On the island in our kitchen sits a spray can, “Microban Sanitizing Spray, Keeps killing 99.9% of bacteria for up to 24 hours.” There is also a smaller sanitizer, “Fresh & Clean, Liquid Moisturizing Hand Sanitizer,” and it promises to kill “99.99 of most harmful germs.” What about the germs, the impurities already within us?
Jesus teaches that purity on the outside should be matched by purity on the inside, and He’s talking about more than germs. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matthew 23:27-28). To protect themselves from ritual impurity, Pharisees whitewashed tombs. If they accidentally touched a tomb, the whitewash meant they technically didn’t touch it. They were still ritually clean. Today Jesus says, “You use sanitizers to cleanse your hands and surfaces, but what about the depths of your being. Are you cleansing your heart?”
The deeper cleansing is the heart of the Church’s message to our fear-filled country. “Baptism…now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 3:21). Baptism is not a ritual cleansing, a whitewash; it’s real. Its power is the Word of God reaching down to purify your inmost being. “You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11).
Diane has been meticulous about sanitizing. When she comes home from the grocery store, she carefully cleans every package before putting it away. She does that, I suspect, both out of fear and love, fear that the contagion might infect us and love so that it doesn’t. A purified heart loves others. “Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God…. And this is the good news that was preached to you” (1 Peter 1:22, 23, 25).
Next time you sanitize, remember. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8).
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