Anybody who knows me knows that one of my working hypotheses is: “If you can’t make your point by quoting Bono or Dylan or C.S. Lewis — or if you can’t make your point by describing a Rouault painting, your point probably isn’t worth making.”

In downtown Tokyo there are not one but two museums given to the art of Georges Rouault, the Idemitsu Museum and the Shiodome Museum. The Idemitsu, in fact, is home to the gorgeous “Christ with Arms Raised” that graces the cover of With One Voice. So, I’ve been waiting for years to get to Japan to see firsthand my first Rouault paintings ever, and especially to admire “Christ with Arms Raised.”

You know where this is going.

Both museums, of course, were between major showings of Rouault’s works, so between the two museums there were but twelve paintings on display (which is exactly twelve more than I had ever been able to see except in art books). And naturally, “Christ with Arms Raised” will be “prominently displayed,” so we were assured, in the Idemitsu’s Rouault Retrospective which was to begin eleven days after we left Japan. Asked if there was any way we could see it anyway, we were politely rebuffed (everybody in Japan is exquisitely polite), “Sorry, it’s not even in the museum. It’s in our warehouse being prepped for the exhibition.”

But, my goodness, were the colors and the textures and the composition of the paintings we did get to see magnificent! I had no idea Rouault laid the paint on as thickly as he did. Or that his colors are really as vivid and as evocative as they are. Or that his clown faces could be as sad as they are up close. Or that his biblical landscapes could draw you in as effectively as they do.

My missionary friend Nancy Nethercott (she shows up in a later “Reason No. …”) and I talked about the attraction of Rouault’s vision for Japanese people — his sense of the way the sadness of life prompts hope for some sort of resolution from beyond, his sense of the way you can say more through less, something complex through simplicity of line and color. Maybe somebody needs to develop a series of lectures on “Georges Rouault and a Christian Apologetic for Japan.”

I’m grateful to Thomas Howard for Dove Descending, his commentary on T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets.” But why must Eliot be so pointedly obtuse as to need line-by-line decoding? (Though I suspect some of my students would think I find in Eliot a kindred spirit.) Having forced my way through “Prufrock” and “Hollow Men” and “Wasteland” last week, I’m ready for some words of redemption. I’m just getting started on “Four Quartets” — I love the notion of there being “a way up that is at one and the same time a way down,” but this poetry is tough going. (I hope I can get some help from Charlie Kidd when he returns from abroad.)

Last week while grading exams (almost done), I listened several times (and am doing so even now) to Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony. The Alpine Symphony, a tribute to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, makes Nietzsche’s atheism (or at least his quest for a “nobler god”) feel so, I dunno, so what? Brave?

Then again, if your best hope is to have your ashes parked on the top of the Himalayas in a Chock Full o’Nuts can (per The Bucket List, which movie Shari sat me down to watch this weekend, and which movie felt to me like an extended commentary on how to make Nietzsche work for you — even if the main characters do make non-Nietzschean moves toward relationships), you move past bravery into, well, again, what?

OK, I guess it makes a pretty big difference whether there’s a Redeemer or not. If not, The Bucket List is about as close to redemption as you’re going to get, I suppose. That said, I’m not sure a bucket list isn’t a bad idea even if (or since) there is a Redeemer.

What could be on mine? I’ve already killed a gator, hit a home run, played Bach & B.B. King, swung a samurai sword, driven (even briefly owned) a muscled up Mustang, kissed the most beautiful girl in the world, raised with her the three most vibrantly alive sons ever, written more than I have the right to expect anybody to read, spoken truth into the lives of half a generation of seminarians, seen tons of the majestic …

Before we leave Strauss, his Also Sprach Zarathustra (the whole tone poem) has inspired me to try to get the “Prelude” into my fingers on my Lucille and out through my Fender tube amps.

My head still hurts (that good hurt when your head feels like it’s taken in more than it’s able) from how rich the Institute for Worship Studies experience was this session. I’m grateful especially for bold prayers and wise counsel I received, and for the self-giving love I witnessed among strong-willed and talented worship leaders. It’s curious that my teaching partner and I are going through such parallel dysfunctions in church life. I love the church so — may all of us who love the Groom and his Bride help each other help Her not dress so ugly. I hold much promise of Her better adornment through my IWS friends.

Like I said, random thoughts … but, hey, it’s my blog.

Note to both devoted readers: I won’t forget about the other seven reasons for samurai sword training in Japan.

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality. • T. S. Eliot

Reason No. 10: The ability finally to “get” Bill Murray’s movie Lost in Translation. Somebody had told us before the trip, “Don’t worry about English. So many people in Japan speak the language, you won’t have any problems.” A preposterous lie. Our travel agent booked us into a businessman’s hotel — a Japanese businessman’s hotel. It wasn’t easy … I couldn’t tell if I was being told, “Your bank card overpaid us by 200 yen,” or “You owe us 200 yen more.” By virtue of the fact that we were allowed out of the country at the end of the week, I infer the former. Nonetheless, even when language was a problem, we kept finding people who tried to help. And it so happens that body language is a pretty amazing dialect.

Reason No. 9: A chance to get a very quick take on an extraordinary people and land. Japan is about many people and much stuff in small spaces. Emblematic: in the little bit of soil around an electric pole on a city sidewalk somebody, I observed, was grooming a lovely rose plant (of course, I never got around to taking a picture). Tokyo and environs are filled with electrical wires, over which you can easily envision Godzilla tripping. Plumbing pipes are on the outside of buildings (all the better for servicing — brilliant!). Cars travel on the left side (note, I resist saying “wrong” side) of roads, and people walk on the left side of sidewalks. Every time I got in the front seat, passenger side of a car I’d reach for a nonexistent steering wheel and start to adjust the mirror. And, oh, the variety of vehicles! My favorite was the Nissan Cube (rival to my beloved Scion xB — which, over there is called the dB). People don’t jaywalk. Bicycles are everywhere — and whereas bicycles in the U.S. are normally recreational, bicycles in Japan are for basic transportation. Thus, they all have fenders and baskets, and are almost all “female” (which makes a lot of sense, once you think about how much easier it is to mount and dismount when there’s not this crazy bar you have to lift your leg over).

The little bit of sightseeing our schedule allowed took us to Mt. Fuji on one day (in the vicinity of which stands Odowara Castle) and to Kurakama on another (home of a famous Buddha statue, and historic shrines).

Reason No. 8: Intense training. In the U.S. it’s awfully hard to come by tatami mats (the slicing & dicing of which is the basic point in the art of batto jutsu). Not to mention they’re prohibitively expensive (sometimes as much as $6 per mat to cut). In Japan, tatami mats are in abundant supply, and they are quite cheap (about $2 per mat to cut). So, while in the U.S. we might get to cut two mats a week, during our week in Japan we cut every day but one. I figure we cut about forty tatami in that week. I went to Japan fairly confident in my basic 5-cut pattern (godan-giri), but scared to death of the next-step-up 6-cut pattern (rokudan-giri). I felt pretty good about both when I left. I hope it was a turning point. We’ll see. At any rate, it was training paradise!

In this regard as well, it was wonderful just to be in Hataya Mitsuo sensei’s sword shop and dojo. Watching him work on swords, you realized you were witnessing generations of artisans — his samurai family served the clan of the great samurai Date Masamune (1567-1636). Oh, and by the end of the week, I at least had a name, “Kidd San” as did my son, “Young Man.” It meant a lot that Hataya sensei gave “Young Man” so much encouragement, sparring with him (not with live blades, thank you very much!), and giving him the last double mat to cut on the last day of training.

Well, how about some perspective?

OK, those little chores aren’t hanging over my head any more. That’s a pretty good thing. One less drain on the battery.

Plus, on reflection, it was great to be reminded that, recent setbacks notwithstanding, I am still able to afford a few simple pleasures, like the music of John Tavener and the prose of Wendell Berry. More, paying off reimbursements from preaching and worship leading at Lookout Mtn. Pres. two weekends ago brought refreshing memories of a healing time with old and new friends.

Reliving last weekend’s sword tournament gave me one more opportunity to give thanks that Randy has found something he does remarkably well … as well as one more opportunity to give thanks that, as event registrar, I’m learning to serve outside my area of gifting.

Recalling last weekend’s tournament also gave pause to consider what a “ruinous visitation” it was for my sensei’s sensei to expose a glaring flaw in my suihe (side to side cut) and to observe that I didn’t know yet how to aim the sword accurately. Change or die, for sure. (Learning how to accept “ruinous visitations” will have to become a chapter in the book: Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Coaching Little League, Training Dogs, or Submitting to a Samurai Sword Sensei.)

Moreover, I did get a couple of hours in Scripture yesterday … with no “preparation agenda” … just getting caught up in the flow of the narrative in Numbers and Mark. That was pretty cool.

I did get to talk with Bob and Charlie (yesterday was his 21st, and his first Newcastle), and wish them well on their spring break trek to MS to do Katrina relief work. That was pretty cool too.

Randy and I did get to cut some pool noodles. My new Hataya Wakizashi is absolutely amazing. Beyond cool.

And Shari and I did get to consider together that in a world that Ecclesiastes describes so keenly, nonetheless God is at work … and in his time and in his way, he will make all things right. Way beyond cool.

This Lenten season is providing a remarkable opportunity to rediscover the wonder of what was redeemed — from the brutally painful to the mind-numbingly mundane:

In a grave they laid you, O my Life and my Christ;
and the armies of the angels were sore amazed
as they sang the praise of your submissive love.

O Life, how can you die? Or abide in a grave?
For You destroy the Kingdom of death, O Lord,
and you raise up the dead of Hades’ realm.

John Tavener, Lamentations & Praises

I’ve just been through one of the latter. I feel like I’ve lived ten years in the last month.

Inexplicably, I woke up the day after being wondrously delivered from a potentially eternity-ushering-in auto accident with a listlessness that went to the core of my being. The switch was “Off” and I didn’t know how to get it back “On.” Truth is, I didn’t want to get it back “On.”

I soon recognized mine to be a condition similar to one that had set in on my father when he was forced to retire from teaching before he was ready. Dad tried to write, but when he found publishers disinterested, he sank into his recliner, put the Braves on TV, and pretty much went away.

Likewise, and to my surprise, after the accident I discovered I too wanted just “to sit and watch a while.”

Mercifully, my life is too full of commitments, my wife too determined that I live, and my memory too full of what I’ve learned from Josef Pieper, Os Guinness, and Carla Waterman about the fourth of the seven deadly sins, sloth.

Often confused with mere laziness, sloth is more a shrinking of the spirit than an indulging of the flesh. What makes sloth sloth is not the nap, but the fact that the nap is the response to the report that there is a lion in the street (Prov 26:13-14). Sloth’s nap has been a constant temptation my entire conscious life, but at no time more oppressively so than in these past few weeks. I’ve come to understand acutely the majority report: “There are giants in the land — if we follow Caleb and Joshua’s counsel, we will perish.”

A month later, and I’m back — but not without an unlookedfor journey into a dark place. Others, too, I suppose, teeter on the balance point between “Further up and further in” and “Whatever … What’s on SportsCenter?” So I thought I would chronicle a few of the tipping points that seem to have brought me back from the edge of the abyss.

Getting Perspective on Greg Davis’s Death. The day before my accident, I had blogged the way the Newsboys’ Peter Furler’s line, “If indeed Christ rose from the dead, everything matters,” was helping me gain altitude on the death of my friend and co-worker Greg Davis. Little did I know how much those words would become my own do-or-die mantra: “Everything does matter. Everything does matter. Because of Christ, everything does matter.”

Ironically, the Greeks’ term for sloth was akeideia = “indifference.” We’re not the first to discover despair of the soul. Praise be, there was One who was not indifferent to our state.

The Sale of the Mustang. I knew the day after the accident that the biggest casualty of the event was going to be my beloved 1965 performance Mustang — I was going to need to sell it to help replace the totaled minivan. As fun as the ‘Stang was for me, she needed the kind of attention either an owner-mechanic or a wealthy dilettante could lavish on her. As much as I loved her, she wasn’t loving me back enough.

That’s what I knew on days when the switch was “On.” The other days, it was somebody else’s fault.

The day I resolved that it was my decision and not somebody else’s, and that the decision was going to be made out of gratitude for the joy the Mustang has brought instead of regret over the fun that was no longer to be, I called the friend from whom I had acquired her, and I offered her back. My friend had rebuilt the car with his father and had entrusted her to me only to raise money for a life-event that, well, eventually turned sour. The loss of the car was part of that pain. The Mustang’s return was as much a part of his healing as it was of mine.

Two Car Deals. I parse Greek verbs, but break lawn tools. I married a financial planner who carries household tools in her purse. I married amazingly smart. This week I got to watch Mrs. Kidd in full glory: walking us away from one car dealer over a $40 insult fee, and closing two car deals at another dealer. I’m sorry to see her give up the big family camping van that she’d grown about as affectionate of as I had the Mustang. But she’s right: we’ve got to be thinking about life-at-$5-per gallon. So, for now we’re driving his and hers Scion xBs: I’m in “Lucille,” she’s in the “Brave Little Toaster” (until our 16-year old learns to drive).

Speaking at Tullian’s Men’s Retreat & in Chapel. Larry Crabb once observed that sometimes all you can do is live as though you know truth is true, until you find yourself believing it. Sort of a sanctified “fake it till you make it” philosophy. Twice during the last month I’ve had speaking engagements in which I’ve simply had to articulate truth that I know to be true despite my internal disengagement from its reality. In the process, it has become more real. Thanks to the men of New City Church of Margate, FL, where my friends Tullian Tchvidjian and Paul Manuel minister, for bearing with me while I reminded myself as much as them that the apostle Paul calls us to “take hold of that for which I have been taken hold”: a life of faith, hope, love, godliness, justice, courage, and temperance. And thanks as well to the faculty, students, and staff at RTS/Orlando for letting me reflect with them on the way Jesus calls us “Out of Sloth and into Hungering and Thirsting for Righteousness.”

Toward Denominational Bonhomie. Right now, my denomination is characterized by some pretty strong distrust. The default drive, I suspect, is for all of us to surround ourselves with people who think just like we do. That’s its own form of sloth.

It has been heartening to hear, of late, how many and what range of folks are saying, “We can do this. It’ll be hard, but we can work at getting to know each other better so we can define better what’s essential and then trust each other on what’s negotiable.”

ALCS Game 5. OK, so how can I briefly say how great it was for ex-assistant Little League Coach Len Hardison to talk me into flying to Cleveland with him to take in Game 5 of the ALCS? I have to let pictures of the (less than prophetic) freebie Tribe towel, my scorebook, and Len & me tell it all.

Beckett was lights out. Otherwise of note: Youkilis’ home run & triple (but what was up with Sizemore’s bad angle on the triple?). And why didn’t Manny slide at home in the first inning or hustle out of the box in the third? Oh yeah, Manny being Manny. Pedroia’s double … I love that Little Leaguer. Even J.D. Drew got a double!?! Holy cow, this was the start of his ALCS & Series breakout! And you gotta love the sweet talk between Beckett & Cool Papa Lofton. How fun to be there for the ALCS turnaround game.

Sword Testing. My 16-year old takes to the samurai sword like a sandspur to socks. I’m still a klutz. It has taken me three years to learn how to do “seiza” — that’s basically a sitting position where your feet wind up under you pointing backwards with the top of the feet flat on the ground and the bottom of your feet up against your rear end. If you’re going, “Ouch!” then you’re probably imagining it about right.

At any rate, this past weekend (on my 38th spiritual birthday, it turns out), I tested for my second rank (“nidan”) in the U.S. federation of our organization — and I freakin’ passed. (Appropriately, I’m still “mudan,” i.e., unranked, in the Japanese association.) Randall didn’t test because they’ve decided they can’t have 16 year olds showing up 56 year olds. Oh, and about a month before the event, I found out I was in charge of registrations — I may ever get this paperwork sorted out!

So, I woke up this past Monday morning and said, “Wow, Lord, I’m back. Thanks.”

The predominant lesson is one I’ve ruminated about before: the “way” of submission I’ve seen in my Scottish-bred, Key West-born sensei. He doesn’t cut corners. He has given himself in humility to learn what his Japanese sensei wants him to know. He has no patience with “know it alls” and self-promoters. He’s learned a power of greatness that comes from taking the lowly path. For my son and me, what we learned from testing is something we already knew: testing isn’t the deal — making progress in the art of the sword is.

A second lesson has to do with the cumulative power of little acts of obedience when combined with a master teacher’s powers of observation and timely guidance. It has only been since the spring that the sword thing has become enjoyable. That’s because there have been several “breakthroughs” for me recently — that is, finally “getting it” about certain mechanics of the discipline.
What it’s taken to finally understand things I’d merely heard for months was a combination of my doing the best I could over and over and over again even though I was doing things wrong, and my sensei’s sensing the timely moment when an individualized word could be heard — that is, his recognizing “teachable moments”:

“Throw the tip of the sword as though you were casting a fishing rod, like this….”

“Keep the pad of your left palm on the sword all the time, like this ….”

“On the left-to-right side cut, keep the right wrist cocked, like this….”

At long last, when I do my forms, I don’t feel like a klutz, and when I approach a tatami to cut it, I expect to cut it cleanly and with an angle that’s at least close. I’ve had to do mongo-numerific repetitions, but sensei had to offer timely corrections, otherwise I’d still just be doing things wrong.

By my daily practice, I put myself in the line of fire for illumination. By his attentiveness, my sensei metes out his best instruction when it can be heard. The whole dynamic is, for me, a window into the way God relates to those he’s adopted into his family through Jesus.

Lectionary Devotions. Not unrelated to the above has been my use of the lectionary for personal devotions. For years I’ve done Bible reading on a “read through” basis, trying to get through the whole Bible in English every year and through the Greek NT once a year too. The latter’s been fairly consistent, the former pretty spotty.

A few months ago I changed over to following the Presbyterian Church (USA) lectionary, where the typical daily pattern is: a psalm or two, an Old Testament passage, a paragraph or so from a New Testament epistle, and a Gospel pericope. In recent years, I’ve picked up more friends from a liturgical tradition, and I’ve been intrigued, first, by how much more actual reading of Scripture there is in their Sunday worship services (a topic for another day!), and, second, by what an oddly satisfying thing it seems to be to them to be reading Scripture daily in concert with a vast number of fellow believers around the world. They seem to have a keener sense than I of being caught up in a shared story with a worldwide, heaven-and-earth-transcending communion.

At any rate, I’m giving myself to the daily lectionary readings for now. To facilitate that for myself and anybody else who cares to join in, I’ve posted an RSS link to the daily lectionary from my website (in the left hand column of this page).

A few observations.

Every day I have at least one psalm to meditate on (I usually use the chants from the Book of Common Worship). The psalms — especially as sung — sort of force a more personal engagement, and remind me that Scripture promotes doxology and authenticity. Lex canendi, lex credendi. Sing praise. Understanding will follow.

Old Testament stories come in smaller bits. Following the lectionary, I’ll read about half a chapter a day instead of, like, three chapters in the annual “read through” track. That means the stories unfold a bit more leisurely, suspense building from day to day. Tracking Samson’s sorry tale over the course of several days, for instance, is quite a different matter than running through it in a day. You come back to him each morning waiting for him to wake up from his spiritual stupor and ethical torpor — but he doesn’t, until his days on this earth are spent. You see yourself in a mirror, and you cry out, “Lord, have mercy!” The Old Testament has suddenly become more like what it actually is, the poignantly dramatic unfolding of God’s story of his reclamation of this out-of-control planet he nonetheless loves.

No matter what, in the lectionary you always end with a gospel reading — that means (like any good children’s sermon) you always end up with Jesus. In the Protestant tradition that has shaped me, we prize the epistles (especially Paul’s), where the implications of Jesus’s coming — his death, his resurrection, and his guidance via the Holy Spirit — are spelled out. But the actual person — the one Martin Kaehler liked to refer to as the “historic Christ” of the gospel accounts — can go relatively unattended in our tradition.

It takes far more intuition and imagination on your part and far more illumining work from the Holy Spirit’s side, to go daily to the gospel accounts and get your bearings from Jesus. Today, for instance, I was reminded that it isn’t in Scripture as such that “eternal life” resides (we’re a religion “of the book,” so to speak — but the book isn’t the religion); rather, “it is they (the Scriptures) that bear witness to me. And you aren’t willing to come to me to get that life” (John 5:39-40). I realize the gospel writers are no less mediators of the “actual Jesus” than are the epistle writers. Nonetheless, through them I’m being reminded more directly my Jesus’s meddlesomeness, not to mention his refusal to be refashioned in my likeness.

From our first class to the time we were allowed to handle sharp swords and cut tatami (reed floor mats rolled up, rubberbanded, and soaked), it was six months. Six months of tutelage in how to take a dull sword out of its sheath and put it back in without losing a finger. Six months of trying to do “forms” that require our bodies to move in stylized, ritualistic, awkwardly Japanese ways. And then another year before being deemed ready to try to earn our first rank. In all, eighteen months of waiting to do “the good stuff.”

Our sensei’s attitude? “We’re not interested in students of the sword who are not students of ‘the way.’” He’s made it clear that if you’re going to be exasperated at “a long obedience in the same direction,” you’d be better off elsewhere.

Really, though, it’s been remarkably easy to submit to a man who himself has submitted to another.

Our sword teacher doesn’t come by his finesse with the samurai sword any more naturally than my son and I do. We share our sensei’s Scottish descent, as well as his deference-deprived Florida upbringing. For heaven’s sake, our sword master hails from the Conch Republic (Key West, to non-Floridians), which makes my Miami Vice South Florida seem positively Stepfordesque.

But he recognized that when his (Japanese) sensei came into his life sixteen years ago, the man’s claims on him were total. The Japanese sensei knew everything, the American student knew nothing. As obvious as that was on the first day, now that the student has himself become a sensei, he believes and acts and teaches as though it were still true that he knows nothing. That’s why his teaching is so commanding, his bearing so arresting.

I ask myself, “Isn’t this the power of Another who taught “as with authority”? What penetrating insight into the true state of things there is in the first-century Roman centurion’s words, “I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. Only say the word and my servant will be healed. For I am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it” (Mt 8:8-9; see also Lk 7:6-8). This representative of an occupying power recognized that in this lowly rabbi he was dealing with Someone who himself had learned an obedience unto lordship.

A little while back — and well enough into our apprenticeship to appreciate what we were seeing — my son and I got to help out at a competition meet. There we watched various sensei and their students from all over the country. The difference between groups where teaching and learning had been done out of a posture of submission and those where “self” was in charge was palpable.

It was at that event that my sensei was promoted to some preposterously high rank in the Japanese version of our U.S. sword association. It was a big deal (though the ceremony was sort of hard to follow, since it was conducted, appropriately enough, in Japanese). During the proceedings, one of our senior students whispered to me: “You know what this means, don’t you? They now count him one of them — they consider him Japanese.”

Here’s to the day when everything about me breathes the atmosphere of the City of God. Here’s to the day when people will look at my life and see nothing but the Master who has mastered me. It all seems so far off — still, I count on the promise of the “Son who learned obedience through what he suffered, and being made perfect became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him” (Heb 5:8-9). And I’m grateful for such a vivid picture of that promise in as unexpected a place as a samurai sword class.

What I wish for each of those who come into the orb of my life and ministry, perhaps especially for those who come to my seminary to train to do ministry, is a “coming under” someone like my sensei. All these aspiring servants of that other Kingdom are as much citizens of our submission-bereft, obedience-challenged world as I am. What I covet for them is the chance to be shaped by the power of a self-abnegation like my sword master’s. Everybody could use a sensei.

•

(This post first appeared at Common Grounds Online)

My whole life I’ve worked hard to avoid just such circumstances. The lowly place doesn’t become me. I don’t like feeling people are looking at me thinking, “Loser.” I’m a lot more comfortable in my own classroom where students ask me questions to which I generally have at least a half-educated guess. I don’t especially care to be on the other end of the learning curve: having to figure out if my next question is going be so inane as to get nothing but a shrug and a sigh in reply.

I realized how good the sword class is for me a couple of weeks ago, however. I was watching my seminary students do a footwashing service in a worship class. (Click here for a footwashing liturgy.) There’s just no slick way to wash somebody’s feet. It’s not even functional in our culture, especially when it’s been planned for, and everybody’s wearing clean socks! But even at this cultural remove, it’s easy to understand Peter’s incredulous protest: “Lord, you’re washing my feet?! … Never!!” There was something upside down about what Jesus was doing. And Peter instinctively felt ashamed to allow it to be done to him.

As John recounts the footwashing scene in the 13th chapter of his gospel, the scandal of the Bible’s lead storyline leaps off the page. The footwashing embodies the amazing parabola of redemption that Paul unforgettably narrates in his letter to the Philippians (ch. 2) —the pre-existing, majestic Son of God not only clothed himself with the fragility of our humanity, but endured the utter abasement of a Roman cross, only then to be raised to an even greater glory than was his in the first place. And all that for us.

It’s one thing, though, to see it on the page. Somehow we seem to have to go out of our way to get it pressed into our lives. That’s why footwashing is a good exercise. And that’s why I’ll keep letting my son keep me in a discipline that makes me look so bad.