The Art of Footwashing

Jesus knew that the Father had given everything into His hands, that He had come from God, and that He was going back to God. So He got up from supper, laid aside His robe, took a towel, and tied it around Himself. Next, He poured water into a basin and began to wash His disciples’ feet and to dry them with the towel tied around Him. – John 13:3-5

I am continuing to ponder the idea of doing “small things” right.

Jesus had a full realization of His authority, His origin and identity, and His destiny. He knew He was God Incarnate, so He washed the feet of His disciples. It sounds strange to us who are always concerned about appearances and status and decorum. Yet, to God, the act naturally follows the understanding. Who but God Incarnate, as Oswald Chambers said somewhere, can properly wash feet? Who but God Incarnate can do the most menial task with perfect awareness, love, and grace?

Anybody can do the grand and showy right. Man can create spectacles. In fact, the more corrupted and fallen we are, the better we seem to be at glorifying self.

But to do the menial mindfully and perfectly, we must have the mind of Christ, the attitude of Christ Jesus who did not exalt Himself – though He had every right to do so. To harmonize with the Spirit, we must be present in the task at hand. Perhaps this tells us something about the difference between art that is beautiful and transcendent, and that which may be called art but fails to transport. The transcendent artist is present in every stroke of the brush, every letter, every hammer fall, movement, or note – conscious only of the here and now – because art done right consists mostly of many small, discrete, unnoticed things brought together by spirit and vision.

Only fallen man can think of something like footwashing as humiliating, demanding, or a sacrifice. When we are caught up in love, the beloved cannot demand too much of us. There is no such thing as sacrifice.

Acting Right

Moses and Aaron went from the assembly to the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and fell facedown, and the glory of the LORD appeared to them. The LORD said to Moses, “Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink.”

So Moses took the staff from the LORD’s presence, just as he commanded him. He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.

But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I have given them.” -- Numbers 20:6-12

Just once I’d like to meet an alien menace that wasn’t immune to bullets. (The Brigadier – “Dr. Who”)

Or, in terms of Gagdad Bob’s ongoing ruminations on Balthasar, could we cut the drama? Why can’t we just, once in a while, address an issue with human power and employ our own efforts to get things done? It seems so much simpler, or at least more straightforward. You know, like instead of wandering around out here in the desert getting water from rocks and eating whatever this manna stuff is, we go in and kill off some tribe that has a river and some land.

It’s not so much that we want to do away with the drama as we’d like to use our own script, be the director, or at least ad lib a little. That’s all Moses was doing. The Bible, though, is all about types and shadows, depicting the universal in little vignettes that we can view and comprehend.

Moses wanted freedom and justice for his people. When he attempted to bring justice, he got forty years of exile in the desert. When he tried to give them freedom, he got – well, forty more years of wandering in the wilderness. Out of all the man endured, this single flash of anger in a moment of frustration denied him entry into the land of Canaan and the opportunity to see his people settled and established in covenant with God.

Moses is not innocent in this. He took matters into his own hand, something Scripture cautions against repeatedly. He knew what God had told him. He could not plead ignorance, though he did not necessarily understand the significance of what he was to depict.

What does it mean to get a spring of water from a rock? Water is Spirit and life. The rock is God. If we speak to the Rock – that is, pray, relying on the grace of God, the life of God flows out to and through us by His Spirit. When Moses struck the rock with the symbol of his authority, his staff, he corrupted the story. Instead of depicting a trust in God’s grace, he depicts God in slave-like subservience to human demands, to man’s strength and authority. Though the Lord loved Moses and understood his weariness and frustration, He could not endorse his actions and reinforce the spoiled object lesson.

We may err in different ways with the same result. I am nobody; no one will know; it doesn't matter if I do things my way. Another view is the sort of new-agey way: I am as a god; I can do as I will and have my way. Or, as Moses did: I know God wants this done; I am going to do it, and since I am "doing the Lord's work", it doesn't matter if I do it my way.

What I am ever-so-slowly coming to understand is that this is replayed in my own life. Obedience in small things takes on a new importance since my actions are channels for big truth to enter into the small, otherwise insignificant details of my existence. I don’t know if those bits of acting right – rather, I don’t know how those bits of acting right ripple through the fabric of reality. I know they do.

The Value of A Life

On Saturday, one of my wife’s older sisters passed away. She was in her early sixties, her life shortened by her lifestyle, by irresponsible behaviors carried on to the very end. Nevertheless, she will be missed because she was a very entertaining personality, loving to be the center of attention, but rarely a bore. She was always smiling or saying something off the wall for a laugh.

The sisters wanted a traditional funeral service with a preacher. She had no pastor – she had been baptized as a Catholic by her grandfather. When she was older, she usually attended a Baptist church. One sister wanted an Assembly of God pastor to do the service, but she also wanted the funeral to take place on Monday – Memorial Day, short notice. There was no way one was going to be found.

They asked if I would do it. That’s probably not as surprising as it might be. I spoke at their father’s funeral – or tried to – half the time I was standing there sobbing myself. We worked all night Saturday and a good part of Sunday morning getting pictures and music together for the visitation Sunday afternoon, and then for the service yesterday.

My sister-in-law lived a hard life in many, many ways. She suffered. For the last several years, she has been in various care facilities, often drugged senseless – sometimes because of pain, sometimes because it was the only way to keep her from hurting herself or the staff. There were probably only about thirty of us at the funeral, and we all knew her, knew her story. My mother-in-law sat staring at the coffin of her “baby” as I stepped up to speak.

We knew the value of that life, we who knew her well. Others might not see it the same way. The world might look at her as a drain on society, someone who contributed nothing but took a great deal to sustain. Some might think it would be better to be rid of her. I believe, though, that the important issue is what God thought of her life. What value did He place on it? Why did He value her?

In Psalm 50:12, God says, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you.” God was speaking to His people about sacrifices, explaining that they were not to “feed” Him, but for their benefit, to teach the people the consequences of their sin. God proclaimed Himself all-sufficient, independent of any need for human help. He is infinite, all-knowing, all-powerful, and utterly sufficient for Himself.

We, on the other hand are very needy and limited and lacking in power. We are not sufficient unto ourselves. There is always something missing. We always need something. We get tired, hungry, thirsty, discouraged.

How can we understand God? How can God understand us? Yes, He’s omniscient and our Creator, but does He see through our eyes? How could He know what it is like to be driven to despair, to be heartbroken, abandoned, fearful?

There is a great gulf between us, not only in understanding, but in the fact that we are sinful and He is holy. He cannot come and dwell in a tainted, contaminated vessel such as fallen man is. Religion attempts to clean man up, bring discipline. It even tries to make us spiritual athletes. But these efforts fall short. Our highest leaps cannot reach God. No tower can be built to heaven. What are we to do?

God, knowing we could not ascend, descends. Philippians 2:6-8 tells us how Jesus as the Son was very God in eternity past, how He laid aside His infinite attributes, humbling Himself to take the form of a slave and become obedient to death. In this He is able not only to provide the means of delivering us from sin, but He reveals God to man, and even man to God. Now God sees through man’s frame. He knows what it is like to live on this earth. He is now our High Priest “touched with the feelings of our infirmities”.

In John 4, we read how Jesus was in Jerusalem and wanted to return to Galilee. It said He “had to go through Samaria”. This speaks of His limitation, like man, in time and space. God can be everywhere present. Jesus knew what it was to have to travel to get where He needed to be. He and His disciples came to Jacob’s well in Samaria, and Jesus sat down to rest. Jesus was tired. The disciples left to get food. Jesus was hungry. As He sat there alone, He saw a woman approaching with a bucket to draw water from the depths of the well. Jesus looked at her, and He looked at the bucket, and He thought of the cool water down in that well. Jesus was thirsty. He spoke to her, “Give me a drink.”

Remember, God said, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you.” Yet now God asks a stranger and sinner for a drink, for He was thirsty and unable to get water for Himself.

If you go to Matthew 25:31-40, you will read a parable of judgment. The King calls the people together and divides them as a shepherd divides sheep from goats. To those on his right hand, the King says, “Enter into the joys of the Kingdom, for when I was hungry you fed Me; when I was thirsty, you gave Me drink; I was a stranger, and you took Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick and in prison, and you came and visited Me.”

The righteous reply that they did not do any of those things. “Yes,” the King says, “when you did it for the least of these brothers of mine, you did it for Me.”

Jesus identifies with us in all that we go through, with our hunger and our suffering. He takes it all as His own. If we can but receive this revelation, all suffering is suffering for Christ. We are yoked together with Christ – “take My yoke upon you”. He is bearing the burden with us. Jesus and I are suffering these things together, as one by His Spirit.

His blood has covered us and made us fit dwelling places for the Spirit of God. He sees our thoughts, our motives, and our desires. As Paul says, “It is no longer I that live, but Christ that lives in me.” My life is His life, and His life is my life. When I pray and when I worship, God sees my thoughts toward Him. In a real way He can see Himself as I see Him. Now He knows us perfectly, and someday we will know as we are known. With this understanding, our suffering, heartache, loss, and pain takes on a new and glorified meaning. The Lord knows what it is to be me. My suffering is now part of His “experience”. Nothing I go through is in vain; nothing is lost. All is purposeful and meaningful, because God is living it through me.

[My goal] is to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead (Philippians 3:10-11).

For God, who said, "Light shall shine out of darkness" —He has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ.

Now we have this treasure in clay jars, so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us. We are pressured in every way but not crushed; we are perplexed but not in despair; we are persecuted but not abandoned; we are struck down but not destroyed. We always carry the death of Jesus in our body, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who live are always given over to death because of Jesus, so that Jesus' life may also be revealed in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you. And since we have the same spirit of faith in accordance with what is written, I believed, therefore I spoke, we also believe, and therefore speak, knowing that the One who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and present us with you. For all this is because of you, so that grace, extended through more and more people, may cause thanksgiving to overflow to God's glory.

Therefore we do not give up; even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen; for what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (2 Corinthians 4:6-18).

An Encouraging Word: Bluegrass

As burned out as I have been at work, I slipped away early yesterday and took in some Bluegrass performances. Bluegrass often involves the work of families or family members -- the Monroe Brothers, the Stanley Brothers, the Louvin Brothers, the Osborne Brothers, the Whites, the Cox Family -- just to name a few. What I saw yesterday were all family bands.

The Downing Family from Catoosa, OK, is a Bluegrass Gospel group, and they are really a family -- Dad, two adult daughters, and a son-in-law, along with their banjo player, Dave Tindale. Luke Miller, the son-in-law, not only does great vocal work, but he does some decent guitar-picking in the breaks. The sisters' vocals are extraordinary. There was a CD playing before the show started, and, having never seen the band before, I did not realize there were two women in the line up -- on fiddle and mandolin as well as vocals. It was annoying me that I couldn't place the voices. I tried to get it to sound like Rhonda Vincent, Alison, or perhaps Claire Lynch but nothing quite matched. Then the band came out, the girls started singing, and I was blown away, and not for the last time.

The Downings were the middle group I saw. The first family band was the Stockdale Family out of Ohio -- a father and four sons. Calvin, the oldest of the boys (all home schooled like the Downing sisters), does most of the talking and singing along with playing the banjo. He's twenty-one and attending Hillsdale College. There's some switching off on the instruments, but the best instrumentalist in a group of very good pickers is the fiddle-playing brother -- who happens to be the Ohio State Champion in the under 18 class. Individually the boys do not have great voices but as a group they have a good, traditional sound. They also have a blast performing. Along with their wholesome sense of humor and stage presence, they put on a terrific show.

They have apparently been on the TV show "Wife Swap" in which they traded mothers with a Rap music family from Chicago. Having been informed of this, we watched as they changed headgear and launched into a bit of "Rap-grass". Afterward someone in the audience asked who wrote the rap number. Calvin explained that it was a collaboration, and, he added, "No offense to rappers, but it's pretty easy to write a rap song. For one thing we didn't have to write any music -- except our chorus."

The last group I was able to catch was the Walker Family from Palmer, Alaska. They are also known as the Redhead Express. The reason for this becomes obvious when the four teenage girls walk out on stage. The oldest daughter, Kendra, is a good guitar picker with flaming red hair and an impressive vocal range, and not just a range -- this girl is an artist. She can sing. I really was blown away, again. They also did one of the songs she has written. I'm glad they performed it before we were told the girl had written it. It's good. Dad and Mom are out there as well, and they are both excellent singers -- the father especially will do for a Bluegrass bass. With this group, the outstanding instrumentalist is again the main fiddle player. I apologize for not remembering the names better -- I think this one is Alisa. She's sixteen and doubles on the mandolin, which smokes when she takes hold of it. She seems to be an alto, but can sing much lower -- almost in a baritone range, as she did on a bluegrassed version of the Ernest Tubb classic "Thanks A Lot". This number included a touch of comedy with her younger sister, age thirteen, who pushed her way into the song with her big upright bass. Kendra may be the star, but if you see this group and don't fall in love with Alisa, have somebody live check your pulse.

The eighteen-year-old daughter plays the banjo, provides great harmony with her sisters, and is sort of a clown, reminding me a little of the part June Carter played in the Carter Family. She does something that not everyone can do, managing to bring the audience into the performance.

Even more laughs came with the youngest members of the family, three boys, came out on stage and did "Man of Constant Sorrows" in O, Brother Where Art Thou fake beards, hats, and bib overalls. Unlike Clooney, these boys, from probably age five to eight, did all their own singing.

I caught bits and pieces of a couple of other bands, the Gold Heart Sisters and the Next Best Thing. Both sounded very good, and I regretted that I was unable to enjoy their whole show.

What I saw were people who think like me -- not just because they love Bluegrass, but because they believe in family, in Christian principles, and in the wonder of life. Other than the Walkers, I don't know how many of these groups are singing Bluegrass for a living, but they are singing for life, to bring joy into the lives of others. Almost everyone except the parents in all the groups I saw were under thirty-five, most were under twenty-one.

It's easy to think all young people are like the ones who make the evening news, or who are portrayed in movies and on television as disaffected and disturbed. We notice the ones covered in metal and tattoos -- they want us to. We sometimes fail to see the kids who are "normal". The kids I saw yesterday were well-adjusted, informed, intelligent, and talented. They were not raised under a glass dome. They will faces challenges and suffer loss and disappointments. Some already have. They will be all right. They are the true descendants of the people who built this nation, and if America falls, they will be the ones who will build again, on the old foundations.

I feel better today.

Don't Stand So Close To Me

In their setting of their threshold by My thresholds, and their post by My posts, and the wall between Me and them, they have even defiled My holy name by their abominations that they have committed. There I have consumed them in My anger. – Ezekiel 43:8

God likes His space. Despite the multitude of stars, space is mostly, well, space. Detachment is an essential principle in knowing God. We usually call it separation, being set apart, or in more technical terms – holiness or sanctification. Back in high school, I wrote a bit of doggerel that summarized my understanding at the time: Detachment is wondrous; involvement is pain./ It’s better to watch than be caught in the rain.

What I didn’t realize, of course, is that detachment is not the opposite of involvement and that separation meant, often, living in the rain. At that same time, I had pinned to the wall in my bedroom a copy of Ecclesiastes 1:18 – “For in much wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”

Wisdom and holiness are closely related. Even in the most mundane things, we gain insight by “stepping back” either physically or mentally. We say that we “turn a problem over” in our minds and look at it from a different perspective. We speak of being too close to something to clearly understand it.

This helps to understand why the Bible talks about the “fear of God” – which is the beginning of wisdom. In order to know God, we must have some distance, respectful distance, you might say, from Him. You can get too close, too familiar, too attached to your piece of the Rock, and you lose perspective on the whole. There are groups of Christians -- or people who call themselves Christians, who get so heavily invested in some tiny point that they become all but demonic. The members of the Westboro Baptist Church – those misguided souls who protest the funerals of fallen servicemen – come to mind.

It’s another of those biblical paradoxes that in order to draw near to God we must give Him some room.

Once we have come to that understanding, we find this passage applies in a different way as well, for we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. We can’t let the things of the world get too close to us. We need space, a buffer around us. If the world presses in too close to the temple, our light cannot be seen by those who crowd around us. The vertical element doesn’t help here. It’s like entering the downtown canyons of a major city. You can see the tops of the skyscrapers from miles away, but once you are down on the streets, it much harder to figure out where you are. We need the horizontal separation as well. Holiness is not some whim God has. It serves a critical purpose. We are called to be a “peculiar people”, different than the secular sleepers who surround us. He wants us to stick out like sore thumbs.

Under Joshua’s leadership the Israelites were to follow the Ark across Jordan and into the Promised Land, but in order to go the right way, they had to give it space, allowing it to be seen by all.

And they commanded the people saying, “When you see the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God and the priests the Levites bearing it, then you shall remove from your place and go after it. Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure. Come not near unto it, that you may know the way by which you must go, for you have not passed this way heretofore” (Joshua 3:3-4)

The Free Willies *

And you have not His Word abiding in you; for Whom He has sent, Him you believe not.

Search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; it is they which testify of Me. And yet you will not come to Me, that you might have life. – John 5:38-40

There are cultures where reality can get pretty twisted, where they call good evil and evil good – I guess they do that in Washington, D. C., as well as in Hollywood these days. Yet all around the world there are people in whom the Word abides regardless of their upbringing or their education, or even their religion. A person has to have the Word abiding in them in order to respond to God at all.

Recently someone asked me if I believed in “once-saved-always-saved” which is a view sort of like Calvinism -- or Calvin-and-Hobbes-ism, or maybe Calvin-Ball-ism. My answer is, no – if the questioner means that by following some ritual or formula, however simple or complex, a person is somehow “saved”. That has always sounded too much like magic – recite the spell, uh, I mean, prayer and suddenly your shoes turn white and you’re Pat Boone. You walk out of church singing, “I got white shoes. I got Great. White. Shoes. I got white shoes.”

(Don’t worry. It’s an inside joke.)

I do believe, on the other hand, that once a person has a genuine encounter with God, in whatever form they receive, that person will never be able to get away. I haven’t been able to, and I’ve been trying for years. I mean, you can’t so much as get on the internet to look for graphic midget imagery without running across somebody talking about “One Cosmos Under God” or whatever. What’s the world coming to?

The more important question, then, is how does one have such an encounter? Obviously osmosis won’t get it. Jesus was walking around teaching, healing the sick, and raising the dead. People witnessed these things and did not believe Jesus. They sat down and ate bagels with the Lord Himself, got up and went away completely unchanged – except for being hardened in their rejection of Him.

Here Jesus pinpoints the problem. Unless a person has the truth in them, they will not accept it when they hear it. To embrace falsehood is to reject truth. If we decide to live the lie, to make ourselves at home in the deception, then the Word – which is truth – cannot abide in us. When we are offered life, we look at it like chopped liver and fail to recognize the inestimable value of it. We turn away.

The people to whom Jesus spoke knew the Scriptures by heart. They thought somehow this knowledge would lead them into a kind of immortality. People are no different today. They seek in science, technology, politics, art, and religion, and find only lies – not because there is no truth where they are seeking but because there is no truth in their hearts. The truth is all around them, all but shouted at them. Yet they do not hear.

It rings no bell. It does not resonate. There is no answering harmonious hum in the soul. It finds nothing to attach to. It does go in one ear and out the other. Jesus says later on in John, that the devil is coming but “he has nothing in Me.” The lie could not cling to the Lord for He had the Word fully abiding in Him – He is the Word. He is nothing but the Truth (So, help me, God). With too many of us, it is the other way around – Christ comes and He cannot take hold of us because He has nothing in us.

It sounds like a catch-22 – and genuinely Calvinistic – that we cannot respond to truth without having the truth abiding in us. There would seem to be nothing we can do.

Nothing? Hey, God can work with that.

For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ (John 1:17).




* See The World Famous Blog of JWM for information on the related "Jesus Willies".

Shake, Shake, Shake

For no man can lay another foundation except that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. – 1 Corinthians 3:11

I started to use a longer quote with the several verses which follow this one, but I stalled out on the enormity of this claim: No man can lay another foundation. It does not say that there are other foundations that are less adequate. If our lives have a foundation, it is Christ. All other ground, as the song says, is shifting sand. The raccoon readers will instantly understand what this does not mean.

We know that there is reality, and there is awareness. In the world today the rankest atheist owes his or her very existence to this foundation despite being unable to grasp or acknowledge it. The fact that the saints, whose lives are consciously founded upon this Rock, are salted into the world makes civilization as we know it possible. We may be only votive candles but we are light – lit, in many cases, by the blazing torches of the great saints we have encountered -- only candles, but without us there is no light at all.

If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?

The world wants to move on. The system may even give a nod to “values”, but it wants to smear Christ with talk of hypocrisy, control, and hatred, of witch hunts, and inquisitions. Now that people have been “enlightened” there is no longer a need for them to cling to superstitions. They are capable of creating their own foundation upon which to build.

In describing an antichrist Daniel speaks of one rejecting the Absolute and embracing a god of fortresses, or better, forces. The people of the world system reject the Ground of Being and look instead at the little castles erected here and there, at the signs of power. They worship not the Source of power but power alone. For politicians of every stripe the focus is on the accumulation and consolidation of power.

Science, politics, art, money, knowledge, et al – can these be foundations? Can anything be erected upon these pillars? The answer is no, unless these things rest upon the foundation of Christ. They can provide no meaning, nothing on which to stand in themselves. They are only methods for creating solutions or deriving support from the foundation. Though good and useful when built on the Rock, they are otherwise doomed to failure, deceptively promising something new but delivering only utter destruction.

Last Friday we had a derecho blow through with hurricane-force winds that spawned nearly twenty tornadoes in our immediate area. Last night another storm came and again snapped limbs and uprooted trees. Houses and schools have been destroyed. When the wind is blowing eighty miles an hour, you think about the roofers and the framers, but it all begins with the ones who dug deep down and poured the concrete.

Change is coming, baby, believe it or not. Ready or not. Storms can be outlawed but they cannot be stopped. Catastrophic events, wars, earthquakes, floods and famine will come no matter what the words on the teleprompter say.

Foundations are so expensive. Let’s spend that concrete money on a gourmet kitchen instead.

Alas, Babylon.