MILTON, PA—Sunday morning Baptist pastor Leonard McFeezey
announced his strategy to defeat the Corona Virus, unemployment,
social upheaval, and other ills of the year 2020. He explained that while
isolated in his church office, maskless, he had entreated the Lord to know why
the Pennsylvania custom of eating pork cooked in sauerkraut on January 1 had
failed to deliver the promised good luck for the 2020.
“Show me,
Lord!” the pastor had cried, accidentally knocking his ESV study Bible onto the
floor. When he retrieved the Bible, it had opened to Leviticus 23, and it was
then that McFeezey realized he and his congregation—indeed the nation and the
entire Christian world—were following the wrong calendar.
“If we
adopt the Hebrew calendar,” the pastor informed his socially-distanced
congregation, “we can officially end this cursed year more than three months
early at sundown on September 18. On God’s calendar, it will be the first of
Tishrei, 5781, the Hebrew holiday Rosh Hashanah.”
McFeezey asked for volunteers to form a committee to ensure the correct foods would be eaten and the proper customs would be observed to guarantee a sweet new year. “There will be no more pork and sauerkraut,” he advised. “We’ll eat apples, honey, and challah. We’ll toss breadcrumbs representing our sins into the creek on Race Street.”
“That will
make the ducks happy,” Miss Gladys Whistle whispered through her mask to her
older sister, who couldn’t hear her.
The
congregation voted unanimously to adopt their pastor’s plan to celebrate Rosh
Hashanah and ring in the new year in September instead of suffering until
January.
Baptist Youth Fellowship president Trevor Johnson supported the idea. “McFeezer’s no geezer,” he said. “If
Pastor can get me out of this mask and back onto the soccer field, well, praise
the Lord!”
