All Saints Day
November 1, 2009
Saint-ified
Hebrews 9:11-14
A Dirty Job
A dirty job
My first real job was as a janitor at a company that sold and serviced heavy road equipment. And it was my job to work in the shop and clean up after the mechanics.
These guys would be covered from head to toe with grease, dust, dirt, grime, oil from working outside on road equipment all day long. It got on everything they touched. And they would track it all in, especially into the locker room.
And at the end of the day, I was the one who had to go into that locker room and clean it up. And I ended up as dirty as they were.
GOJO Magic
But thank God there was this magic stuff called “GOJO.” A creamy, gentle, waterless hand cleaner that I could crank out of a dispenser.
Thank God for GOJO
And here, I come to Ohio and I discover that GOJO is based right here in Akron in our own back yard. It was invented for those working in the tire industry. And you all know another product that they make—it is the Purell hand sanitizer that is so popular today. Small world, isn’t it?
Ashes of the Red Heifer
The priests back in the days of Jesus had a body sanitizer. It would cleanse anyone who had contact with a dead body.
Say you attended a funeral this year. Or you visited a grave to honor the dead. Or you were in the house or touched the clothes of someone who had died. Contact with death would render you unfit to approach God. You were “unclean,” they called it.
Red heifer without blemish
But the priests had a formula to make you clean again. They would burn a red heifer, a young red cow that had no blemish (for things sacrificed to God could have no blemishes). They would burn it with cedar wood (for durability) and hyssop branches (for its cleaning power) and with a scarlet, blood-red cloth (who knows why).
And then they would take the ashes and mix it with water. And whenever a person came into contact with death, those persons would be sprinkled with this stuff—this ancient GOJO—to take the defilement away.
It cleansed them. It sanctified them. Saint-ified them. It renewed and restored them as “saints.” Part of that holy people who are set aside for God’s service. Which is how the word “saint” was first used—for all of Israel, for all of God’s holy people. They all were saints, people set aside for God’s service.
How Much More the Blood of Jesus
Jesus Carrying Cross by El Greco
Now consider this—the “awesome thought” proposed to us on this All Saints’ Day by the Book of Hebrews: If the sprinkling with those ashes purified the people, “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 worship the living God!”
Jesus is “so much more” than a red heifer. He is the God, the Son of the living God. And, not only did he have no blemishes on the outside, he had no blemishes on the inside—in his soul and in his heart and spirit.
And his self-sacrifice, not only opens up the door to any earthly place of worship (like a temple, for example), but it takes us to the highest & holiest of all places, the very throne of God itself. And it does not last for only a few moments (until the next time that we contact death), but it last forever. For all eternity.
Breaking Through the Limitations
The ritual with the red heifer had its limitations. It only cleaned the outside. It did not clean the soul, the heart, the mind, the spirit. And it only dealt “temporarily” with the problem of death. It did not deal with it permanently, eternally.
And it was limited in time and space. It only worked for those of the right pedigree who got to those priests in that one temple.
But outside the city gate, Jesus offers up a sacrifice of a whole another kind. Not animal sacrifice, but himself. His human and divine self. And not one that ever has to be repeated. But one that is good once-and-for all. For everyone. Everywhere. Of any time and place. Including this time and this place.
And it does not deal just with our contact with someone else’s death. It deals with our death. And not just our death at the end of our days, but our death now. Our living death.
Especially our “dead works” that make us “dead ducks” before the searching eye of the Living God. It deals with that “guilt conscience” that can bug us as we are plagued and haunted by a life that we know has not been so squeaky clean and saintly as God would have us be.
The Death of Jesus is our Cleanser
And so, the death of Christ becomes our cleanser. His death and resurrection is mixed with water and splashed on us in Holy Baptism to clean us from the top of our head to the tip of our toes. His MOJO—Christ’s MOJO—becomes God’s GOJO that can take stain of sin away no matter how grimy our lives become.
And it sanctifies us. Saint-ifies us. It makes us part of that holy people who are set aside for God’s service. “The priesthood of all believers,” Martin Luther called it. The saints. The holy ones of God. The baptized. God’s new Israel. The church.
Living Testimonials
The faith departed that we remember today all knew that. They all did. Donald James Rakosik, Joseph Sandor, Mary Borden, Daryll Meng, Faye Tiech, Warren Ries, CharlieAnn Curtis.
They all were “saints” who did saintly things for Jesus. Oh, yes, they were “sinners” too, who had their faults and failings. They were characters. All of them were characters.
And it makes me smile to think of each and every one of them. They were so full of character. They were people who got their hands dirty with the joys and demands of daily live.
But they were characters who put their trust in Christ. And who put their hands out to receive his gifts of grace. And they pulled on the dispenser of his forgiveness.
And they said, “Touch me. Heal me. Hold me. Wash me head to toe with the cleansing waters of your baptism. Fill me with your Word and Spirit. Use me in your service.” Their lives are “living testimonials” to the cleansing and purifying power that Jesus brings.
And take it from someone who has spent a lifetime as a custodian of one kind or another, always cleaning up after other people—I have yet to see a stain that Jesus can’t remove.