CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS

                                                                 A sermon by Rev. George R. Taylor

                                                             First Presbyterian Church, Stroudsburg, Pa.

                                                                                                                                                             August 12, 2007

     We all know the importance of cleanliness and proper hygiene. From the time we were little children, we heard the relentless drumbeat of parental admonition to wash our hands before sitting down for dinner and to brush our teeth before going to bed.  Because we know that germs are passed from something as innocent and innocuous as a handshake, we all are careful to more frequently wash our hands when summer colds find us sneezing and coughing.   To prevent the spread of germs, hospitals now have bottles of sanitizing foam available at the door to every patient room.  After a round of golf on a hot, humid day, I’m not sure who is more relieved after I take a shower, me or my family.  Showers not only wash away physical dirt and unpleasant body odors, they also mysteriously get deep beneath the surface, refreshing our energies, renewing our spirits, seemingly cleansing our very souls.

     When we think about it, we realize that dirt and sweat are not all there is in life which makes us feel unclean, are they?  After watching a particularly violent TV show or video, where the characters are especially sleazy and reprehensible, and rather than turning to another channel or simply walking away, you reluctantly choose stick it out to the very end in the hope that there will be some redeeming value to the story.  And when you are disappointed, which almost always is the case, don’t you go away feeling a bit dirty, that your inner being has been soiled by all the gratuitous sex and sensational violence and deceitful, manipulative relationships? Researchers at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois have named a related psychological phenomena the “Macbeth Effect,” after the famous scene in Shakespeare’s play where Lady Macbeth obsesses over washing her hands after committing cold blooded murder.  Guilty consciences, it seems, seek clean hands. People across many cultures, from Beijing to Boston, have described a person who commits a crime as having “dirty hands.”  Whether you have committed a felony or a misdemeanor, whether you have cheated on your taxes, or cheated on your spouse, or in some way cheated on your own set of personal morals and ethics, cleaning one’s hands is a kind of psychosomatic attempt at cleansing the soul, isn’t it?

     If ever there were two cities who lived up to their reputation as “sin city” it would be Sodom and Gomorrah of Biblical times.   In his scathing attack upon Judah, the southern kingdom of the nation Israel, and Jerusalem, Judah’s capital city, the prophet Isaiah, calls them the worst that they could possibly be called, “rulers of Sodom and people of Gomorrah.” Certainly not all the citizens of Judah were evil and contemptible.  The majority of them were in all likelihood decent, law abiding, God fearing people, who were victims of a governing elite whose abuse and misuse of political and religious power created a climate of corruption and an atmosphere of injustice.  What is interesting to me is that when Isaiah gets specific about what the southern Kingdom of Judah had been up to that was so reprehensible and abhorrent to God, he doesn’t say anything about corrupt politicians, or greedy business leaders, or crazed immorality, or callous oppression of the poor. What is the very first activity or behavior which Isaiah condemns and warns the nation about? Their religious practices and spiritual life.  We are at first surprised that Isaiah is not criticizing the irreligious behavior of a secular society that has no time for or interest in God. He is not lowering the boom on those who would sooner sleep in on the sabbath and would never be caught dead darkening the inside of the temple. Isaiah takes us aback as he takes issue with those who do attend worship.    Isaiah singles out those who make their sacrifices and give their offerings, those who support the institution and keep the temple afloat.  Isaiah expresses God’s anger and disappointment in those, seemingly good, decent, upright citizens, who make their sacrifices, who participate in the rituals, who go through the motions, but not to truly honor God, but simply to appease God; not to express a sincere love for God, but rather to placate God and hedge their bets; not to exercise a faith that is alive and authentic, but to buy God’s approval and earn God’s favor with their “religious lip service.”  Like it or not, God will go easier on those who never believed, than he will with those who believe, but only with a lukewarm faith.  Just reread Luke 12 verses 47 and 48 and you will see this for yourselves. God sees through superficiality. God knows the real content of the human heart and the true motivation for our actions. God knows when we value convenience over conviction and personal pleasure more than divine purpose. And so Isaiah admonishes the Israelites. “Stop bringing meaningless offerings.  Your incense is detestable to me. Your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts my soul hates. They have become a burden to me and I weary of bearing them. Your hands are full of blood, wash yourselves and make yourselves clean.”  You see, unlike Lady Macbeth, you don’t have to commit murder to have blood on your hands. 

     While our culture more and more resembles the immorality of Sodom and the lawlessness of Gomorrah, most of us feel like the common citizens of Judah and Jerusalem, don’t we? We are not the perpetrators of the crimes and misdemeanors and the uncivil behavior that runs amok, at least I hope we’re not.  We too are decent, hardworking, lawabiding folk who do not continence nor approve of the deteriorating ethical and moral climate of our culture, but feel powerless to change the ways of the powerful and alter the actions of the influential.   No, few of us can be accused of sins of commission. We don’t operate adult bookstores and promote child pornography.  We do not traffic in drugs nor seek to defraud or to cheat others.  Ours are not largely sins of commission, though there are those for sure, for if we say we do not sin, we are deceived, and the truth is not in us.  Each of us have done all that we can to wash ourselves of moral impurity and ethical wrongdoing.  And yet, why then, if you are anything like me,  do we still feel a bit dirty, less than completely clean?  

     Perhaps because we live in a broken world where sin, personal sin and corporate sin, individual sin and systemic sin are painfully too prevalent.   We do not feel completely clean because we live in a world which continues to feather the beds of the rich while the poor struggle to survive, which continues to widen the economic gap between the haves and the have nots, which continues to concentrate more and more wealth in fewer and fewer hands, all of this making a mockery of God who calls for shalom and demands justice.  How then, should we wash ourselves of this blood which is on our hands? For you see, as someone once said, “the only thing for evil to prosper is for good people to do nothing.”  Are not ours sins of omission and failures of will and delinquency in obedience?

     How do we wash ourselves and make ourselves clean?  Isaiah spells it out for us very clearly. Take your evil deeds out of my sight. Stop doing wrong, learn to do right. Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless and plead the case of the widow, meaning, look after the powerless and those with no voice and who cannot survive without a helping hand.  I recently read that several hedge fund mangers on Wall Street personally made billions of dollars, just in the last year. No, I didn’t mispeak.  I didn’t mean to say millions, which in itself would  smack of economic injustice to many.  Imagine if you will, that somehow in our country it is considered ethical, much less legal, for several financial executives to each earn billions and billions of dollars in one year, by doing what? What is the value to society that is returned for such limited labor? Is there not something fundamentally wrong in a culture where a few can monopolize so much wealth while so many go without adequate nutrition, affordable housing, meaningful work and necessary healthcare?  How do we wash ourselves and make ourselves clean?  Just listen to Isaiah.  “If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land; but if your resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

     Last week Carol preached a marvelous sermon called “My Way or God’s Way” which by using other words and different images and another scripture spoke in another way about washing ourselves, keeping ourselves clean from the sin of avarice and greed, from the sin of self-indulgence and compassionless uncaring.  Jesus himself tells us that this is how it will be for anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God. The Bible speaks plainly about God’s passionate love for creation. It also speaks with a singular voice about the judgment and accountability that awaits us all.

     Which reminds me of an ironic and whimsical story I came across last week.  A stingy old lawyer, and it could have been a stingy old minister or a stingy old school teacher and still have rung true. This stingy old man, regardless of his profession, had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and was determined to prove wrong the saying, “You can’t take it with you.” After much thought and consideration, the old ambulance chaser finally figured out how to take at least some of his money with him when he died. He instructed his wife to go to the bank and withdraw enough money to fill two pillow cases. He then directed her to take the bags of money up into the attic and leave them directly above his bed. His plan: When he passed away, he would reach out and grab the bags on his way to heaven.  Several weeks after the funeral, the deceased lawyer’s wife, up in the attic cleaning, came upon two forgotten pillow cases stuffed with cash. “Oh that darned old fool,” she exclaimed. “I knew he should have put the money down in the basement.”

     In today’s Gospel lesson from Luke, Jesus again spells things out very clearly. I do not see how anyone of us can misunderstand or plead ignorance.  “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked. For where your treasure lies, there will your heart be also.”  Whoever first said that cleanliness was next to Godliness must have been a student of the Bible, although that exact phrase is nowhere to be found in scripture.  While the words are not there, the meaning and content certainly is.  Those who seek to draw near to God and experience God’s intimate presence, can do so by washing themselves of the practices, the prejudices and the purposes which are not of God, nor of the kingdom which God is so pleased to give. We wash ourselves and keep ourselves clean by remembering and never losing sight of who we are before God and what it is that God requires of us all. We wash ourselves and keep ourselves clean when we remember and never lose sight that God blesses us that we might bless others, God is generous to us that we might be generous with others, and God loves us, that we might so love one another.