When I was a child, it would happen every day, like clockwork. My mother would say,
“Byron, wash your hands before supper.” And then, holding up my hands, palms pointed
eagerly forward, I would proclaim, out of a combination of childish optimism and stubborn
denial, “Look, Mom, I don’t need to wash.” But she would always reply, “Oh yes you
do,” and then she’d offer to escort me personally to the wash basin.
That didn’t happen to anyone else who’s here today, did it?
Well, with a large dose of adult hindsight, we can now say, “Mother was right.” After
all, medical authorities are continually reminding us that the single most important thing
we can do to avoid flu and colds is to always wash our hands before we eat. For as doctors
say, “There’re a whole lot of unhealthy things, right there on our hands, that we just
aren’t seeing.”
As I reflected on my childlike inability to see many of the things that are unhealthy,
and as I pondered the intuitive wisdom possessed by my mother and the scientific truth
communicated by contemporary doctors—the wisdom and truth that unhealthy, unseen viruses
and bacteria need to be taken care of—as I pondered these I said to myself, “There’s a
sermon and a ritual in this.”
For in the sacramental life of the church, God our Mother calls her children to the
Table of Christ’s Supper, and says to us, in words spoken through the prophet Isaiah of
old (1:16), “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from
before my eyes.”
And upon hearing that, our inclination, I believe, is to respond by holding up our
hands, palms eagerly forward, while proclaiming, out of a combination of childlike
optimism and stubborn denial, “Look, Mother God, I don’t need to wash.” But God
replies, “Oh yes you do. For there are within you a whole lot of unhealthy things that
you just aren’t seeing.” Then, in the words spoken in our First Lesson through the prophet
Ezekiel (36:25–26), God goes on to say to us: Come, “I will sprinkle clean water upon you,
and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses… A new heart I will give you, and a new
spirit I will put within you…”
In the sacramental life of the church, God our Mother has led us to the font and has
sprinkled us with the clean water of baptism in preparation for coming to the Table of
Christ’s Supper. And, although we are baptized only once in our life, God our Mother
continually asks us when we approach the Table to wash ourselves anew, renewing our
baptism through repeated acts of confession and penance, through regular reaffirmations of
our baptismal vows, and through continuing openness to the cleansing power of God’s grace.
It is both intuitive wisdom and religious truth that the unhealthy, unacknowledged
“viruses and bacteria” on our spirit need to be taken care of.
So on this Communion Sunday, when we are remembering the baptism of Jesus by John the
Baptist, let us who have been baptized in the name of Jesus now prepare to sit at the Table
of Christ by renewing our baptismal covenant with God.
And let us do so both by reaffirming our baptismal vows and by participating in a ritual
of washing—a ritual of washing our hands and cleansing our spirit before coming to Christ’s
Supper.
Let us wash before supper.