Baggage - Psalm 51:1-7 (Ash Wednesday Reflection)

We call her “The Bag Lady.”  No, we are not name-calling a homeless female with a derogatory label due to her living conditions.  We are talking about my wife.  As we take our youth on trips, the other chaperones, the youth, and myself have begun lovingly calling Anita, “The Bag Lady.”  How has she earned that nickname?  It is because any time we go on a trip (whether it is a family vacation, a church trip, or a day trip to someone’s home), she carries enough luggage, enough baggage, to dwarf that of any traveler—she might’ve even given “Lovey” from Gilligan’s Island a run for her money.  She has earned the name “The Bag Lady” because in each of her suitcase or bags, are more bags, into which she has organized each and everything she has brought along…for instance, inside the “toiletries bag,” there is a medicine bag, a makeup bag, a jewelry bag, a toothbrush bag, a bag for the shampoo and conditioner, a bag for combs and brushes, and of course, a first aid bag, all amongst many other bags.  Now I have to admit, as hard a time as we give her about being “The Bag Lady,” truth be told, if there is a need, she more than likely has it covered.  Two years ago at Pilgrimage, she was the only one of us adults who had Neosporin and a Band-Aid when one of the youth got cut; this past weekend at Infusion it was an extra bag of clothes desperately needed when Joshua messed up what had been packed.  In addition, when she packs a bag, she knows what she has.  She may have thirty bags of varying degrees on a trip, but she knows what bags she has packed and she knows when she has lost one—for example a bag at Infusion that contained her hand-sanitizer, lotion, and perfume.  Friday night and Saturday she looked all over for this bag, claiming it was lost—thinking she had accidently dropped it out of the car somewhere along the trip.  I helped her look a little bit, but at times wondered if maybe she had forgotten the bag or it was just lost amongst all the other bags.  Saturday night when she checked at the front desk, it had been found in the parking lot where we had parked on Friday night.  “The Bag Lady” knows her bags, and quickly reclaimed her lost baggage.

You know, many of us could claim the title “The Bag Lady,” or “The Bag Man.”  We would not earn the name because we carry around a lot of suitcases, garment bags, makeup kits, backpacks, or brief cases.  It is not about the luggage that everyone can see with us when we travel.  I am talking about the baggage that many of us carry around that no one sees.  You know the baggage that I am talking about...not made by Samsonite or Vera Bradley, but the baggage we assemble ourselves out of our past.  It is baggage made up of our hurts and pains, our guilt and shame.  It is the abuse that we suffered at the hands of someone we loved.  It is the fear we feel because our homes, or maybe our bodies, were violated and nothing around us seems safe.  It is the guilt we feel over the drugs we took, the sex we had, the abuse we dealt out, or the money we spent.  It is the shame we endure because of the gossip we have shared or the bitterness that we harbor.  It is the baggage that weighs down our hearts, minds, and souls with so great a burden that we can hardly stand up straight.

David knew about that baggage.  He carried plenty of it.  He had been lazy.  He had sent his troops out to war, while he kicked back on his rooftop.  He had been a stalker.  It wasn’t like he only accidently saw Bathsheba bathing on her rooftop and looked away, he stared…not only did he stare, but he called a servant, “Come check this out, who is she?”  Finding out she was married to one of his soldiers, he didn’t stop himself, but let his lust turn to licentiousness, as he sent for Bathsheba, seduced her, and his sexual urges satisfied, sent her home.  Learning later that she was pregnant, he sent for her husband so that he would sleep with her and he could pass responsibility for that child off as Uriah’s (since DNA testing didn’t exist).  When Uriah decided to be a man of honor and refused to lay with his own wife because his comrades were still in the midst of the war, David arranged for Uriah’s death.  David was like many of us, his baggage had baggage.  Having been confronted by the prophet Nathan and coming face to face with his sin-filled baggage, David cried out:

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love;  according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.   Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.  Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.  Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.  You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

David found himself a Bag Man like the rest of us and he wanted to lose his luggage.  He wanted to be free of all that he carried around, so he turned to the only place he knew he could intentionally lose all that weighted him down.  David cried out to God to remove his baggage and cleanse him.

My friends, today/tonight we enter the season of Lent.  We enter the period of the church year in which we are called to examine our lives.  As we examine our lives, as we reflect on who we have become, where we find ourselves, and what we have done, we will discover the baggage that we carry—some of it we may be aware of all ready, some of it may suddenly be revealed to us, all of it will weigh us down and leave us ready to cry out like David, “Have mercy upon me, O God!”

The Good News is that God has, does, and will have mercy on us.  With His Son, Jesus Christ, God invites us to bring our luggage…all that troubled filled baggage that we are hauling around, and leave it at His throne.  LEAVE IT AT HIS THRONE.  God doesn’t invite us to bring our baggage to Him, unpack it, view it with him, and like the clothes on our vacation, repack and take it home with us.  God invites us to bring our pains, our hurts, our guilt, our shame, our scars, and our sins to Him and leave them there.  His desire is to take our luggage, cleansing our lives with the blood of our Savior, clothing us with Christ, and sending us out as the forgiven, healed, children He wants us to be.

So, my friends, as we examine our lives this Lent…let us pack all of those places we fall short and all of those regrets and all of those pains and place them in the largest suitcase we can find…and leave them at the cross on Good Friday so that on Easter Morning we cannot be called a Bag Lady or Bag Man but only Bag-Free Children of God.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.