Headline news on Huffington Post (an internet news site) in 2014:

On April 17, 2014, Pope Francis will visit the Centro Santa Maria della Provvidenza Fondazione Don Carlo Gnocchi home and wash the feet of the residents, many of whom are elderly and have disabilities. The ritual will happen on Maundy Thursday, which remembers the Last Supper of Jesus Christ with his disciples, when Jesus humbles himself and washes the feet of his apostles prior to their Passover meal.

Shortly after being elected, Pope Francis made headlines when he washed the feet of two women at a Rome youth prison, a sharp departure from the foot-washing of 12 priests in Rome’s St. John Lateran Basilica. [1]

Wikipedia says that : “In a notable break from the 1955 norms, Pope Francis washed the feet of two women and Muslims at a juvenile detention center in Rome 2013. In 2016, it was announced that the Roman Missal had been revised to permit women to have their feet washed on Maundy Thursday; previously it permitted only males to do so.” [2]

Over many years, the usual papal ritual has been for the Pope to wash the feet of 12 selected priests in an endeavour to mirror Jesus’ action at the last supper. Pope Francis sought to move away from this careful and beautiful choreography towards something more meaningful.

As Pope Francis did this, he symbolically took the place of Jesus and his message was the same. Jesus said, “If I, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” Pope Francis was saying the same to those who accept his leadership: “If I, you spiritual leader, have washed the feet of the elderly and infirm, the least you can do is treat them as human beings and honour them by serving them as you would serve your Lord.”

This is the most obvious challenge in the passage from John 13 for those of us who want to faithfully follow Jesus. If we were to stop with that thought, we’d have something worthwhile to think about on Maundy Thursday.

However, this is not the only challenge that faces us in the passage from John 13.

Let’s think about Peter’s response to Jesus. He says, “You will never wash my feet.” In these words is another challenge, which for many of us might be more significant?

So often our focus in the evening service on Maundy Thursday is on Jesus, and rightly so. His humility and servant love call for a response. And so, perhaps, we make a mental note to be a little more generous in the way we deal with other people. Or we feel something as the service progresses – our emotions are affected and we feel like behaving differently.

But what does the story feel like, if instead of identifying with Jesus, we take Peter’s place. … What was it that provoked Peter to say: “You will never wash my feet.”

Was it a sense that it wasn’t right? Perhaps Peter felt that a leader should not do something usually done by the lowest of slaves.

Was it embarrassment? My feet are so dirty, they’ve got corns and bunyons, my toes are mis-shapen. I don’t want you to see.

Or, was it embarrassment for another reason? Did none of the disciples want the job? Were they looking round at each other wondering who would crack first? And then shock, horror – it is Jesus who picks up the slave’s towel.

Or, was it pride? Under no circumstances am I going to be so demeaned as to have you touch my feet.

What do you think it was that provoked Peter’s response? .Take a few moments to think about this. …….

Then I’d like to ask you a few other questions.

In a moment or two, in this article, we will move on to think about the particularly unique circumstances which face us in Holy Week in 2020, but let’s for a moment stick with the story in John 13 and with our attempt to identify with Peter.

What is it that has governed your decision on Maundy Thursday in the past. When you have been presented with the opportunity in church to have your feet washed. What has it been that has kept you in your seat? Or come to that, what is it that propels you out of your seat to come forward to have a foot washed?

Let’s translate the same question into more general circumstances. … When someone offers to serve you in another context, or seeks to help you, what is your response? Would it be one of these?

‘I am not prepared to accept charity.’

‘Go away, I don’t want your help.’

‘What is in it for you?’ ‘There must be a catch!’

What governs/governed your decision? Is it, or was it, a sense of propriety? Is it, or was it, embarrassment? Was it pride? … Is (or was) your response like that of Peter: “You will never wash my feet.”

There is a phrase we sometimes quote: “It is better to give than to receive.” There are times, however, when the giving is easy and the receiving is so much harder. It is actually often easier to serve than be served; often easier to serve than to take praise for our service; it is sometimes easier to give than to receive. The real challenge for us can be the need to be willing to receive the love shown to us by others.

Perhaps you could take a few moments to think about how you respond to love shown to you before you go on to read the rest of this reflection. …………………………….

We are in very strange circumstances in 2020. It feels as though Holy Week and Easter has been cancelled. Not that they have, of course. Our additional challenge is to find a way to engage over the next few days with the most important stories of the Christian faith and to do so in a way that unites us as members of the body of Christ.

We have been told that Archbishop Justin Welby, “will not be conducting the annual Maundy Thursday public ceremony of foot washing this year.” [3] That statement was made before a decision had finally been taken to close our Churches to protect us from the COVID-19 pandemic. But it is true. No clergy will this year be washing the feet of members of our congregations. It seems as though many things now serve only to emphasise our isolation – the inability to share in the physical Eucharist, the loss of our regular services, the need to communicate only by phone, email, text, face-time and letter, the loss of physical contact with people from other generations in our families. All these things, and more leave us alone or even lonely – isolated from what means most to us.

Yet, the spirit of service, that essential commitment to caring for others, which is so dramatically played out in the story of John 13 is with us in the most purposeful of ways. There are those today who are choosing to touch what is untouchable, who are choosing to place themselves in harm’s way. There are those who, without the benefit of suitable PPE are touching and washing not just the dirty feet of others, but whole bodies as well, bodies that are infected and so are dangerous to touch. What seems to have brought isolation to so many, is also demanding so much from others.

The idea of foot-washing seems to be somewhat irrelevant in the context of all that is going on. The loss of the ceremony seems almost to be an unimportant footnote in the current crisis.

But the loss of this ceremony is significant. The loss of this, specific, personal contact is relevant. This loss is symbolic not only of all our other losses, but symbolic too of the selfless giving of others. I hope that in future years we will be able to see this ceremony as a focus for our gratitude that physical contact is once again possible for all of us, and as an act of gratitude for the love and care of others. I hope that we will all see having our feet washed as one essential part of the flow of the seasons of the church’s year.

References

1. https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/pope-francis-foot-washing-maundy-thursday_n_5166531?ri18n=true&guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvLnVrLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANEBjpyhkw1W-xYGm1dtHzvRW7NgD0A-lpDCNny11KZrixpVUQWfGBzUaxQCSMVBxn3UgeJQ6nCaYDvUufx6jZgAN3OfMF2900mqmw1qRyMNRo7VKbaCWJbCMfoeDTSxCM6TQihtitpRUt4sXcYnBHguAAtM3C7JZJVoNKrjBBJl, accessed on 5th April 2020.
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_washing, accessed on 5th April 2020.
3. https://premierchristian.news/en/news/article/welby-won-t-be-foot-washing-this-maundy-thursday, accessed on 5th April 2020.

Our Old Testament reading used the phrase, “I have set my face like a flint.” How might we phrase that today? “Go for it, no matter the cost.” “Climbing over dead men’s bodies.” “The end justifies the means?”

The phrase conjures up a sense of dedication and a refusal to be deflected no matter what happens. Determined, committed, purposeful.

It could be like a powerboat moving so fast towards its destination that its wash overturns everything in its wake. Real winners don’t put time limits on their commitments! They are committed with no conditions, and when they begin, they’ve made up their minds to finish!

Martin Luther King, Jr. said something a bit different: “If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michael Angelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.”

Ambition, determination, whole-hearted commitment to our goals are quite good things in themselves. Often, however, when our hopes conflict with the interests of others we can produce all sorts of justifications for less than generous attitudes and actions. Our readings speak of whole-hearted commitment. Jesus, on Palm Sunday, sets his face like a flint towards Jerusalem, nothing will stop him fulfilling God’s will – nothing will deflect him from the path of the cross.

Success for Jesus is, however, measured in terms of apparent personal failure. In Jesus’ weakness, God’s purposes are fulfilled. For Jesus to meet his goals he has to die.

In Isaiah, the Suffering Servant, sets his face like a flint into the suffering that is coming his way – confident of God’s help to endure. There’s no disgrace, no shame, in the torture he faces because he knows that he can trust God for his future, for his ultimate vindication.

How different these attitudes are to our own? We struggle and strive to protect ourselves. We’ve learnt to be self-reliant. “Look after number one – no one else will!”

We’ve learnt to see failure and weakness is shameful. Success in the world=s terms is important to our sense of self-worth. We cannot be seen to fail, even if that means that we need to put others down.

Is that a fair assessment? Is that what I am like?

Perhaps I need to ask my self a few questions. …. How willing would I be to embrace apparent failure, like Jesus did, for the sake of others? … Would I be prepared for you to think bad of me, to reject me – if I only knew that I was doing what God wanted?

But things are never quite as stark as this. Things are never that clear-cut. It=s in the smaller things that I need to learn to place the needs of others above my own, in the smaller things that I need to learn to set aside self-protection and look to the interests of others. So, what does Christ-like determination and commitment look like?

Our reading from Isaiah gives us a clue:

“The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens  – wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.”

Says Isaiah – we need the “tongue of a teacher” – the openness that doesn’t hoard knowledge (because knowledge is power) but shares it with others. Openness that shares ourselves with others. Openness which allows us to share the glory and praise with others. Openness that makes ourselves vulnerable so as to lift others from their weariness.

And, says Isaiah, it is not only a willingness to share but a willingness to listen. … We must not close our minds in some sort of self-righteous crusade. (We know what is best and we’ll do it. Blow everyone else!)

No. It was because Christ was open to others, vulnerably sharing himself with them listening to their needs, that he set his face like a flint to the cross. Because he loved of others – he chose suffering a death.

The challenge for us is to be so open with others that we are prepared, if necessary, to set aside our well-being, our comfort, so as to meet their needs. So, how do we succeed?

Jesus answer: “By becoming vulnerable, willing to die, willing to embracing failure.”

By accepting that Palm Sunday’s adulation will give way to Good Friday’s rejection.”  A very different measure of success!

Collect

Loving Father, whose Son Jesus Christ set his face like a flint toward the cross. Give us, your people, such love and compassion for others that we, like Christ, may be prepared to place others needs above our own. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Prayers

Let us pray for the world and the Church and let us thank God for his goodness. ….. Almighty God, our heavenly Father, you promised through your Son Jesus Christ to hear us when we pray in faith.

We bring before you the needs of our nation: we pray for those living below the poverty line, for the unemployed, the homeless, the dispossessed, those unjustly accused, those longing for justice.

We pray for all who govern and lead us. The Queen and her minsters of government, the opposition, civil servants and other government employees. Our Councillors and local authority workers. All who make decisions which affect our daily lives. We pray for the rule of law and that we will be justly and peaceably governed.

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

We pray for nations around the world, for regions of conflict. Bring peace to our world, bring to power those who seek not only for their own good but for the good of others.

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

We pray for your Church throughout the world, across all our denominations. Bring unity and a sense of common purpose in serving you. Help us to see Christ in one another and be alive to each others needs. Strengthen our bishops, church leaders and all your church in the service of Christ. May we, and they, place serving you above party spirit and narrow ambition.

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Merciful God, in silence we lift to you the names of those we love, our families, friends and neighbours. … Break down the barriers that we so easily erect, and open us up to sharing with each other in love

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Comfort and heal all those who suffer in body, mind or spirit – those whose names rest heavily on our hearts, …. those in our street, our parish, our community and further afield, who we don’t know, … those known only to you – all of whom need your healing touch. Gather them into the warmth of your embrace, give them courage and hope in their troubles, and bring them the joy of your salvation.

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Hear us as we remember those who have died, those whose funerals have taken place this week. May we, and they, share in your eternal kingdom.

Merciful Father accept these prayers for the sake of your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

A prayer over your Palm Cross

If you have been sent a Palm Cross, or if you have one from last year, please use this prayer and give the Cross pride of place in your home over Holy Week and Easter. ….

God our Saviour, whose Son Jesus Christ entered Jerusalem as Messiah to suffer and to die, let these palms be for us signs of his victory; and grant that we who bear them in his name may ever hail him as our King, and follow him in the way that leads to eternal life; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.

How do you feel about the future? Optimistic? Pessimistic? What fills you mind as you think about the next few years?

Can you look forward with hope at this most difficult time for the whole human race? Does Coronavirus fill you heart with fear?

What about the future of the Church?

It is easy to feel despondent. We’ve been told time and again that numbers attending churches are dropping, that the church is no longer relevant. The evidence seems to support a general air of despondency. And at times many of us will have wondered whether there is any point carrying on coming to church.

I’ve heard people saying things like: “It’s dry and musty, it’s not my kind of thing, it’s just like a bag of old bones – no life there at all. Why would I want to come to church?”

And yet for others of us, Church does not feel that way at all. Somehow God has reached out and touched us through the worship. Sometimes there is a tingling inside us when we think about coming to worship – and we say that coming to church seems to give our life a sense of purpose. We have hope for the future again.

For others, the presence of the church in the midst of life is so very important. It is the bastion against all that threatens to pull us down. It is the one constant in a shifting world, a place we can always turn to in an hour of need. And this current time, with the threat of disease hanging over us, is just such a time.

The readings set for Passion Sunday are long. But they clearly have one theme in common. New life breathed into dead bodies. It was obvious in Ezekiel, just as obvious in the raising of Lazarus. Both these readings have a sense of hope and life.

Both in Ezekiel and in the story of Lazarus the seemingly impossible happens. In Ezekiel’s case it is in a vision, in Lazarus’ case the story asks us to accept that he was raised by Jesus. Both are saying to us in their own way that the seemingly impossible is possible with God. God can even raise the dead! Ezekiel wants his hearers to believe again that defeated, hopeless Old Testament Israel can again be a living, dynamic force.

And Ezekiel’s vision was taken up as a primary rallying point for black slaves in America. “…Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones … hear the word of the Lord.”

And as generations past, hopelessness was transformed into belief and action. The slave trade was abolished and later, the sporting success of a person like Jesse Owen brought dignity and hope to black people. And people like Dr. Martin Luther King took on the establishment and brought an end to official discrimination.

Hope rose from the ashes of despair.

There have been other instances in the history of the world where darkness is defeated. The fall of communism and the downfall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the end of apartheid in South Africa in the 1990s.

And in our Gospel reading Jesus speaks into a tomb and raises Lazarus, prefiguring his own resurrection which was to take place only a few months later. Martha clearly believed in the resurrection, but for her it was something remote, something which would only happen come judgement day. …  Jesus wanted her to have hope now, hope for the present and the immediate future – and so he raises Lazarus.

It would be so easy for us to relegate hope and hopefulness to the hereafter. So easy for us to think that our faith only really works as we look beyond death and pray that God will accept us home to heaven. But ‘life to mortal bodies’ isn’t just for heaven. Life and hope are for now as well as for the future.

Just as in Ashton-under-Lyne we saw, 12 years ago, a new market rise from the ashes of the old – like a Phoenix. Jesus wants us to believe that he can through his Spirit breath new life into us as individuals and new life into our churches. We might feel small and insignificant, we might feel hopeless. But our bible readings talk of God’s Spirit energising and strengthening us.

All Lazarus had to do was respond – he could have stayed in the tomb, but he chose to come out into the light. Ultimately, all we have to do is to respond to what we see God doing in our churches and in our wider communities.

No doubt the signs of new growth will be fragile. They will need tending and caring for, they might even seem small and insignificant. But God’s Spirit is at work, we need to feel his breath inside us and respond, like Lazarus walking out into the light.

“If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,” says Paul in Romans, “he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.” (Romans 8: 11)

This is the theme of all of the lectionary readings set for this Sunday. … God’s life can and does reinvigorate our lives.

A very small congregation in a Church of England Church in Ashton-under-Lyne has been having a dramatic impact in its local community.

Holy Trinity Church in the West End of Ashton-under-Lyne meets for worship on Thursday afternoons. Its regular congregation is less that 10 people.

Visionary leadership resulted in the completion of a Community Centre in the church nave, and has resulted in the Centre being used extensively by the local community.

St. Peter’s Ward, in which Holy Trinity Church is situated, is in the 2.5% most deprived wards in the UK. The area immediately around Holy Trinity Church has a history stretching back to early Victorian times. Throughout much of its history the neighbourhood has been a diverse place to live.

After the Second World War the local community had a high proportion of Ukrainian and Polish Immigrants. More recently the area has hosted a cosmopolitan mix of different nationalities. The local Church of England Primary School has a delightful mix of children for many of whom English is not their first language. Predominantly children come from families that have their roots in Asia.

Church members in the later part of the 20th century became aware of the changing demographics and decided that the building needed to be a place for the whole community.

A series of grants were obtained to allow major work inside the building. Since the millennium, the very small congregation has first enabled significant projects funded by others to use the building and then more recently has sought grants and employed its own staff to address some of the needs identified by the local community.

Holy Trinity Church and Community Centre was awarded its first ‘Reaching Communities’ grant from the Big Lottery in late 2016 for a project to enhance prospects for women in the immediate community. That project has been running since April 2017 and has just received the news from the Community Fund of the Big Lottery that it will receive a further 3 years of grant funding.

Outreach workers employed by the church have been making a significant difference within the local community. Tameside College is now partnering with the Centre to provide much needed education at a level below usual college entry requirements. The local social housing provider, New Charter (Jigsaw), is funding a number of different projects with the aim of empowering local people and developing skills. Other partners provide, or fund, youth-work, martial arts, sewing classes and slimming classes. One group knits to support the work of neonatal units is a number of local hospitals, another provides much needed community space for older Asian women. The centre provided essential advice and guidance, in a number of languages, for those navigating the increasingly complex, often on-line, world of benefits and asylum claims.

The work at Holy Trinity is visionary by its very nature, as no attempt  is made to dictate to the local community. The work is founded on the understanding that a local community has all the skills needed to make its own decisions. Provided wider society, particularly local and national government and the National Health Service, is willing to provide sufficient resources without dictating to the local community then real change is possible. For many people this seems counter-intuitive, but this (asset based community development) approach has a proven record of success.

Dynamic project leadership is resulting in local people effecting real change.  Community members are growing in self-confidence, local people are developing their skills through being at the Centre and through volunteering. For some, moving on through a process we call ‘Grow Our Own’ into employment with the Centre or in the wider local community.

There is real hope and joy in the faces of many involved with this project.

This is Christian Mission at its best! The Kingdom of God is growing. Christians, those of other faiths, and others who profess no faith, working together to bring hope to one local community.

The grant award  secures this work for a further three years, until April 2023.