Cleansing and Renewal
a sermon based on 1 Peter 3:13-22
by Rev. Randy Quinn

Several years ago I heard a conference speaker use a word image that has stuck with me. He was talking about our tendency to complain and moan about the state of the world rather than getting involved and trying to change the world.

His response was a simple, yet powerful, word picture. He said, “You can’t wring your hands and roll up your sleeves at the same time.”

We can either complain about things or we can do something. We can either wring our hands or we can roll up our sleeves. But we cannot do both.

We have a flower bed in back of our house that has as many weeds as it does flowers. The work is so overwhelming that we are tempted to “wring our hands” and let the weeds grow for yet another summer rather than “roll up our sleeves” and tackle the garden one weed at a time.

In a similar manner, politicians have often found themselves accused of misdeeds and are tempted to “wring their hands” and hope the investigation will go away because they don’t know how to “roll up their sleeves” and right the wrongs – or at least right the perception of wrongdoing.

Like most people, I am disturbed and disheartened by the ongoing news story about priests in the Roman Catholic Church who have violated sexual boundaries. And I have watched as the church’s leadership has struggled with “wringing their hands” while trying to figure out how to “roll up their sleeves.”

We used to have a babysitter that loved the kids but had an entirely different standard of cleanliness than we had. Ronda and I left her with the kids for two days once, knowing that we’d come home to an incredibly messy house.

And as we suspected, the kids were fine; the house was a disaster. The kitchen floor was so bad that when I walked across it in my stocking feet, my socks stuck to the floor and came off my feet!

If we had “wrung our hands,” it would have gotten worse before it got better, so we “rolled up our sleeves” and began the task of cleaning – or I should more accurately say “Ronda rolled up her sleeves” while I played with the kids.

(Ronda didn’t think I was helping, but I kept the kids out of the kitchen so it didn’t get worse. When the kitchen floor is dirty, the first step in cleaning it is to keep everyone out of the kitchen so it doesn’t get worse, isn’t it? The first step to “rolling up our sleeves” is to stop making the mess.)

I worked with a pastor once who told me the best way to keep your church clean is not to hire a good janitor but to keep the doors locked! There won’t be any dirt to clean up if no one comes through the doors.

Some of you may have learned that one way to keep floors clean is to take your shoes off at the door.

In 1886, Leo Tolstoy wrote a delightful little story called “The Godfather.” It’s about a man who was trying to learn how to make up for some wrongdoing. The man is never named, but the story begins with him looking for and finding his mysterious Godfather. When the Godson finds his Godfather, he stays with him for a while but breaks one of the rules of the house and is sent away. He is told to watch for clues about how to right his wrong on his journey home.

One of the clues he gets is the scene he encounters in a small restaurant. While sitting there he watches a waitress scrub a table over and over again. When he asks her what she is doing, she looks at him blankly – one of those “stupid” question looks – and points out what should have been obvious, that she is cleaning the table.

He suggests that she rinse her rag once in a while. Without realizing how important that would be, she thanks him and in short order, the table is clean and her work is complete.

But it wasn’t until years later that the Godson realizes the message of the rinsed rag for his own life’s story.

The kitchen floor doesn’t get cleaned if you don’t throw away the dirt.

The garden will not be weed free if you pull the weeds and simply lay them down.

The politicians cannot clear a tarnished record by trying to turn our attention to the good they have done.

The church – whether Roman Catholic, United Methodist, or Evangelical Baptist – cannot expect to “clean house” by simply reassigning pastors or priests who have violated ethical boundaries.

And simply using the right detergent will not work either. The rag must be rinsed to take away the dirt.

In our text for today, Peter suggests that being forgiven of our sins is only one part of the process of purification – or as John Wesley would call it, sanctification. It is the most important part; it’s the most difficult part.

It’s also the part that God does for us so we don’t have to “wring our hands” about the sin in our lives. Implied, however, is the reminder that our sin won’t go away if we simply “roll up our sleeves.”

But God’s forgiveness is only the first part of the process of becoming God’s people. We must also work on a day-to-day basis to remove the sin from our lives so that it does not resurface.

It’s the equivalent of taking our shoes off at the door so there won’t be as much dirt to clean up.

It’s like planting ground cover to keep the weeds from springing up in a garden.

It’s the process of examining our lives to ensure that there is no appearance of evil in them.

Every day on every ship I’ve been on, there is the daily routine of sweeping the decks. It’s usually announced over the ship’s announcing system, “Sweepers, sweepers, man your brooms. Sweep all lower decks and passageways fore and aft.”

I remember listening to that announcement on the submarine once after we’d been out at sea for over a month. “Where did the dirt come from?” I wondered. After sweeping the decks every day for over a month and with no exposure to the outside environment, you’d think the dirt was gone.

But like sin in our lives, dirt continued to find its way into the living spaces of the submarine.

God cleanses our lives. And try as we might to live clean lives, we cannot avoid sin on our own. So God continues to offer cleansing and renewal.

It isn’t something we can simply wring our hands about, nor is it something that we can simply roll up our sleeves about. Rather this is something that invites us to raise our hands in praise, to clap our hands with gratitude, and to reach out our hands to others who are struggling.

Our lives may not be “squeaky clean,” but by the grace and goodness of God they have been made new.

Thanks be to God. Amen.