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This is part of a series of posts based on the Churches Together in England publication one light: one world. If you click on the link you will find the biblical texts. This post of the same name covers the purpose of this series.
John 13: 3 - 15
Michael Scott was a Church of England vicar. When he was in his forties, after a substantial time as a parish priest, he had a vicarage next to the field in Knebworth that hosted a pop festival. His teenage son wanted to go but Michael objected on moral grounds. His son suggested he was being unfair and challenged him to go and meet the people himself.
And so Mick the Vic became known as the priest who visited pop festivals during the seventies and eighties. He became a hippy and washed festival go-ers feet.
Mick was one of the founder member of the Christian Praxis Group and once washed our feet. I don't know whether you have ever had each toe individually unscrewed, washed and then screwed back on, not necessarily in the right order? I swore never again as I hobbled away.
I wanted to tell Mick's story, or at least this small part of it, because it illustrates the importance of this story, found only in John's Gospel, of Jesus washing the disciples' feet.
We have lost touch with the reality of dirty feet in an age of shoes, socks and showers. Until a few decades ago, most people had dirty feet. I remember an exhibition in London a few years ago, with paintings by Raphael and Caravaggio. Raphael was the last of the artists who drew stylised devotional pictures, where angels and saints were all impossibly clean. Caravaggio normally painted only the top halves of people because then he didn't have to show their feet, which as a natural painter, he had to paint dirty.
The thing is we cannot ignore the fact that Jesus had dirty feet. It was usual for a guest to have their feet washed when they entered the home of their host. Many New Testament stories revolve around this custom, from the wedding of Cana in John, to the story of Simon the Pharisee in the Synoptics.
It is hard to imagine what the modern equivalent would be. Perhaps it is the vicar with his sleeves rolled up washing hippies' feet at a pop festival.
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