Wash and Be Washed
I have chronically dry skin.
Looking back at the Grow Christians pandemic posts for Maundy Thursday about the creative ways families shared this night’s ritual, part of me wonders if our church services can ever approach the intimacy of the footwashing done by family members for one another.
Do you remember observing Maundy Thursday at home last year? It felt like a quaint, one-time experience to share with our households, then years later share as a story with future generations of the family. Except of course, it wasn’t a one-time experience. We’re here again a year later with another Maundy Thursday at home.
As this article is being written, I am on the 20th day being home with my husband, two small children, and my mother.
Maundy Thursday offers a bookend of touch to Ash Wednesday: a touch on the forehead with ashes juxtaposed with the touch of hands, soap, and water on feet. These are fleeting moments of tenderness, thin spaces of vulnerability, connection.