John 13:6-9, Philippians 3:7-16

June 19, 2005

First Presbyterian Church Carson City

Pastor Bruce Kochsmeier

As I live life and do my work I encounter a lot of different human situations inside and outside the church. In this I see a lot of very unhappy stories. I see a lot of stuff that people have accumulated. It doesn’t take very long. We are born with a predisposition to attract stuff that makes us unhappy. It’s called sin. But I wonder if in our western culture we even begin to realize this anymore. I wonder if people are even willing to consider that their unhappiness; their disease (dis-ease) is caused by the very stuff we are holding on to. I wonder if the problem is that people aren’t holding on to Jesus. I wonder if we really know what that means anymore; particularly today in our way-too-smart for ourselves fast-paced life. I wonder if we haven’t outsmarted ourselves by thinking the answer can’t be so simple. I wonder if we really know what it means to say as Shirley has sung for us today, “Give Me Jesus”. Do we really know what it means to experience true intimacy with Jesus; to let him climb inside our secret places and know us as we need to be known? I don’t think we do, but I know we need to know and I know Jesus wants to show us what needs to be changed so that his love can replace the stuff that is holding us back from wholeness.

I read a story this week that speaks to many of these ponderings. A man writes,

In our family carpet cleaning business we offered a special service for removing pet urine odors. To show potential customers their need for the service, I would darken the room and then turn on a powerful black light. The black light caused urine crystals to glow brightly.

To the horror of the homeowner every drop and dribble could be seen, not only on the carpet, but usually on walls, drapes, furniture, and even on lamp shades. One homeowner begged me to shut off the light: "I can't bear to see anymore. I don't care what it costs. Please clean it up!" Another woman said, "I'll never be comfortable in my home again."

The offense was there all the time, but it was invisible until the right light exposed it. It would have been cruel to show customers the extent of their problem and then say, "Too bad for you" and walk away. I brought the light so that they might desperately want my cleaning services.

In the same way, God shines the light of his commandments not just to make us feel guilty and leave us that way. He has a cleaning service to offer—salvation through Jesus Christ.

In the conclusion of this classic devotional, “My Heart, Christ’s Home” Dr. Robert Munger writes of Jesus going into the hall closet of a life. It’s that place we hold to be off limits. It is that place we know is not right, but it comforts us in a perverse way and so without saying so, we demand that we be allowed to keep it, even as it may be ironically destroying us.

In the story Jesus says to the homeowner, (that’s us), “There’s a peculiar odor in the house. Something must be dead around here. I think it is in the hall closet.”

The homeowner says, “As soon as he said this I knew what he was talking about.” And we do too. We know when Jesus identifies something in us that has died. We know just what it is even in a world that says there really isn’t anything that you can’t justify having in your life because God’s love for us is so strong he won’t let us forget what stands in the way of belonging to him. Paul says, The very things I thought made me successful I count as loss; they hurt me because they kept me from relying only upon Jesus.” John Calvin writes, “…as soon as Christ shines forth, all those things that formerly dazzled our eyes with a false splendor instantly vanish.”

The homeowner says, “The things Jesus identified were dead and rotting things leftover from the old life – not wicked, but not right and good to have in a Christian life. Yet I loved them. I wanted them so much for myself I was really afraid to admit they were there.” Again John Calvin nails it for us asking, “What is more hurtful that anything that keeps us back from drawing near to Christ.”

We all know specifically what these things are and the fact of the matter is they are more wicked than we want to admit because they are the things that keep us from experiencing and passing on the transforming love and power of God in Jesus Christ.

The first and most deadly thing in our locked closet is the belief that we don’t need to be saved; we don’t need to be rescued; that we are pretty good people and that’s plenty good enough. If that doesn’t stink, nothing does because it is the stench of trying to be enough and have enough in this life to be whole and complete.

This smell is made up of a lot of stuff piled together; things like pride, bitterness, sadness, grief, fear, anger, addiction, (sex, drugs, power, money, buying,) self-righteousness, selfishness, arrogance, and perhaps worst of all, the unwillingness to be vulnerable enough to LET God come in and clean out what is killing us.

Paul, the writer of this letter to the Philippians knew this smell. He had lived and rolled in it too long himself to forget. He tells us something we all need to consider. Paul is talking about the stuff he needs to let go. Are we?

Very simply Paul knew that he needed his whole life cleaned out. He knew he wasn’t there yet. He knew there was still junk in his garage. But most importantly he knew that only Jesus could do the job.

In John’s Gospel, as Jesus prepares to give himself up for us he says, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” Peter doesn’t want Jesus to wash his feet. He’s too proud. He knows his closet is full. But Jesus tells him, “If I don’t wash you; if I don’t clean out your closet you have NO PART of me.” We might say, “Well, I’m a Christian. I believe in Jesus and even that he died for my sins” but do we know him? He is allowed to take possession of our whole life?

The point that Jesus makes; that Paul confirms with his own life; that we know in our heart of hearts is that unless we let Jesus come in and clean our closets; empty our garages of the junk that is killing us we have no hope. This week it occurred to me that we can cling to our temptations; those things that SEEM like they would comfort us or we can cling to the cross of Jesus, but we can’t do both. To cling to the cross; to give ourselves up is frightening and far more difficult, but which one will deliver us? Which one really offers peace? What should we deem it a sacrifice to get rid of things in our life that only keep us from this peace? To mature in Christ is to be willing to throw away as if it were dung anything that keeps us from growing in the knowledge and service of Christ.

It all comes down to being willing to say to Jesus, “I give you the key, but you’ll have to open the closet and clean it out. I haven’t the strength to do it.” This may be a one time statement, (I don’t think it is) but regardless, it is a lifelong process of letting Jesus not only empty out the junk, but to fill it back up with himself.

One of my mentors is regularly telling me, “Nature abhors a vacuum”. What he means is that if we don’t let the right stuff in the wrong stuff will go right back in. This is what Paul is describing when he says, “Only let us hold fast to what we have attained.” Of this again Calvin say, “…we lose nothing when we come to Christ naked and stripped of everything, for those things which we previously imagined, on false grounds, that we possessed, we then begin to really acquire.” To do this we have to transfer the title of our lives to Jesus Christ every day and in each new season. It is as Jesus tells the owner of the home, “You can’t live out the Christian life in your own strength.”

The two greatest opportunities to know a new life rest in the final two steps of this little book. They are bound up in Paul’s confession of not being there yet and in Jesus’ call to let him wash our feet. We need to let Jesus clean our closet. For this to really happen and take hold we must transfer all authority to Jesus.

What DOES Jesus need to take out of your closet? Are we willing to let him do it? Are we willing to realize how healed we need to be from the affects of what has come into our lives? Dr. Paul Tournier has said “… doctors seek to heal the whole by healing the parts, whereas Jesus, it seems, healed the parts by healing the whole.” Carl Jung said, “Only the wounded healer can heal.” Jesus alone can heal us from ourselves because he is wounded by our sin. By his stripes we are healed.

Today Jesus wants to heal you and me; this whole church; and those beyond these walls by coming in to take possession of our lives, by identifying and removing the things we hold that only hurt us, by showing us that until we are surrendered to him we have no hope in this life no matter how much of the world’s stuff we put in our closets. May today be the day we surrender the contents of our closet to Jesus; may it be the day we surrender pride and embarrassment to his amazing grace; may it be the day we remember as one in which we realized only he can really set us free and that only he is the ONE who will give us peace. May today be the day others begin to see in us this peace as together we transfer all authority to Jesus and let our hearts be his home. Amen.