Foot-washing is the clearest example of a command the church has kept as a ceremony rather than as a practice. In first-century Palestine it was the work of a slave, and non-Jewish slaves at that; John records Jesus doing it on the last night and then saying he has given them an example to copy. Most of Christianity keeps it once a year, on Maundy Thursday, with clean feet and a photographer — the word Maundy comes from mandatum, the commandment, in the antiphon sung during it. Popes have washed the feet of the poor, of prisoners, and since Francis in 2013, of women and of Muslims, which caused a liturgical row. A minority tradition takes it as a standing ordinance alongside baptism and communion: Anabaptists, Mennonites, the Church of the Brethren, many Free Will Baptists and much of African Independent Christianity wash feet regularly and mean it. That the majority does not is a fair test case for how the tradition handles instructions it finds awkward.