Good Morning All,
I sat and listened as the speaker was
telling about his journey of faith. It
had been a rocky journey. He had
divorced his wife of 15 years and abandoned his children. He left a good paying job and wasn’t working
at the time. He had turned to alcohol to
dull some of his pain and was living on hand outs. This was the shape he was in when he began to
talk to one of the volunteers at the shelter he was staying at. The volunteer steered him to a pastor who
steered him to a counselor who began the process of healing this man.
Two years before the man’s divorce, he was
in a car accident. He wasn’t seriously
hurt but a child in the other vehicle died.
The investigation claimed it wasn’t his fault, but he could not shake
the guilt. It kept him awake at night;
it caused him to lose concentration at work so his performance suffered. He withdrew from his wife, his children, and
his family. He quit his job; he quit his
marriage and he wanted to quit life. He
told his counselor that he was just a dirty person. The stain of his actions could not be washed
away. He felt he deserved to wander
alone for what he had done. The
counselor opened his Bible and started looking at verses like the one we use
today. God opens a fountain to cleanse
his people. John speaks of God cleansing
us from all unrighteousness. Eventually,
the Spirit worked in this man’s heart, and he began to heal. He was healed because he was cleansed by the
blood of Jesus.
There are many of us who always feel
dirty. We look at our life and some of
the things we have done, and we wonder if we could ever be clean. Maybe we were a little too wild and carefree. Perhaps you caused pain to someone. Perhaps you stole from your parents, or
another loved one. Maybe you were the
class bully; maybe you have something in your past that is just painful to remember,
and the guilt remains, so the stain remains, and you feel dirty and full of
uncleanness.
Yet we are cleansed. We are cleansed because God saw our
uncleanness and sent Jesus into this brokenness to heal us. He uses Baptism to remind us that we are
clean. We are washed and purified. In Baptism we die to sin; our sins are drowned,
and we are raised to new life in the resurrection of Jesus. In the resurrection, we look forward to our
new life in Christ, forever forgiven and cleansed from all our unrighteousness. We are cleansed of the stain of sin. We are named, claimed, washed, and redeemed
by his love. In his mercy, we are
cleansed.
Father of all
cleansing, when I feel dirty and unclean, you send your Spirit to go forth in
the washing of my Baptism and I remember your words; I remember you claimed me
as your own. Help me to see your love,
help me to cling to your truth. Help me
to cling to the certainty of your love.
Move the hearts of those who feel so dirty and unloved. Bring your healing and your peace into their
life. Guard your children this day. In the precious name of Jesus our risen
Savior we pray, amen.
God’s Peace,
Pastor Bret
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