How good is a deep soak in a steaming hot tub?
A teenage boy by the name of Brett Whitely once won a high school art competition with a piece of work that took him only a few minutes to paint. Bold brush strokes of mud brown paint covered his canvas. A series of white paint strokes were then liberally applied diagonally across the chaotic mass of brown. Beneath the canvas was the title Showering After Football!
Few phrases evoke stronger feelings of cleansing and relaxation than the phrase Showering After Football, especially after a game on a wet, muddy oval. We can all identify with the stress releasing joy that accompanies the flow of hot water. Imagine it splashing and streaming over your soaped up body, head to toe. It may be after a game of footy, a workout at the gym, a strenuous walk in the bush or a hard day’s work in the garden.
Is there anything like getting clean after being dirty? What comes near to cooling off when hot and sweaty? What is better than stepping into a steamy shower, slipping into a hot tub, diving into a cool surf, standing under the fine mist of a mighty waterfall or dangling tired feet in a cold mountain stream?
How good is the clean water that thunders forth like waterfalls from the multiple taps and cisterns inside and outside our homes?
In the Gambella region of Ethiopia, where 91 children out of every 1,000 live births are dying before their fifth birthday, many from water-borne diseases, Anglican is partnering with the Mothers’ Union of the Anglican Church to train mothers throughout the community in simple water and sanitation hygiene. Our participation in this project will save the lives of over 500 children in 2014.
What price would we put on clean water? Or on a child’s life?
Clean water, clean air, clean food and clean skin are fundamental principles for the preservation of health and life. But has our drive for cleanliness gone too far?
The Body Shop, and other retail outlets like it, go gangbusters at Christmas, and all year round to feed our fetish for scented sprays, creams and lotions so that we may not only feel clean but smell clean. Is it our whole society that suffers from an obsessive/compulsive disorder?
Religious people love to look squeaky clean on the outside too. Loud prayers, long prayers and literary prayers sound so impressive. But, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner (see Luke 18:9-14),” sounds so primitive and unimpressive by comparison.
Dressing up and looking down on those who aren’t dressed up for church (for a raft of good reasons) is another feature of religious people who like to look clean on the outside. Or making a show of their charity while actually shunning the poor.
Yes, having clean water is a wonderful gift. So are clean food, clean air and clean skin. Yes, looking and feeling clean on the outside is nice if you have the luxury of being so. But what price would we put on having a clean heart, on being clean where it matters to God?
A friend of mine recalls an incident in the last week of the school year just a couple of weeks before Christmas. She was driving her daughter to school. The 10 year old was beside her, hand-making Christmas cards for some of her classmates.
A typical Christmas scene was drawn on the front of the card, a randomly selected bible verse written on one inside panel and a personal greeting on the other. My friend looked over at her daughter's handiwork as the car idled at a set of traffic lights. She noticed that the Bible verse selected for one of the boys in the class came from Jeremiah 2:22:
“Though you wash with strong stain remover and use an abundance of soap, the stain of your guilt is still before me,” declares the Sovereign Lord.
Despite the suggestion that this might not be the best Bible verse for a Christmas card, the girl was unmoved. That’s the bit of the Bible she had chosen and that was the bit this boy in her class would get!
When I heard the story I thought it was brilliant. It’s a great Bible verse for Christmas. This is what Jesus is all about. This is what Christmas is all about. This is why God sent his son into the world. He came to do what we could not and could never do!
We can't clean up our act. Nor can we clean up the mess we have made of the world. But Jesus came to wash us clean. He came to remove the filthy stains of our guilt.
The Bible in general and Jesus in particular use the language of washing and cleansing to refer, not to the hygiene of the body, but the cleansing of the heart.
• Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin (Psalm 51:2).
• Wash and make yourselves clean (Isaiah 1:16)
• Unless I wash you have no part with me (John 13:8).
How often has shame led to feelings of uncleanness? Consider the occasions our guilt has made us cry out to be made clean. Count the times we have heard phrases like ‘come clean’ and ‘cleaning up our act’ and ‘clean on the inside’ to refer, not to housework, but to heart-work?
Israel’s King David, a thousand years before Jesus washed his followers’ feet, cried out to God at a time of spiritual crisis and moral failure in his life. This is precisely the kind of language he used. His words in Psalm 51 are a prayer for forgiveness:
Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.
Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin (verses 1&2)Cleanse me with hyssop,
and I shall be clean;
wash me,
and I shall be whiter than snow (verse 7).
When Jesus washed his disciples’ feet we often see it as an example of, and call to, humility and service. It is certainly that (John 13:12-17). But before it is that, it signifies the great washing away of sin that Jesus makes possible through his death on the cross.
Peter baulked at the ‘basin and towel’ Jesus, until he was put on notice that only Jesus could make him clean. Jesus was washing street-soiled feet. His ultimate work would be in washing sin-stained hearts (John 13:7).
I shared a room at a conference recently with a Welsh guy called Johnny. He came to Christ in the weirdest of ways.
Most Friday and Saturday nights he and his mates would hit the nightclubs of Cardiff. One night Johnny noticed a bunch of people in the foyer of the club with towels and basins of water. He asked one of them what they were doing. He discovered that they were a bunch of Christians who visited the nightclubs around the city offering people, whose feet were hot and tired from dancing, a cool foot bath and towel rub.
A little bemused, Johnny had his feet done. He was taken by the strangeness of the whole activity. The person who was being so kind to him left a lasting impression. The incident and conversation about Jesus that took place made him begin to question where his life was headed and why these ‘foot-washing’ Christians were so weird and whether or not it was his life that was really the weird one. His journey led him to surrender his life to Jesus and receive his ‘hot tub’ forgiveness!
Johnny now knows the price of a clean heart. Jesus paid that price in his death on the cross.
There’s only one thing better than a happy Christmas. It’s a clean one.
Feature photo: stevendepolo
