone gives you the gift of listening they are giving you their time (a precious commodity today) and their attention (which our increasingly technological world is sapping).
When someone listens, they impart the message that you are important and valued.

Julian Treasure, on his TED talk, says that when he got married, he said to his wife, ‘I promise that when you speak, I will try and listen to you as if hearing your voice for the first time’. What a thought!

It is a great risk to be a listener. You risk all sorts of people taking advantage, just like Jesus took a risk with Judas, yet still offered him broken bread and the cup of wine. You risk not being heard yourself. You have to slow down, give up your own limelight and act out of loving humility. It seems in many ways to be entirely in the spirit of foot washing.

When I think of the people I know, there are not many who know how to really listen. Research suggests that we are distracted for about 75% of the time when we are supposed to be listening to someone.

The average attention span of an adult listening is about 22 seconds. Immediately after listening to someone talk, we recall about half; after a few hours, only about 20%

When we think of the church, we know there are those special ones who do give others the time of day; who are gracious listeners; who listen across age barriers, who go away from a conversation understanding more. Will we be those people?

There are undoubtedly those whose voices we would rather not hear: in any community there are those who feel their voices are silenced. There are no doubt voices in our churches that we have not heard, who nonetheless have something important to say.

Amongst Jesus’ followers there were the strident voices of James and John who wanted to call down thunder on the unrepentant; there was the voice of Peter, refusing to have his feet washed and making promises of loyalty he couldn't keep.

To listen well is to value someone – essentially to be willing to love, as Jesus commanded us. ‘You do not know what I am doing, but later you will understand’, said Jesus. Later you will see that loving service is to be the hall mark of your life as my followers.

When we listen, we are not just attending to the sound of the words, we are attending to the direction of that person’s life. You could argue there’s no sharing of the Good News without listening, listening to that gap in the conversation where someone admits to a need, to a doubt, to a hope that there might be more to life than this, where they reach out to God for healing and forgiveness. 

How many times have I failed to perceive that moment of grace, that moment of growth, because in the pause in conversation, I have rushed in with too many words…?
After church coffee conversation is a classic example. Slow down and listen with the ears of the Spirit! 

At our Community Coffee Morning in Whitchurch, I like to think that people who come, if they find anything there, will find a welcome and listening ear.

It’s when someone has given me the grace of listening that I have often known the fresh touch of God in my life, or have understood something important for that time about God’s guidance.

As we have thought about different images of loving service, the washing of dirty feet; the washing of clean feet, shaking hands with an AIDS sufferer; maybe we can take on board afresh the act of loving service which is listening.
Imagine if people said of the church: that’s the group of people who have time to listen!

And as we listen to each other, we might find we are actually surprised by hearing the voice of God.

Goodbye Christendom, hello servanthood

20th After Trinity

Mark 10: 45: For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’ 

What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus today in the West, in the 2^nd decade of the 21^st Century?

In some ways it’s very different from the experience of the first disciples who set out to follow Jesus on the Way.

In some ways it’s very similar.

Firstly, how is it different?

One word: Christendom.

Whatever we think about how ‘Christian’ we are in the UK now, we have to live with the reality that for large swathes of the population, going to church and following in the way of Christ are seen as entirely unnecessary to the good life.

So as disciples of Jesus today, we are already swimming against the tide.

It’s as if Christianity has been tried and found wanting.

When the Emperor Constantine first embraced Christianity as the official Roman religion, the Way of Christ became associated with the way of temporal power.

Given our gospel reading today, this was perhaps a mistake.

Rowan Williams in his Epilogue to Praying for England (Wells and Coakley, Eds., 2008) says ‘we cannot take for granted any specific religious foundation for national belonging, public morality or policy-making’ (p. 172).

He is surely right. We cannot assume any sort of religious, let alone Christian basis for society any more.

We are post indeed Christian, but with the background noise of a once Christian identification humming away like society static.

So people still come to the church in times of need.

When April Jones, the five year old from Machynlleth

disappeared, to be later presumed dead, the Bishop organized a silent procession from her home to the local Anglican church - half the town turned out to cling onto something in the darkness.

This was the church standing up for and serving the weak and powerless, not wielding influence over society through some imagined privilege.

We’re called to follow a Saviour who chose the way of the Cross, not the way of power and political influence.

The first disciples misunderstood this, as we heard in the gospel.

James and John said they could suffer with Jesus but the fact they asked him for privileged positions in heaven shows they had got it wrong.

Anyone who follows Jesus for the privileged position it will give them is onto a losing wicket.

(Okay, I have to admit that processing into a Cathedral with your clerical robes on, for an Ordination service does make you feel quite special, but there is a warning here against pride.)

The Established Church today is a strange mixture of what looks like past historic privilege and the reality of today’s falling numbers, falling revenues and falling reputation.

People generally don’t want the church to assume it has influence today and to tell them what to do.

Is it a case of how the mighty have fallen?

Does it bother you?

A fellow Curate told me of a time recently when he was called to visit a woman in her 80s whose husband had died.

The first thing she said, a little abruptly, when he arrived at the house was ‘why have you never visited me before?’

He felt like answering ‘because I didn’t know you existed until now.’

She was living in a world where the Parish Priest apparently knew everyone and checked up on them if they didn’t come to church.

She told my friend that when she was little, the priest would walk around the village in his black robes and if you didn’t say a courteous hello as he passed, he would be in the school the next day complaining about you to the teacher.

This world of ecclesiastical influence and privilege does not exist any more  (at least it doesn't appear to in Whitchurch).

Is this a terrible loss, or is it an opportunity for a new humility about the place of the Church in our culture?

The demise of Christendom, is, of course, experienced differently in different generations.

I will not forget in a hurry the time I helped to start an All Age Service a few years ago in a previous church.

With the particular aim of nurturing younger Christians we eventually gathered a group of people who represented three different generations.

We had a handful of teenagers, some mums and dads in their 30s and 40s and some older members of the regular congregation, in their 60s and 70s, who came to support and give stability to this new group.

We met on a Sunday afternoon, and one day our theme was sharing your faith with those you come across day by day.

We split into groups to talk about how easy or difficult it was to talk about being a Christian today.

The older people, by and large, found that it wasn’t really an issue for them.

Most of their friends were in the church already and so it didn’t seem that they were living in a culture that was hostile to Christian faith.

The 30s and 40s said it was hard to follow Jesus ‘out there’ in the world, but the encouragement of a handful of Christian friends did help and they were seeking ways to be Christ in their culture.

The teenagers were very timid. One of them spoke up and said it was extremely difficult to be a Christian and a teenager in today’s culture; that a Christian at Secondary School is in a tiny minority and finds it very hard to have the courage to speak out.

I know this to be true as my son recently left Sixth Form College where he helped lead a Christian union of 6 people in a College of 2000.
Three different experiences from three different generations.

When we consider what it means to be a follower of Jesus in the 21^st Century, let’s remember and cherish those younger people who are forging a way forward in a highly secularized environment, and give them our prayers and support.

Living in a secular environment, though, can represent a chance to go back to basics, to refocus on the Son of Man who had nowhere to lay his head and whose disciples were called to follow his example of self sacrifice.

Jesus was absolutely clear that following him would not be easy.

He had set his face towards Jerusalem and in so doing, spelled out to his disciples that there would be a baptism of suffering for them.

We relive this baptism into his death and resurrection every time we gather around the Lord’s Table and break bread and drink the cup of his self giving.

The first disciples would drink the cup of suffering but only as an outworking of their discipleship, not for any hoped for promotion in heaven.

So we do live in a culturally different time to the first disciples.

We have to contend with a post Christian society which doesn't know what or whom to believe any more.

One thing that doesn't seem to change amongst disciples, however, is the bickering.

After discovering that James and John have asked this embarrassing request of Jesus, the other ten are incensed.

They argue, they get into camps, they say bad things about the others; they feel they’re in the right while the others are in the wrong; they have no unity amongst themselves…

And all the while something of huge salvation importance is unfolding ahead of them on the road to Jerusalem.

Bickering about non essentials whilst ignoring the essential…

Does it sound at all familiar?!

How many times have we read in the newspaper that the church is arguing over this or that, while some huge issue like West African Famine unfolds on the front covers?

We need to look outwards and to regain a sense of urgency about seeking the Lord while he may be found.

We need to regain humility.

We in the Church of England are so wonderfully middle class and respectable - we urgently need to divest ourselves of any remaining sense of cultural privilege and recapture a sense of service to our world.

Two words used in Mark 10 describe the life of a disciple: Jesus says ‘whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all’.

‘Diakonos’  and ‘doulos’.

'Diakonos' gives us ‘servant’, ‘minister’ or ‘deacon’, and 'doulos' is even lower: ‘slave’.

Servant and slave.

Two words which sit uncomfortably against a history of power, wealth and privilege about which the Church may well feel uncomfortable today.

‘The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many (verse 45).

This is the life to which we are all called; this is the life of humble service.
This is the life which may be misunderstood by the general populace but which still brings salt and light to the world.

May God strengthen us in this life today and teach us to walk in the way of the Cross.

Amen.