A man went
to see his doctor for a checkup and while he was there he expressed to his
doctor a concern that perhaps his wife was losing her hearing. “Here’s what you should do”, said the
doctor. “When you go home, when her back
is turned, ask her a question, the way you normally would. If she doesn’t respond, cut the distance in
half and ask again. If she still doesn’t
respond, again halve the distance and ask again. Keep asking till you get a response. He thought this sounded like a good idea and
decided to give it a try.
Upon
arriving at home, his wife was at the counter in the kitchen with her back turned
and seeing his chance, he said to her, “Honey, what’s for dinner?” Getting no
response. He cut the distance in
half. Again he said, “Honey, what’s for
dinner?” Still nothing. Half the distance – now practically right on
top of her. “Honey, what’s for DINNER?” She turned around looking him in the eye and
said, “For the third time, CHICKEN!”
And this is
the way it is. When we compare ourselves
to others, when we judge and condemn, we are the ones condemned.
We see as
much in the Gospel of Mark. The
Pharisees and scribes compared their piety, their holiness and their perfection
to Jesus’ disciples. It made sense. After
all, one would expect great students from a great teacher. Yet upon comparison, the disciples were not
so great. They didn’t keep the
traditions of the elders. You probably
remember from Sunday School the teachers of the law were constantly commenting
on the Law of Moses, adding up rule upon rule to further explain and define
what it was that constituted a sin, what you did and did not have to do to be a
good and righteous Jew. So there were
reams upon reams of little rules to obey.
The Pharisees were experts at these rules. They made it their business to keep every one
of them.
Well, one of
those rules just so happened to be washing your hands. The Jews and especially the Pharisees, constantly
washed their hands - but not to get rid of dirt or germs. They baptized
them to get rid of sin and uncleanness.
They baptized their hands – did a ceremonial washing to clean their
hands from sin. Sometimes their own but
also and especially everyone else’s sin.
And they didn’t’ just baptize their hands. They baptized their pots and pans and cups
and even their couches; because, you never know, somebody sitting there might
have been dirty, might have been a sinner, and a good Jew – (or a good
Christian for that matter) can’t have all that sin just following them around. It gets you dirty. And so, you wash it off, you baptize it away. And that takes care of the problem.
The problem
is dirty hands. Dirty sinful hands. Hands that do sinful things. Think of all the things you do with your hands. The things they touch, the things they hold,
the violence we do with our hands. Our hands
are dirty. We have gotten our hands
dirty.
Your
conscience knows. Your conscience knows
your hands are dirty. Your conscience
knows where your hands have been and what your hands have done. And your conscience won’t let you
forget. It constantly reminds you. It constantly whispers in your ear that what
you have done wasn’t right. And you
conscience needs to be satisfied. You
need to feel better about your sin. You
need to find some way to keep your conscience quiet. What do you do when your conscience bothers
you?
The
Pharisees baptized things. They knew
they had dirty, sin stained hands. And
so they baptized them. Over and over
again they baptized their hands, their pots, their cups, their plates, their
couches. Everything! They must have been desperate!
They must
have been desperate for a good conscience.
What do you
do when your conscience bothers you?
To have a
bad conscience is a horrible thing. It
is a terrifying thing. It tortures you
and keeps you awake at night. A bad conscience
comes between you and your friends – you are constantly thinking about how you
have sinned against that person and so you can’t carry on a conversation with
them. Or else, you are constantly
thinking about how they have sinned against you and that can bother your conscience
too! We need a good conscience. The Apostle Paul writes to Timothy, “The aim
of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a
sincere faith.” (1 Timothy 1:5)
When our
conscience is bad. When it is plagued
and bothered by sin, when we look at our hands and see that they are stained
with sin, we will often do what the Pharisees did. Not that we baptize things, we don’t do
that. We know that doesn’t do any good,
but we find ourselves behaving a lot like the Pharisees. We compensate and we compare and then we
condemn.
The
Pharisees knew they had unclean hands.
They knew their hands were stained with sin. They looked down at their hands and thought
to themselves, “Oh no! What am I going to do!”
They had a guilty conscience so they decided they would try to
compensate for their sin. They decided
to work it off, to wash it off, to do
enough good things so that they could make up for the bad thing. You and I do this all the time. You do something to offend your wife, and so
you buy her flowers. You do something to
offend your husband and so you bake him a pie.
You make someone angry so you kiss up, brownnose a bit. You do something to offend God so you spend
some extra time at church. You do all
these things to compensate for your sin and hope that it will keep your conscience
quiet. But it doesn’t work.
You still
know your sin, you still feel you guilt, you still have a bad conscience. Compensating for it didn’t work. Your conscience is still screaming at you
because of your sin. You need to feel
better. You need to keep your conscience quiet. So the next thing you do is compare. Look at the disciples of Jesus. Look at the things they do. They don’t follow the traditions of the
elders. They don’t baptize their hands
before they eat their meal. They pick
grain on the Sabbath. Or what about
Judas – he had a bad conscience because
of the way he handled the money and so when a woman came with an alabaster jar
of perfume and broke it open on Jesus’ feet he compared himself to her. He pointed his accusing finger at her and
said. “Look! Look! Look at how wasteful she is. She should have give that money to the poor. Instead she poured out that costly perfume on
Jesus.” Don’t we do the same thing. Don’t we compare ourselves to others. Don’t we try to make ourselves feel better about
our own guilt by pointing out the guilt of others? The Pharisees did it. Judas did it.
We do it.
And so, when
we are done comparing, when we have sized one another up and determined that
the other is guilty, we start to condemn.
We, just like the Pharisees, point out all the sins of others, we point
out just how guilty they are. We become
hyper sensitive to the sins of others.
Hyper sensitive to the sins committed against us. And so, to make ourselves feel better we
condemn. We see this very thing going on
all the time. Democrats and republicans
with guilty consciences, are hyper sensitive to the sins of the other party and
so they condemn. Abortion activist have
a guilty conscience for their blood stained hand and so the condemn others who
harm spotted owls. Fathers have a guilty
conscience about the times spent away from home so they condemn their children
for their bad grades. Children have a guilty
conscience for disobeying their parents and not doing their school work so they
condemn their fathers for being so hard-nosed and judgmental. Mothers and wives have a guilty conscience
for nagging at their husbands to do something so they snap at their husbands
for the way they handled their children.
It’s terrible. A bad conscience is
a terrible thing. We feel sin. We feel guilt. We don’t know what to do about it. We compensate, that is an utter failure. We compare, but that doesn’t take away the
sin. We condemn one another and it just
makes the sin worse.
Friends we
look at our hands, we look at the mess we have made with our hands, and let’s
face it, it is a big mess. And there is
nothing we can do about it. No amount of
water could wash our hands clean from the stains and the sins that are left
because of all that we have done. We
know we are dirty. We know we need to be
clean. We want our conscience to be
silenced, to keep quiet and leave us alone but there is no way we can keep it
from accusing us. Because your
conscience is right. We have
sinned. WE are guilty.
We are
guilty, but Jesus was not. Jesus lived
his life with no sin what so ever. He
was pure and clean and holy from the moment he was conceived. There was no sin, no evil in him that could
defile his conscience. His hands. His hands were holy and clean, there was no
violence in them, no jealousy, never an impure or selfish touch. Always his hands were used to love, to help,
to heal, Jesus had clean hands. And so
when he performed his works, they were truly works of love. When Jesus used his hands, those sin free
hands of Jesus, he fed the hungry and picked up the lame so that they could
walk, he touched the eyes of the blind man so that he could see. And his motives were pure, filled with love,
not some effort to compensate for his own sin, only to love. And when he walked through the streets and
saw those he came to save, it was not to compare. It was not to point out the sins of others,
it was not to condemn. In fact, when an
adulterous woman was brought before him and all those who would have thrown
stones were gone because of their own guilty conscience, Jesus did not condemn
her. Jesus let her go free. “Go and sin no more” he said. And so the hands of Jesus, the healing hands,
the forgiving hands, the helping hands were perfectly clean.
But what
about you? What about your guilt and
your guilty conscience?
The Book of
Hebrews says of Jesus that “He entered
once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and
calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For
if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the
ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more
will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself
without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the
living God.” (Hebrews 9:12-14 ESV)
The perfect
and sin free hands of Jesus that had only been used for good and never evil
were stretched out by Roman executioners.
They were secured in place and then pierced through with spikes. And then, the perfect hands of Jesus began to
bleed. Blood flowed from the hands of
Jesus so that he could cover and clean the sins that were committed by your
hands. Your hands are dirty. Jesus hands are clean. Jesus’ hands bled to offer himself to God and
to purify your conscience.
Hebrews 10
says, “Therefore, brothers, since we have
confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and
living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his
flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near
with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean
from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” (Hebrews
10:19-22 ESV)
The
Pharisees and the Jews according to the traditions of the elders and in an
attempt to compensate for their guilt spent their time washing and baptizing
their hands and their pots and pans and cups and utensils hoping that this
baptizing would make them clean. It didn’t. It was a washing done with dirty hands. But you have been washed and made clean by
Jesus himself. Those same hands that were
used to help and to heal, that were pierced through with nails were used to wash
you in your baptism.
A
self-baptism a self-cleaning can’t ever do the job, you need to be cleansed by
Jesus. And so he does, he did. When you were baptized your heart was sprinkled
clean from a bad conscience as your body was washed with water. The Lord did this for you.
A bad
conscience is a terrible thing. It fills
us with guilt and it tortures us and terrifies us. It destroys our relationships and tears apart
families and homes and relationships and friendships. But Jesus heals them. Jesus heals bad consciences by taking away
the sin and by cleansing the sinner. Your
sin is washed away and you are clean.
“Baptism now
saves you,” writes Peter, “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)
Amen
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