Mopping Up Operation Series

confused ritual purity with actual righteousness; as Jesus said, "Woe to you, ...hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence... First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean.” [Mt 23:25-26]

Well, most of us, I think, know that coming to church on Sunday, singing the hymns and participating in the sacraments, aren’t what makes us fit for the presence of God. But some have taken the lesson too far, assuming that being kind, and honest, and basically a good person is enough. They assume that we human beings are capable of cleaning both our outsides and our insides without help. But we’re not.

What does it take to clean things up enough for God and people to live side by side together? It takes a lot. And the process is dangerous. Remember that when Isaiah was in God’s throne room, and he recognized his own sinfulness, the angel purified his mouth by burning it with a live coal. Everything that we know that kills germs can kill people, too, from fire to penicillin. The word “anti-biotics” means against life! That’s why chemo and radiation are so unpleasant - it’s hard for people to engineer cures that can tell the difference between good tissue and bad tissue. And that’s why we keep Comet and Mr. Clean away from children.

And that is why it is so important that we understand where we are on the road map to eternity. We’ve been given a glimpse of the mountaintop as an incentive to get us going and a beacon to keep us on track, but we can’t stay up there. Once we go back down the mountain and get involved in the pressures and problems of life, the only way we can navigate is to be guided by Jesus, the only way we can be safe is to be protected by Jesus, and the only way we can be cleaned is to be washed by Jesus.

When I was a new Christian, one of the bits of Christian jargon that I had trouble swallowing was the phrase “washed in the blood of the Lamb.” It didn’t mean anything to me, and I found it a rather gruesome, grisly image. It’s still not my favorite, I’m a touch squeamish. But it’s a necessary image, and a true image. Because blood is a symbol for life, and it’s only when we let God replace our life with that of Jesus - a sort of spiritual transfusion - that we can actually go and live with him.