April 9, 2020
I wrote about “feet washing” yesterday and I was asked by one of my readers for more details on this seldom seen Christian ritual. All I can tell you is what I experienced.
Bonnie and I were serving our first church, the Damascus (Maryland) Church of God. One of the members of the church – it’s been too long ago for me to remember who it was, probably Everett Shifflet, a precious man and a real saint of God – asked if we could have a feet washing before Communion, and I agreed.
The service was announced in advance so we could all wash our feet before coming to church, and have on clean socks. The men went into one part of the building – it was a storefront church whose rooms were partitioned by curtains – and the women into another, where we removed our shoes and socks.
Then, on the men’s side at least, we dropped to our knees, laid a towel across our laps, and washed one by one, each man washing one man’s feet. I assume the ladies followed the same pattern. That was back in the bygone era when ladies wore panty hose, and Bonnie commented that she hoped we wouldn’t do feet washing again too soon.
We left Damascus for Erie, PA before Jennifer was 2, so I know the intervening 5 decades have changed things. But this is Main Street, and I think that is the building – now very different – where the church met. I found Bethesda Church Road, where we rented a house, but I don’t remember the house number.
There are classes in computer science, business, humanities, personal development, art and design, health and medicine, mathematics, education and teaching, and more. In fact, they advertise more than 1500 in a wide variety of subjects. Some on the site are for pay, the others are free – just look for a class that advertises “audit.” When you click on it, you will be offered a chance to pay for the class and receive a certificate, or you can continue with audit and do it for free. I have started a history course called “The Mediterranean, a Space of Exchange (from the Renaissance to Enlightenment).” I’ll let you know how it is.
👉 With at least 42 states issuing statewide stay-at-home orders many have questioned the goings-on in Wisconsin. On Tuesday long lines of voters were waiting at the polls in Wisconsin. In spite of the pandemic it was politics as usual as the state’s Democratic governor and Republican legislative leaders refused to compromise and put everyone who went to vote at risk of their lives.
Governor Tony Evers ordered Wisconsin’s schools closed on March 17, and issued a stay-at-home order to state residents that is scheduled to last until the end of April. All well and good, but then the whole thing goes up side down.
Governor Evers first supported proceeding with elections, but with all voters to receive ballots by mail, and a time extension to let all of those absentee ballots be counted. The Republican leader of the state Senate, Scott Fitzgerald, rejected Evers’s all-mail proposal, as not “logistically feasible.” Absentee ballots that had been previously requested (a record 1.3 million) and were postmarked by election day will be counted.
Last Friday, four days before the election, Evers finally called for it to be postponed until May. The legislature’s leaders at a special session again rejected his request, gaveling in and out of its special session in seconds, and proposed no alternative to Evers’s plan.
On Monday Evers issued an executive order that postponed in-person voting until June. The legislature’s leaders immediately sued, challenging the order as an unconstitutional overreach, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in their favor.
According to the National Review, the predominantly Republican city of Waukesha consolidated its normal 15 polling places into one. The predominantly Democratic city of Milwaukee consolidated its normal 180 polling places into five. And a shortage of poll workers state wide produced similar results elsewhere.
Voters wait in a line, which continued a few blocks south of the polling location, to vote in the presidential primary election while wearing masks and practicing social distancing at Riverside High School in Milwaukee, Wisc., April 7, 2020. (Photo by: Mike De Sisti, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).
👉 “When it was evening, he reclined at table with the twelve. And as they were eating, he said, ‘Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.’ And they were very sorrowful and began to say to him one after another, ‘Is it I, Lord?’” (Matthew 26:20-22).
We know the end of this story. We know it is Judas, who for whatever reason – greed, politics, hurt feelings – betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. So we are not surprised when we read that Jesus announces that His would-be betrayer is sitting at the table with Him.
But don’t miss the power of verse 22. Each one of them, one after the other, asked, “Is it I, Lord?” All twelve of them. No one pointed a finger and said, “I know! It’s Judas!” Meaning what? Meaning that each of them knew that deep down inside, they possessed the capacity to turn away from Jesus.
They had each walked with Jesus for three years. They had each seen the miracle of the water turned into wine. They had each seen the miracle of the loaves and the fishes. They had each seen Lazarus transformed from a stinking corpse into a living man. They had each heard Jesus speak as no one had ever spoken before. And yet each of them asked, “Lord, is it I?”
Only one of the twelve asked that question from a heart committed to betrayal. The other eleven asked it from sensitive hearts, personally grieved that the possibility to betray Jesus was just a word or a gesture away.
Is that potential within me?
Those who love Him the most, guard that relationship the closest.
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