Subverting hierarchy: Washing the disciples feet

Here is my sermon based on John 13 from today's Maundy Thursday Eucharist  at St Stephen Walbrook:

Jesus had a marvellous way of subverting people’s expectations. He did it when he called on the one without sin to cast the first stone. He did it when he rode into Jerusalem as a King but on a donkey, not a charger. And he did it in this story too; when he, their Master, served the disciples by washing their feet. He continually turned the expectations of the people around him upside down.

It was normal for a servant to wash the feet of those who came to visit and there would have been nothing unusual in a disciple washing the feet of his rabbi. These things reinforced what people thought of as the normal, natural, hierarchical order of things where some were masters or teachers and where such people had the right to lord it over those who were slaves or disciples.

What Jesus did in acting as a menial slave to his disciples turns the normal order upside-down. This is why Peter declares so forcefully, “Never at any time will you wash my feet!” What Jesus is doing is, in the words of Lesslie Newbigin, “a total subversion of good order as we understand it, and as the smooth operation of human affairs seems to require”: “All normal management procedures require chains of authority. All of us except those at the very bottom have a vested interest in keeping it so, for as long as we duly submit to those above us we are free to bear down on those below us. The action of Jesus subverts this order and threatens to destabilize all society. Peter’s protest is the protest of normal human nature.”

Jesus’ action also echoes that of Mary who washed his feet with a precious ointment and dried his feet with her hair. So, in washing his disciples feet Jesus, as a Master, does not only take the place of a servant but also affirms and follows the example of a woman; again, a radical, destabilizing gesture within a patriarchal society. 

Jesus goes further still in his explanation of what he has done. As Newbigin explains: “If Jesus had said: “Since I have washed your feet, you must wash my feet,” then we would have been fighting with one another for the privilege of being first with the basin and the towel. Then the old order of pre-eminence would have been restored, thinly disguised under the name of “service.” The “Chief Minister” would have become the old ruler under a new name.” But Jesus says something very different which negates that possibility. He actually says, “You ought to wash one another’s feet.” This is a statement that subverts and replaces all normal human patterns of authority. Imagine the task of drawing up a management chart in which A is subject to B, B is subject to A, C is subject to A and to B and A and B subject to C and so on.

“Yet this is what is called for. The disciples are to be – literally – “servants of one another” (Gal 5. 13). This is about equality but it is not an equality based on human rights. Instead, this is an equality based on the fact of Jesus, our ‘Master’, making himself the slave of all of us equally. He laid down his life for us and out of love for all that he has done for we are to serve our neighbours.

In other words, in order to serve others in this way we need to know who we are in Christ. We need to know that we are loved unconditionally by him, that we are accepted as we are and loved by him although we are still sinners. Each one of us goes through life looking for love but it is only when we know we are loved by God that we can relax in a love that is not going to change or to fail us. Having that security and confidence in our loves frees us to serve others in this radical way.

It is what we see at the beginning of this story. Jesus knows that the Father has given him complete power; he knows that he has come from God and is returning to God. The security of this knowledge means that he can rise from the table, take off his outer garment, tie a towel around his waist and wash the feet of his disciples. The action flows directly from his sense that he is loved by God and is right in the centre of God’s will for his life. The sense of security that this provides means that does not have to worry what others think of him; nor does he worry about status and hierarchy. Instead, he is free to serve others, to love others, to give himself for others in the same way that his Father does.

The reality is that Jesus had that knowledge and sense of security in God’s love throughout his ministry but it is in this story that the Gospel writer makes this plain to us, so we can grow into the same sense of security and through that gain the same ability to serve others.

Peter protested at the thought of having his feet washed by Jesus not understanding that Jesus wanted to draw him into a deeper appreciation of God’s love for him. Today, like Peter, we too need to be drawn into that deeper awareness of God’s reaching out in love towards us. As we know and respond more deeply to that love tonight, Jesus challenges us to do what he has done for us; to wash the feet of others by sacrificing ourselves for others. 

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Graham Kendrick - The Servant King.

The Virgin Birth and the Resurrection: Subverting Patriarchy

I’ve just returned from a day at Greenbelt where one of the most interesting sessions I attended was a panel discussion exploring whether we can re-imagine marriage. This was chaired by Vicky Beeching, who rightly received a standing ovation on arrival for her bravery in recently coming out. Her panellists were Linda Woodhead, Sarah Miles and Robert Song.

Linda Woodhead briefly summarised the history of approaches to marriage within Church history. All marriages were civil contracts until part-way through the medieval period, only becoming predominantly church ceremonies at the Reformation. Affirmation of the nuclear family is much more recent phenomenon with the Church. The Church has, therefore, viewed a spectrum of relationships – some formal, some informal – as marriage across its history, with celibacy often being the primary stance recommended. Since the 1970s, the numbers marrying within our society have been in decline, while within these numbers civil marriage has grown significantly. One consequence has been that society is accepting of a greater diversity of relationships.

Sarah Miles spoke from her own experience of same-sex marriages as a sign of the radical inclusion to which Jesus’ ministry points. God’s love is at work to bind all people together and equal marriage can be a sign of this reality.

Robert Song suggested that sex before Christ is not the same as sex after Christ. Much of our thinking about marriage is based on the creation patterning of Genesis 1 and 2 and this is also the case with Jewish identity which is based on genealogy. In Christ, however, membership of God’s people is not based on shared ancestral blood but on the blood of Christ, and, as a result, the hope of having children is not intrinsic to the Christian community (as demonstrated by its affirmation of celibacy). In Christ, procreation is no longer central. The resurrection changes everything. If there is no death, there is also no need for birth or marriage. Therefore, Jesus said that in heaven there is no marriage. This makes non-procreative covenant partnerships possible – with a focus on faithfulness, permanence and fruitfulness - as a third vocation (after marriage and celibacy).   

For me, this made connections with some of my thinking and reading during my sabbatical. On my sabbatical I visited lots of churches which were dedicated to Our Lady and, as a result, had thought rather more than usual about her significance for Christianity. Martin Jay in ‘Force Fields’ suggests that the monotheistic religions of Judaism and Christianity sought to replace “their mother-goddess predecessors with a stern patriarchal deity.” At times on my sabbatical the Protestant in me has wanted to argue that if that is so, the significance that Mary gained within Catholicism, in particular, could be seen as an attempt to redress the balance and reintroduce a mother-goddess to Christianity.

As a counter-balance, though, I’ve also seen a number of churches and chapels dedicated to St Joseph. At Aylesford Priory, where I had my first sabbatical retreat, St Joseph’s Chapel contains the following inscription: ‘The wise and faithful servant set over your family as guardian and fosterfather of Jesus Christ our Lord.’

One of the art books that I read during my sabbatical offers a different and more helpful perspective on the Virgin Birth and patriarchy which is, I think, closer to the subversive nature of Jesus’ words and actions. It seems to me that the significance of the argument which Thierry De Duve advances in ‘Re-Enchantment’ begins with the existence of two creation stories at the beginning of Genesis. In the first, men and women are created equal while in the other the woman is created by God from the man's rib as a help-meet to him and is named by him as well as taken in the context of marriage. The second story, therefore, institutes or confirms patriarchy. The primary purpose of patriarchy is to assure the man of the legitimacy of his offspring.

De Duve quotes Amelia Jones: “Patriarchy's investment in systems that ensure proof of authorial possession results from the necessity of overcoming male anxiety over the ultimate uncertainty of biological paternity. Although the woman always knows she is the mother - through her physical connection with the developing foetus - the man never knows for sure that he is the father, and thus has a high stake in maintaining a system by which he can claim paternal ‘ownership’.”

Genealogy plays a very important role in Patriarchial systems. The Ancestors of Christ windows at Canterbury Cathedral originally consisted of eighty-six life-sized seated patriarchs of the Old Testament, largely based on the list of names contained in the Gospel of St Luke (III, 23–28) and interpolated with additional names from the Gospel of St Matthew (I, 1–17). It was the largest known series of the genealogy of Christ in medieval art and the images represent his male biblical genealogy, beginning with Adam and coming forward to King David, from whom Mary and Joseph are said to descend. Matthew’s genealogy is, of course, strange in that it is traced through the ancestry of Joseph who, by virtue of the Virgin Birth, did not have a blood relationship to Jesus.

The anomaly of Jesus’ genealogy may highlight a different perspective i.e. that the Virgin Birth subverts patriarchy. Joseph is not the father and does not know whether Mary has slept with another man or not. The Joseph-based genealogy of Jesus is by adoption only. A different role is asked of Joseph from that of the Patriarch. As the inscription in the St Joseph’s Chapel at Aylesford Priory reads: ‘The wise and faithful servant set over your family as guardian and fosterfather of Jesus Christ our Lord.’

De Duve suggests: “The great invention, the great coup of Christianity, is to short-circuit all this [i.e. patriarchal ownership through genealogies] … the production line of sons is brought to a sudden halt … And the status of woman changes drastically … Virgin and mother, rather than virgin and then mother! and then mother-in-law, and then grandmother, and then old. This means that her function is no longer to take her place in the production line that fabricates sons. One Son is enough. He will have no offspring. He will save the world instead …”

Jesus' birth occurs outside of or at a tangent to the Patriarchal system. He is a man who doesn’t marry and who has no physical offspring - the furtherance of his 'seed' is of no interest to him. His emphasis is on his followers as his family, rather than his blood and adoptive relatives. His death is for the entire family of God - all people everywhere.

On the one hand, this seems a part of what it means that: “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come.” Also, as St Paul suggests in his discussion of marriage, the new situation created by Christ means that it is better not to marry. Physical offspring is now less important than bringing people into the family of God and the make-up of that family takes us back to that first creation story as in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free; all are equal.

Putting De Duve and Song’s arguments together, therefore, suggests that both the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection subvert the patriarchal system and the necessity of creating physical offspring in families meaning that, in the present, relational and family structures in society can be diverse while in the future family of God, marriage is no longer necessary and equality will be the norm.

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U2 - Ordinary Love.

A self-subverting tradition

'In troubling times, the church is in danger of betraying its roots by becoming a cultural fallout shelter – a place for those bruised and broken by fractured foundations to immerse themselves in a warm bath of nostalgia. The water is scented with a faint whiff of Christendom, from days of glory past. While all this might provide some temporary respite and comfort, we would have to wonder if providing an ecclesial day spa is the intended role for a community that bears the name of Jesus. It would pay to take some interest in the waters in which we’re bathing. That foul soup carries the stench of the torture and oppression of innocents; the diminution of women; the theme song for the holocaust; the sexual abuse of children; the legitimation of war; the oppression of every sort of minority; the persecution of dissenters; the abuse of authority and the accumulation of power.

The challenge before us is to overcome the fear of the future, and give up our museums of cultural power for the sake of risking authenticity. It may well be that the storm we resist is God’s invitation to partnership. We travel across the border, or we stop travelling altogether. If we are to regard the future with hope and anticipation, and cross the threshold, it will bring cultural and theological dislocation. Like Peter, we will need to confront our own resistance to the rules being changed part way through the game. Our encounter with the surrounding world and with God must allow new insights. We have a self-subverting tradition that at least provides a model for such a strategic evolution.'

Mike Riddell, The Ferguson Lectures August 2011 - Forbidden Flesh: Subversion & Encounter, Lecture One: A Brief Fling with an Open Future

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Chagall Guevara - Escher's World.