Spiritual Cleansing
Delivered on Ash Wednesday, 2005
By
The Rev. Dr. W. Maynard Pittendreigh
Senior Pastor
Mpittendreigh@goodshepherdpc.org
I John 1:5-9
5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.
6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (NIV)
I am glad to be back in this pulpit! I know I missed only one Sunday, but it felt to me that I was gone for months!
While I am glad to be back, I am very grateful to Mission India for the opportunity they gave me to join them on the trip. I fell in love with the people of that country and I came back with a real passion for the work of Christ in India.
People ask me how my trip was, and it is so hard to answer that. There were so many experiences, it becomes difficult to share in a few brief words what that trip meant to me.
But I want to tell you about one experience as it relates to tonight’s Ash Wednesday theme. Those of you who kept up with the online journal I wrote on the Internet will be familiar with part of this story, but I want to share it with everyone tonight.
One of the places we visited was the city of Varanasi, which is regarded by the Hindu as the holiest place on earth.
Here people will gather at the Ganges River at sunrise and will step into the water as a ceremonial cleansing of their sins.
I know that sounds like a baptism, but it is not. It’s nothing like a baptism.
The water is filthy.
You can’t see beyond the surface of the water.
While we were there, we saw a dead cow float by in the river.
There are two large crematoriums there and over 100 people are cremated every day at this place, and their ashes are shoveled into the Ganges – people think it is a holy place for their remains to be deposited.
And in the midst of this filth, people dive into the waters for a spiritual cleansing.
It is such a sad place.
Because the people have a sense of truth. They know they have sinned and they know they need to be spiritually cleansed.
But it so sad because what they are doing is useless.
The waters of the Ganges don’t clean your spirit.
The waters of the Ganges don’t clean anything! The waters are so filthy.
Now, tonight is Ash Wednesday, and this is the beginning of Lent. Lent is the season of reflection when we try to cleanse ourselves from sin.
We are trying to do the very same thing that the Hindus try to do by bathing in the polluted waters of the Ganges.
We are trying to cleanse ourselves of sins.
Now as Christians, we really ought to be trying to do this all the time, but Lent gives us the opportunity to really focus on this spiritual cleansing.
But we don’t want to be like the Hindus diving into the Ganges River. We don’t want to waste our time.
We want to do it right.
So how do you cleanse yourself spiritually?
And do it in an effective way?
Tonight, I want us to look at Scripture and think about four things we can do to cleanse ourselves spiritually.
These are four things we ought to be doing all the time, but especially during Lent, I hope you will take these four steps with you daily.
There are 40 days in Lent, not counting the Sundays. Each day you should consider these 4 steps.
These steps are outlined in your bulletin, and the first one is Self Examination.
1. Self-examination
We read in the Old Testament book of Lamentations, (Lam 3:40), “Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the LORD.”
It is easier for most of us to examine other people, than to examine ourselves.
We look at someone else and we can easily see all their faults.
That person is a racist.
This person is a selfish.
But to look in the mirror and see ourselves takes courage and skill. To examine ourselves and to see our own faults is often a difficult thing to do.
But if you really seek a spiritual cleansing, you have to see yourself with all of your faults.
In fact, the Bible mandates that we carefully go through some sort of self-examination process every time we receive the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.
St. Paul said in I Corinthians (11:28-30), “A person ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep.”
But how many of us actually do that before receiving Communion? Examine ourselves.
I suspect many of us do not.
How self-centered are you?
How dishonest have you been?
How racist are you?
Are you generous? Are you loving? Are you kind?
St. Paul says in his second letter to the Corinthians, (2 Cor 13:5), “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves.”
But you can’t just examine yourself - alone. Because you have a lot of bias about yourself. You need someone to be involved in that process with you to help you to get a good, honest assessment of yourself.
And while it may be good to involve your husband or wife, your parents or your best friends, ultimately what I’m talking about is involving God in this process.
2. Prayerful-examination
Don’t just examine yourself, but prayerfully ask God to examine you. Psalm 26 says, “Test me, O LORD, and try me, examine my heart and my mind.”
We are so full of justifications for what we do.
We can deny to ourselves so well that in the end we don’t have a clue that we acted hatefully to someone.
If we want to truly be cleansed spiritually, then we need the divine insights of God.
The psalmist wrote in Psalm 139: (Ps 139:23-24) “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
Those offensive ways in us – we can’t always see them by ourselves.
3. Admission of sin
All this examination – by ourselves and by God hopefully will help us come to the realization that you have some sort of sin in your life – but that realization is not enough.
The Christian way of life requires that we take another step, which is to make a confession. An admission – which means not only admitting it to ourselves, but to God.
The Apostle John says in his first letter (I Jn 1:8,9) “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
One of the most important things that we do in our worship services is to have that Prayer of Confession. It comes early in our worship services on Sunday morning because there is a sense that until you get some things out of the way, worship will be impaired.
Now you might think that if a person examined himself and realized there was some sort of sin in his or her life, that confession to God would be an easy thing.
But not necessarily.
Sometimes it is difficult to confess a sin to God because we know in our hearts that if we confess to God, there is a next and logical step that many of us are not willing to take.
4. Turn away from sin
If you confess, the expectation is that you will turn away from sin.
You admit to God that you are self-centered, then you will now stop.
You admit to God that you are filled with hate, then you will now seek to become more loving.
The problem is, many of us enjoy our sins.
That’s why we do them.
We don’t want to let go of them. So even if we are aware of them, we hang onto them and refuse to confess, because we do not want to turn from our sins.
But this is the goal of self-examination.
This is the goal of Lent.
This is the reason for Ash Wednesday.
To give up your sins.
To have a spiritual cleansing.
We read in the Old Testament, in II Chronicles 7:14, “if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
This is what Lent is all about.
And if you don’t reach that point when you can turn away from your sins, then your spiritual cleansing is going to be as ineffective as taking a dive into the Ganges River is for the Hindu.
You just stay in your filth and in your polluted lives.
You have these four steps in your bulletin –
1. Self examination
2. Prayerful examination with God
3. Admission of sins
4. Turning away from your sins.
Take this outline and make it part of your Lenten season. Put that in your Bible and make these four steps part of your prayer life over the next 40 days.
But let me suggest one other thing that is not in your bulletin.
Lent is a traditional time to “give something up.”
It is supposed to be part of a spiritual discipline to give something up for Lent, and we give up silly things sometimes.
We give up chocolate, or beer, or something like that.
Let me suggest that you give up one sin.
Just one.
Don’t try to live a perfect life right away – that’s asking the impossible.
But move through this four-step process and when you come to number 4, which is to turn away from sin, pick one sin to give up for Lent.
One thing you have struggled with.
It may be selfishness.
It may be telling lies.
It may be lust.
It may be an affair you are having.
It may be --- well, who knows.
Focus on that one thing. Give up that one sin in your life.
Don’t give up chocolate for Lent. Give up racism. Give up anger. Give up cheating.
If you can succeed with that, then you can move onto the next sin in your life.
But if you can really give up one sin in your life that you have been struggling with, then your Lenten season will truly be successful for you.
Copyright 2005, The Rev. Dr. Maynard Pittendreigh
All rights reserved.
Sermons are available online and can be found by visiting www.Pittendreigh.com
