Cleaning House, God-Style
Luke 3:7-17, 21-22
Mary Hammond
January 10, 2010
“The main character in the drama” [that would be Jesus] “will ignite the kingdom life, a fire, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. He’s going to clean house–make a clean sweep of your lives. He’ll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned” (Luke 3:16-17). Thus proclaims the fiery prophet, John the Baptizer, in the third chapter of Luke’s Gospel.
Cleaning house! What appropriate imagery for Americans who have just celebrated Christmas, eaten more than we needed, received gifts we might not use, and thrown away more stuff than usual. What appropriate imagery for Ohioans in winter’s grip, when every snowfall induces further fantasies of burrowing in our holes or retreating to our nests until the spring flowers start blooming again.
“It’s house-cleaning time!” John the Baptizer announces in no uncertain terms. It’s another way of saying “The Reign of God is at hand,” but is an image that embodies both the ordinary and the radical all at the same time.
I can appreciate this analogy even more because the winter cold has indeed induced within me the hankering to do some deep housecleaning. Just from cleaning some shelves between the Piano Room and kitchen I realized an important fact: Cleaning house can reveal unexpected surprises.
The prophet John wants the crowds who come to be baptized by him to know that he is performing no empty ceremony. Jesus, the one who follows him, will be “cleaning house,” and he’s not just talking about doing the dishes and picking up the living room for company. Jesus is calling for a deep cleaning, the kind that takes time, reveals what is authentic and duplicitous within ourselves; the kind that exposes what is good and true and confronts what we prefer to ignore or deny.
John’s directives are tailor-made for each audience–first the crowd, then the tax collectors, and finally, the soldiers. In light of his question, “Is your life green and blossoming, or is it deadwood ready to be thrown on the fire?”, each group successively asks, “Then, what are we to do?”
They get practical instructions from the prophet, not theological treatises. John’s words radically excavate their hearts, confronting the deepest human instincts to take care of ourselves while ignoring or missing the impact our actions have on others.
What would John the Baptizer say to me? I wonder. What would he say to this church and to this nation? I want to know. The truth is, what John said to the tax collectors, soldiers, and crowd convicted me enough to get me moving this week. I don’t know if I could handle much more!
Before we explore these questions, however, I want to take you on a little journey. Give me a minute, and I’ll return to talk with you. You can talk among yourselves for a bit, but please stop when I come back (we all know how gabby we are as a group when we get going!).
[I leave the sanctuary and bring back a suitcase full of clothes and three large cloth bags, one completely full of plastic bags, one with newspapers and magazines consumed with both celebrity gossip and bad news, and another with items for the Church Food Shelf].
Boy, do I have a lot of house-cleaning to do! This stuff can get downright heavy!
I’ve got this suitcase full of clothes here. Steve and I have collectively lost 100 pounds in the last three years. We’ve passed through multiple sizes on the way. This means that a lot of clothes have been gathering dust around the Hammond house.
“Those who have two coats should share with the person who has none,” the Baptizer says to the crowd. Uh oh. I fit into the “two coat” category–or so. I can’t really
preach on this text if I don’t think about that fact. OK…
Friday, I remembered reading that Oberlin Community Services was collecting coats, mittens, scarves, sweaters, and sweatshirts for clients, so I called. Good timing! The monthly Food Distribution was Saturday, and crowds would be there. “By the time it’s over, all the free winter gear will probably be gone,” the staff person told me, “and we’ll be starting over for next month.”
Time for some closet-cleaning! The hardest item to part with was my mom’s down coat. I helped her pick it out after my dad died. I thought she was crazy to buy a new coat off-season when she had inoperable cancer and might not see another winter. She felt otherwise, so we went shopping. Mom was right; she used it longer than I ever anticipated.
That coat was a piece of her heart that sat in our closet. Could I really get rid of it? Could I be so attached to something I was not wearing that someone else might need? I really had to look inside myself on this one.
I placed an anonymous card with a note in the pocket for the new owner. I shared a little history of the coat, just to make parting with it easier and hopefully make it more special for the next person.
“If you have two coats, share with the person who has none,” the Baptizer says to the crowd. How relevant is that in the United States, where 1,549,000 private sector jobs have been lost in the last decade? ( see Dean Baker, The Center for Economic & Policy Research, January 8, 2010, “Economy Loses 85,000 Jobs in December, Ends Decade with Job Loss,” Truthout).
John continues, “If you have food, share it.” Last Sunday Steve mentioned that one in four children in our country right now lives on Food Stamps. As Judy Riggle said from her pew, “This is criminal.” When I grocery shop, helping to support the Church Food Shelf reminds me that I have food while one billion people in the world go to bed hungry every night. As one person told me this week, “Helping to support the church Food Shelf is part of our family tithe.”
OK, John the Baptizer didn’t mention plastic bags. You can’t eat them. Oh, but wait! You can—and you probably DO! Last year, I learned about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, estimated to be somewhere between twice the size of Texas and twice the size of the Continental United States. It is an enormous stretch of floating oceanic debris, 80% from the land, 20% from ships.
You see, plastic never biodegrades. It turns into particles smaller than the naked eye, floating in that Ocean Garbage Patch, eaten by fish which are then consumed by people…on and on the food chain goes. Steve and I use cloth bags for groceries; I recycle our plastic bags at Ben Franklin’s, and still they grow like weeds in our house.
What might the Baptizer say to us here in the United States at this time in our history? [Congregational feedback].
Before we close today, let’s bring these questions even closer to home. What might John–and Jesus–say to Peace Community Church to respond to our question, “Then, what should we do?”[Congregational feedback]. What might they say to you as an individual? [Congregational feedback].
All of these thoughts take us back to Epiphany where we celebrate the Light of God that comes in Christ. In order to shine, we have to open ourselves daily to some deep inner house-cleaning. Are we green and blossoming? Do we make time for prayer, meditation, and rest? Do we live with humility while practicing justice and mercy? Do we take Jesus seriously? Are we just too lazy, too busy, or too fearful to do the deep cleaning of our inner–and outer–closets, for our own welfare and the common good?
We don’t need the passing of a calendar year to begin again. We can begin again every single day of our lives. We can start small, and build. Every great journey begins with a single step. The Light of Christ continually radiates God’s transforming love. Let us walk in that Light, and there find Life Now and Forever. Amen.