Thanks to apartment living here in Macon, I no longer count yard work among my domestic responsibilities. I am not sad about this. Not one bit.
What I will miss, however, are the post-yard-work showers. Few middle class privileges outrank the feeling of washing off hours of raking, weeding, and mowing. To watch the dirt, grime, and sweat circle the drain and disappear into the great gone -- sublime! A fresh start at cleanliness. Relief.
After several weeks sitting together in the witness of Acts chapter 1, this Sunday we begin three weeks on the sacraments -- BATH, MEAL, and BOOK. World Communion Sunday (October 7) will be the midpoint in this short run of sermons, but this Sunday we go down into the BATH waters with a journey in John 9:1-12 -- Jesus' act of healing near a public pool called "Sent."
Lest baptism remain merely some remote or sentimental event in our distant infancies, we will consider what it means to say that, in Jesus, we are a "people of the bath." His bath. His dirt dissolving, grime gracing, sin-sweat solvent of a bath. Come, after another week of walking around in the dirt of our lives, let's get cleaned up together in scripture. "Go, wash in the pool" called worship.
See you again on the Lord's Day. Bring a towel!
[photo: St. Francis Xavier College Church, St. Louis MO — RWH]
