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Earl Tyson describes Jesus washing the disciples’ feet at the Last Supper. He repeats his brother Tommy’s line that “anybody will wash clean feet” but “the trick is washing dirty feet.” At the Washington CFO in 1980, he tells his despairing wife Betty that her unbroken love for a suicidal girl in her care was itself the presence of God.
At the 1980 Washington CFO, Earl Tyson preaches urgency. He retells Kierkegaard’s story of Isaac, who secretly overheard his parents agree to fake their obedience to God and mocked their prayers ever after. He also describes baptizing a dying burn patient named Neil from a Dixie cup, after Neil begged him to “do it now.”
Earl Tyson recalls visiting an elderly woman who finally spoke of childhood abuse she had carried for decades. He led her to forgive her mother and the man who hurt her. She later wrote, “it’s wonderful to walk in the light.” He told it at the Washington CFO in 1980.
Earl Tyson says the kingdom is offered right now, and the tragedy in the prodigal story is the elder brother who would not come to the party. He tells of giving up a salaried pastorate, buying a windowless old house with money that arrived the day before it was due, and taking in Edith Savage, a woman who could not hear or speak, brought from a jail cell to his home and renamed “Edith Christian” the night she was set free. He brings these stories to the 1980 Washington CFO.
The 1980 Washington CFO hears Earl Tyson trace three steps into knowing Jesus, surrender, submission, and satisfaction, beginning with his claim that “be still and know that I am God” is a military order meaning stack your arms. Authority, he says, grows only out of submission, and nobody would swap a filet mignon for a fifty cent hot dog, though people trade the real for the cheap all the time.
Earl Tyson tells how a stranger in Hagerstown turned out to be a diesel broker on the Sunday his tank ran dry, and argues that no one walks into the kingdom of God unaided. At the 1980 Washington CFO he describes the earth as a planet heaven has invaded and occupied, where God gives exactly the power a life needs and never a thousand horsepower for a job that takes half of one.