When I was in the hospital a few years ago, there was one thing I really looked forward to about going home: taking a shower. And I was right: when I did finally get to take that shower, it was the first thing that made me feel like a human being again.
Since then, I’ve done a lot of bicycling, and as much as I love being out there in the wild on my bike, there’s nothing quite like the feeling of coming home and washing all the road dirt off. What a gift that feeling is: what a marvelous thing water can do. In my last sermon I talked about the power of water to extinguish the fires of hate, and to dissolve the stone walls of denial. Those are two very important uses for water – but you probably don’t do them every day. So let’s talk about one more miraculous property of water, which I assume you benefit from every day: the ability to wash away dirt.
Of course, you don’t just wash your body – you also wash clothes and dishes and sheets and floors and windows. In order to live a life that is healthy and happy and balanced, one key activity is to remove the dirt. And when I say that, I am speaking literally and metaphorically: in order to live a spiritual life that is healthy and happy and balanced, you must do the spiritual equivalent of washing.
First let’s delve deep into exactly what washing is. That may seem like a silly exercise – you know what washing is. But it’s worth stopping and really thinking about. In its simplest terms, when I go out and work on the garden and then come back in the house, “I” am a combination of my own body and a lot of dirt stuck to it: there’s “me” plus “the dirt on me.” So when I wash up, what I’m doing is just removing the stuff that isn’t me.
Do you remember the character of Pig Pen from the Peanuts cartoons? He always had a cloud of dirt around him, and even on the rare occasions when he took a bath, the cloud of dirt would just come right back. Perhaps one reason he didn’t like to take baths is because he might be afraid that the dirt around him is him – that’s his identity, and if we were to wash the dirt off, would anything be left? It’s a childish thought, but he may have thought that.
Likewise, when I wash clothes, I am using water to take out all the extra “stuff” that my clothes picked up; when I wash the dishes, I’m taking away the uneaten food and leaving just the plates. Why am I explaining the obvious? Because, like so many things in life, it is not as obvious as it seems.
First of all, when I wash my hands or scrub the dishes, it’s not just the visible dirt and food that I’m removing – there is also a lot of invisible stuff to get rid of. This was made very obvious during the pandemic, when we were told to use hand sanitizer frequently, and if you thought, “No, it’s okay, my hands are clean already,” you’re missing the point: it doesn’t matter if your hands look clean – the worrisome part was the microscopic germs and particles we couldn’t see. I once heard a story about a child who was asked to wash the dishes, and there was a dog in the house, and instead of actually washing the dishes, the child let the dog lick them, and then put them back in the cupboard. If you’re not horrified by that, you don’t know much about dogs. And the worst part is, no one else in the family knew that the dishes were still dirty.
So: it’s not just what is visible – washing also means removing bacteria and microbes. But if you look on a microscopic level and you know your science, you might know that the distinction between “you” and “the microbes on you” doesn’t work very well. A scientist named Ed Yong recently wrote a book called “I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life.” A summary in the New York Times Review of Books begins:
Reader, as you read these words, trillions of microbes and quadrillions of viruses are multiplying on your face, your hands and in the darkness of your gut. With every breath you take, you are sending bacteria into the air at the rate of about 37 million per hour — your invisible aura, your personal microbial cloud.
According to the latest estimates, about half of your cells are not human — enough to make you wonder what you mean by “you.” Your human cells come from a single fertilized egg with DNA from your mother and father. Microbes began mingling with those human cells even before your first breath, the first kiss from your mother, your first taste of milk. And your human cells could not have built a healthy body without intimate help from all those trillions of immigrant microbes — your other half.
It can be a hard book to read. Suffice it to say that when you use hand sanitizer, you may be killing the coronavirus but you are certainly not succeeding in killing all the microbes on your skin or inside your body. That book might make you want to live in a totally sterile environment free of all microbes – but that’s impossible, and as the author points out, you need those microbes.
But the reason we were told to wash our hands frequently was about disease. This raises the question: can you wash away disease? Well, if it is on your skin, perhaps, but if it is inside your body, obviously not. Yet we have the story of Naaman in the Old Testament, who gets rid of the disease that has been plaguing him for years – leprosy – just by washing in the Jordan River. One of the things I like about that story is that when he hears the idea of curing his leprosy just by washing in a river, he doesn’t say, “That’s absurd – you can’t get rid of leprosy that way.” No, he accepts the concept: his argument is over which river he should wash in.
Is that scientifically valid? No, and it’s not meant to be: like the whole Bible, it is symbolic of our spiritual lives. So let’s look at the spiritual ramifications of the Naaman story. In Apocalypse Explained #475, Swedenborg talks about the significance of that story—that it represents “purification from falsified truths.”
I want to point out something I didn’t realize before about the Naaman story. For years, I was a counselor at Maple camp in Ontario, Canada, and we did many experiential worship services. When we did a worship service about Naaman, the minister asked us to think about its inner meaning and then go wash seven times in our equivalent of the Jordan River: Wood Lake. When you actually physically re-enact things, sometimes that brings new insights. And as I was walking into the lake, I realized that I didn’t know what “washing seven times meant.” Or, in the New International Version, “he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times.” Does that mean going completely underwater, and then coming all the way out and drying off, and then walking in until I’m completely submerged, and then drying off? Or does it mean standing in the water, and dunking under seven times? Is going up to my neck enough? Was I doing it right? Did Naaman have those same questions?
Well, there are other Bible stories where the number “seven” is a clue that it means “continually,” such as when Peter asks Jesus how often he is supposed to forgive someone who sins against him, and Jesus replies, “Seven times seventy times” [Matthew 18:21]. The point was, forgiveness is a continual process, not just a one-time thing. Likewise, if Naaman is ridding himself of falsity and sin, he can’t just do it once and be done: it is something we are meant to do over and over, on a regular basis.
So that’s spiritual lesson #1: we must remove falsity and sin from our lives, but it’s not a one-time process. Just like washing your hands or brushing your teeth or bathing, it’s something you should do regularly. Why? Because falsity and sin, just like dirt, keep building up. They will always keep returning, and the goal is not to live in a completely sterile environment—just like your goal on earth cannot be to live in a community where no one ever does anything bad. When people have tried to build those communities, they never succeed in keeping the sin out. It is better to aim for a society in which, if evil arises, you have a process for removing it.
The second spiritual lesson goes back to the image of washing as separating “you” from “the dirt on you.” Have you ever had a sinful thought or a bad desire? Yes you have – everyone does. Just like trying to keep all the germs in the world at bay, you will never succeed in preventing them from entering your mind. You are not meant to. What should you do when you recognize evil in yourself or in others? Jesus says it over and over: you are supposed to shun it. Does that mean destroy evil in all its forms? No, “shun” just means “avoid.” That’s all you are asked to do – avoid evil, and learn to do good.
But what if you think that those evil thoughts and desires are you? What if they have become a part of your identity? Like Pig Pen, you can’t make the separation between “you” and “the dirt around you”? How can you shun yourself? That will never work.
Some people identify strongly with a disease – they might think “I am a diabetic” or “I am schizophrenia” or “I am cystic fibrosis.” No, that’s a disease you have, it’s not who you are. If that is your identity, are you truly motivated to get rid of the disease? If Naaman had said, “Leprosy is who I am – it’s an integral part of me,” then he would not have washed in the Jordan.
Likewise, if you look at the evil thoughts and desires that come into your head, and you say, “That’s the real me,” then you are in trouble. Instead, it is vital to recognize that those thoughts and desires are not you – at least, not unless you invite them in to live with you permanently. As it says in Heaven and Hell #302 – they are just the dirt that the hells are dusting your spiritual body with, which you can “throw back into the hell it came from.”
But it also says that all things good are also not you. You should not take credit for the good thoughts and intentions you have, for those are all from the Lord. So what is “the real you”? It is just the choice. When dust and dirt settles on you, do you choose to wash it off, or do you choose to absorb it into your spirit?
The choice is up to you, and always will be. If the dirt has been clinging to you for a long time, it will take a lot of washing to remove it—but it can still be done. If you remove it every day, the process will be easier. And what do you use to remove it? The water of truth.
Amen.
READINGS
Old Testament reading: 2 Kings 5:1-4, 9-14
Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy. Now bands of raiders from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, “If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”
So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.” But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage. Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.
New Testament reading: Matthew 23:25-26
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.”
Reading from Swedenborg: Heaven and Hell #302
If we believed the way things really are, that everything good comes from God and everything evil from hell, then we would not take credit for the good within us or blame for the evil. Whenever we thought or did anything good, we would focus on the Lord, and any evil that flowed in we would throw back into the hell it came from. But since we do not believe in any inflow from heaven or from hell and therefore believe that everything we think and intend is in us and from us, we make the evil our own and defile the good with our feeling that we deserve it.