(You can view video of this ritual as part of worship services at our local church and our regional conference virtual annual meeting)

My friends, it has been a hard year, more than a year.

You all know what all you’ve been journeying through and the ways it’s been hard. I won’t presume to know.

But I am sure we all could use some healing water.

If Jesus, right now, were to come to you in love and wash your feet – and not only your feet but your hands and your head too! – If Jesus were come and pour those healing waters over you, over those parts of you that have borne your weight and the weight you carry, those parts of you that have labored and struggled, and strived and yearned these months and year.

If Jesus were to wash your feet  – and your hands and your heads too and your hearts –

What would be released? What would be washed away?

What names do you give to the dust and mud and callouses and weight and that you could release, could surrender to the healing waters?

I invite you write that down now –

Now, we can’t wash each other’s feet right now to help each other to release what all we’ve named.

But we can wash our hands, in our own spaces right now. Together even as we are separate.

These days the regular practice of washing our hands has been such an important way of caring for ourselves and caring for each other. What if we washed our hands as if Jesus were washing our hands like he washed the disciples’ feet?

An opportunity to be released of those burdens we can surrender to our savior.

So, let’s do that together

– we can take some moments now in our own spaces to go and wash our hands as a ritual act of receiving release, receiving cleansing, receiving blessing.

Feel free to pray as you wash your hands.

So, as you are comfortable, let’s take some moments to leave your computer and go now and wash our hands as an act of prayer

My friends, through the Spirit of the living God in Christ, may the living waters in your home be a blessing to you as they flow.   

“Holy God

Eternal Spirit in which we live and move and have our being

            Help us to immerse our very beings into your living waters

Help us to open ourselves to the ways Your love and your lifegiving power

Flows arounds us

Surrounding us

Supporting us

Cleansing us

Nourishing us

Filling us

Flowing through us, among us, beyond us

Interweaving us

As the streams and the rivers of these sacred lands

Interweave on their way

Trickling and rushing from the mountains and through the plains

Through the forests and the farms and the cities and the places of industry

Drawing from diverse terrains, shaped by diverse obstacles,

Flowing and flowing on –

These living waters that flow through us –

Joining us into greater and greater currents

Carrying us out together into the great oceanic expanse and depth

Of your Being –

O Holy One, our God!

In that expanse

In those depths

In that intermingling flow

Let us worship You,

Our dear Creator,

Creator of all.

Amen.”