Of Dirty Feet and Hair

I’m gonna just dive right in here straight, no chaser, shaken not stirred.  Mary, Lazarus’ sister washed Jesus’ dirty feet with her hair (her glory, her crown) (Revelation 2:10, 3:11, 9:7) (I Corinthians 11:15) in chapter 12 of John’s gospel before Jesus washed the feet of His disciples in chapter 13.  Hmmm.  A woman again steps out first and lays it all on the line for a man – her body, her tears, her reputation, her glory.  Under a man’s dirty feet.  She wore no wigs, or extensions.  It was all her hair.  She wasn’t fake, but she was the real deal.

Dirty feet, crusted with donkey and camel manure, mixed with dirt and dust from how many days?  Okay, how many hours?  Does it really matter?  Dooky is dooky.  Dirt is dirt.  And a woman’s hair is on her head around her face and shoulders.  Mary took the daily stench of walking and being strangers off of Jesus and bore it upon herself, wiping his feet clean with her tears and perfume.  Do you realize how much water she needed to clean His feet?  She did some heavy duty weeping, with her face on His feet.  Have we ever wept like that where a bowl of tears could be collected from our eyes because of . . . love?

I don’t just lay it all down at your feet Jesus – my glory that is:  my (hmm, are they really mine since they all came from Him in the first place?) talents, gifts, anointing, charisma, fortunes, fame, education, beauty, shapely and muscular body, etc.  Those “beautiful” things that I wear on the “top” of my head; Those things that define my personality; Those things which identify me to the world and create around me a fan base who follow . . . me?  Oh Jesus I lay them all down at your feet, but not only that, but I wash your feet with all of my accomplishments, my tears of pain and gratitude for what you’ve done in, for and to me, and the perfume of my life, my praise and worship and adoration because of Who YOU are.

Then Jesus turned around and washed the dirty feet of His disciples, a bunch of judgmental, proud, wealthy, arrogant, selfish, critical, muscular, fishy smelling, educated doctors and lawyers and tax collectors, always sleeping when they should be praying, athletic and competitive writers over flowing with testosterone cowards, Benedict Arnolds, snitches, thieves, backbiters, often wanting to use God’s fire from heaven to burn up people, places and things, MEN.  There were no women in that room in John’s gospel account, and if there were, he on purpose did not bring attention to them.  No, it was a man’s world where Jesus let down His hair before them.  Jesus became vulnerable before them, to and with them.  He took that part of themselves that they hated (and loved) in and about themselves and others, and washed it.  He took that part of themselves that they used to judge and reject others, and themselves, and washed them.  He touched them – man to man with no sexual connotations, no gender identity issues, no, not at all.  Brother to brother, Father to son.  

Jesus ministered to the hurting little boys hidden away inside each of them.  He reached out and touched them where they had been raped, molested, abused, accused and misused, but which had been covered up by their family names, education and professions, their zoot suits and Stacey Addams sandals, their Louis Vuitton man-bags, and Cartier earrings.  Oh what they had so successfully hidden from others with their affluence, attitudes and arrogance, Jesus respected them enough to wait to uncover behind closed doors, by washing their feet.

To touch someone’s feet is a very intimate act but because most of us do not care very well for our own feet, and because most feet are not beautiful and carry a very bad odor, we reject the feet – one of the most sensual parts of the body.  But every single organ in the body can be located in the feet by a trained masseuse, and they can identity internal problems through the feet as well.  Could this also be what Jesus was doing by washing their feet?  Ministering to their internal disorders by touching their feet?  See, we don’t know exactly how many hours He was with them in that room, but we do know that He washed 12, not one or two, but 12 pairs of stinking and dirty MEN’s feet – not women and children.  But cantankerous “You shall not wash my feet” know-it-all men. J

Imagine a women’s hair, nail and foot salon with the fans blowing, chemical fumes, hair hanging and flying around everywhere, children in strollers crying and hungry and chatter chatter chatter, all day long.  You just got back from one didn’t you?  Okay now imagine a men’s barbershop – arguing, politics, religion, young and old, testerone flying, competition, television, news, sports, laughter, profanity, gays and straights, just LOUD.  Well, Jesus had twelve clients that evening and He washed not only their physical feet, but their souls with His love.  This took some time.

Then He told them to do the same for each other.  Hmmm.  When was the last time you washed and massaged someone else’s feet?  Literally?  After much walking, carrying heavy bags and luggage, singing and dancing and preaching on stage, the feet take a licking and have to keep on kicking.  When was the last time you or I reached out in purity and innocence - the Spirit of Jesus’ love (WWJD) and washed and massaged a sister or a brother’s tired feet?  When was the last time someone did this for you?  For me?  Physically?  Spiritually?

Now I don’t expect anyone to wash the feet of others with their hair and not even with the removable kind, but a nice gentle foot soak and massage can do wonders for the soul and body.  Oh, and then to pray for them at the same time.  What a holy moment!  Laying our glory at each other’s feet.  If those of us who say we are disciples of Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God, would do this to and for each other, egos would die, humility would be birthed and increase in us at such a powerful rate, and so many of us would experience inner healing from our hidden and secret pains.  If the Bible had not told us her name was Mary, I would ask “was her name Rapunzel?”  J

Peace.

Congestion

When we wake up in the mornings, even if we don’t have a cold, we experience minimal congestion in the sinuses and chest area, especially in geographical regions where the climates change drastically from hot to cold and the seasons like to play with our minds.  When we begin drinking water and hot fluids, this stuff we call mucus and/or phlegm beings to break up, become diluted and flows more easily from the body through our coughing, swallowing, or blowing the nose.  In times of extreme colds and flu season, the mucus build-up may be so great that it becomes a film over the eyes.  When one suffers from a “head cold” the congestion can fill all of the cavities in the head causing stopped-up ears, nose and watery eyes (and dry eyes) as the eyes do their job of trying to wash this stuff away.  The doctor will take his light and look into your eyes, throat, nose, and ears to see how badly the cavities (caves, holes) are filled.  You probably talk with a nasal sound and thus everyone can see that you are suffering from congestion.

Things just are not flowing and moving as they normally do and should.  Something has happened along the way to slow things down, and now even you have been slowed down to a snail’s pace in your daily life and affairs.  All you want to do is lie down and be still, but your Megamind bids you to get up and get out, and get on with life, otherwise nothing will work without you.  WRONG!  Life will go on, with or without you, but how you deal with the congestion before you (without you) will decide how and whose life goes on – with or without you. J

Most illnesses and diseases in the body and soul are reactions to some kind of outside “substance” or stimulus.  For every kind of information we receive into ourselves through our five senses and our sixth sense – the mind – the body has a response and/or reaction to.  The body must process everything we do or don’t do whether positive or negative, short termed or sustained and part of its response is to release chemicals from certain organs which travel in the blood to and through all of the other organs.  Picture in your megamind (just love this word and the movie too) a highway with many exits and entrances.  Traffic is coming on and off all day long at fast and slow speeds. Vehicles with poorly maintained engines and such, giving off pollutants into the vehicles behind them.  Cough!  Yuck.

On weekdays when everyone is going to work at the same time is usually when traffic jams (not jelly) occur, and because of impatient drivers (whether they’re on time or not) accidents happen stopping the movement of traffic altogether.  You know when your six year old comes into your bedroom talking funny, he says “I’m stopped up mummy.  I can’t breathe through my nose.”  You then get the picture of a traffic jam.  (Jam has pieces of fruit and more sugar than jelly so you can see why we call them traffic “JAMS” and not traffic “Jelly” J)  Now might not be the best time for a meal.  You can eat after you finish reading this blog.  LOL  Anyhoooo, nothing’s moving.  Until this traffic jam is cleared up.  But how in the world can an already crowded freeway (I won’t mess with that one) be cleared when every vehicle on the road is a part of the problem?

Authorities on motorcycles and even police cars have to make their way through the narrow spaces between the cars and trucks and along the median.  They are “authorized” to go where common folk cannot go, and make commands which by law the regular people must follow.  They have to assess the situation and implement a solution.  Let’s go back to the nasally head for a minute.

I find that in the morning time, the more I drink water and hot tea, the better I begin to breathe, not just in my head, but in my chest as well.  This is because the fluid and heat of the fluid are authorized to go where nothing else can go, and break up that traffic jam in the head and chest.  Hmmm,  Somehow you knew that this message was not just about traffic jams and jelly in the head and on the highway.  And you’re right! J  Let’s go for a ride with the top down.

While spending some time in prayer with the Lord I felt led to keep my mouth shut so I could hear what was going on inside of my head and heart.  See, the mouth can be speaking one prayer while the head is thinking something else.  If you don’t believe me, do two things, not at the same time mind you.  First, call someone on the telephone and just talk, and see how soon or eventually you will be saying one thing but thinking another.  And depending on how close you are to the other person, you might just confess to them what’s going on with you.  Second, read Isaiah 29:13.  Here the Lord complains that His people say one thing but their hearts hide something else.  So I didn’t want to be a parrot in my prayers.  I wanted to know what was in my own heart and the way to do that was to keep my mouth closed in the presence of the Lord, and listen to the conversation between His heart and mine.

He said to me, “you notice how your sinuses and chest cleared up as you continued drinking the water.  You were washing your organs with water.  Your body is 98% water and thus water is the only fluid authorized to flow throughout the entire body to cleanse and heal, to clear things up.”  I continued listening while Holy Spirit said “the more you spend time washing in My Word – the Logos, it clears away all the gunk that causes congestion in your heart and soul which blocks you from letting my Word transform you into My ‘personality likeness’" (for we are spiritual beings made into His image, but our social skills don’t reveal the image of Christ dwelling within.  So our souls must be continually washed to clear up the internal traffic jam.).

One of the main reasons this process is necessary is so that we can fully “act” without pretense, hypocrisy, falsehood, in spirit and in truth like Jesus did when He walked the earth.  When He speaks a Rhema Word into our hearts we SEE it as He sees it with our spirit, and then we SAY it as He says it.  Next we DO it – the works we SEE Him doing, whatever they may be.  But there can be no Saying without first Seeing and there can be no seeing without first BEING and there can be no being without first YIELDING.

It’s not complicated, but what makes it difficult is what’s inside of us already – it gets in the way, clogging things up, stopping things up.  Congestion.  Not processing well all that’s coming into our “space”, or trying to process too much of the wrong stuff, or trying to process too many things at the same time.  Remember the entrances and exits on the highway – a lot of vehicles coming on trying to go in the same direction at the same time within and through a limited amount of space.

We become, and become like what (and who) we ingest spirit, soul, and body.  The good and best things received in the right doses at the best and right times can keep things flowing at a steady pace.  Of course the wrong and bad-for-us substances (in whatever forms – material or immaterial) can and will clog and stop things up, and we find ourselves sitting by the side of the road waiting for a tow truck. J  However, the GOD things received on a daily basis throughout every 24 hour period we are allowed to breathe J can and will keep things flowing and moving as they should – stopping at the red lights, driving the speed limit, keeping the safe distance between vehicles, obeying the warning signals, taking the best route which may not always be the quickest J, but will help avoid unnecessary troubles and delays.  Checking and changing the oil, using the best gasoline and keeping the tank full, checking the air level in the tires and the treads too, carburetor, antifreeze, catalytic converter, shock absorbers, etc.  I’m not talking cars here people, but our lives – spirit, soul, and body.

I have a book which I use to help me understand my dreams and visions and the author says that when you’re dreaming about a car – driving a car, more than likely you are receiving a message concerning your life.  Hmmmm.  Congestion on the highway of life.  There is help and it is called the Word (the Logos and the Rhema) of God.  The breath of God.  Jesus the Christ Himself.  But in order for it (Him) to keep you flowing and to keep things flowing within you (us) we will have to spend copious hours bathing in it (Him) and drinking it (Him):  the Water of the Word.  You wash your car and body in water, not in milk, tea, coffee, wine, or juice, for water is the only fluid qualified and authorized to cleanse everything.  When pollutants get into our eyes we don’t rinse them out with tea or juice.  The doctor irrigates our ears with . . . water.  It is the only substance authorized and qualified to wash us fully – inside and out.  “So that He (Christ Jesus) might sanctify her (His Bride, the church – you and me), having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, . . .”  Ephesians 5:26 [Parentheses mine.]  Water is our best Friend.  J

Peace.