The Reason Behind Laundry Detergent
Speaker: Rev. Matt Henry
Location: Whitney United Methodist Church
Date: April 19, 2009
I think one thing that seems to be, seems to define American culture is that we are a nostalgic people, don’t you think? People my parents age, when they’re nostalgic they think of old toys like cast iron banks with batters that hit the penny into the catcher’s glove. So, when my parents think of nostalgia, that’s what they’re thinking. Some of us, when we think of nostalgia we think of certain candies like Necco discs. Remember Necco discs, right, the North England Confectionary Company, those little chalky wafers that were really better at playing tiddly winks with than eating? You know, to have eaten those and lived is a story to tell. So some of us remember nostalgically when we think about candy, but baby boomers now, when we think nostalgia we think of television because we were born and raised and grew up in the area of TV, the first generation to really do so. So, when boomers think nostalgically not only do they think of TV far worse, they tend to think of and remember with some fondness television commercials. “Certs! Certs! Two breath mints in one.” I remember Johnson Wax had this commercial of a fighter jet and a close-up of the cockpit canopy, the windshield. Some guy would come out with a Thompson’s sub-machine gun and spray it with bullets and the bullets would bounce off, theoretically because of the wax treatment on the windows. Do you remember that?
Do you remember Bayer Aspirin? A harried housewife making a five course meal and her mother-in-law is there to help her in the kitchen. And the mother-in-law means well but the poor young housewife with a nasty headache is now spilling things and her mother-in-law tries to help her. And what does she say? “Mother! I can do it myself!” Am I tuning in on anybody here? The one that gave me the creeps was the one for “Off” where a guy would role his white shirt sleeve up to his elbow and stick his entire arm in, like, an aquarium full of mosquitoes. “They don’t bite. They don’t even light.” This is how boomers remember the past. I don’t think this is really helpful, but I’m telling you. Then, of course, there’s the famous one where a man takes a brand new shirt and he cuts it into two and he says….now, we’re going to wash this dirty shirt in our competitor’s product and we’re going to wash this half of this shirt in product de jour. And, you know, after the washing cycle and both the halves of the shirt came out and one is still very yellowed and dirty. Our competitor’s product obviously didn’t do anything and, you know, our product is brilliantly gleaming white just like it’s brand new. And, of course, the product that was meant to be pushed had a company name like “All” or “Cheer” or “Tide” right? Pick any of them you want. Who can forget that commercial involving dirty laundry?
Dirty laundry. I want to talk to you this morning about dirty laundry. I grew up in a racist family, in a racist town, in a racist state, Ohio, Toledo, in a racist culture. When I was a child in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, at that time African Americans were forced into the downtown area of Toledo, Ohio in what we all referred to as “the ghetto” much like Polish Jews were in World War II. And us Anglo-Americans did our best to keep them there. My family used to say something like this. My father would say to me, realizing that one day would come when I was to be married, he would say, “I don’t care who you bring home to us. Just don’t bring home to us any,” and he used that dreaded 6-letter Crips word that began with an “N” and ended with an “R.” His mother, my grandmother, a kind woman would laughingly refer to Brazil nuts and she would call them, she would use that “N” word again and end the expression with the word “toes.” I grew up in a very racist family.
Now, having said that, African-Americans weren’t the only target of that kind of behavior. In fact Toledo, Ohio was a very ethnic town and the Maumee River cuts right through the middle of it and there’s the west side and there’s the east side and all the Western Anglo-Americans tended to live on the west side. And on the east side were Hungarian-Americans and Polish-Americans, and in my family, however, they weren’t referred to as that. They were called “Hunkies” and “Polocks.” I never knew where that word “Polock” came from, but they would always talk about Polish-Americans as “Polocks,” derisively, as if somehow these people were not that smart.
Our family went to, well my father and my brother and I, went to a barber shop that had four barbers. One of them was an African-American man. His name was Jim Johnson. They were all very effective, nice barbers. One day my father related to us this story at home that he had gone to the barbershop and it was busy. He had to wait for awhile. Finally the first barber to come open to cut his hair was Mr. Jim Johnson. And my father said to him (in reference to are you able to cut my hair now?) my father said to him, “Mr. Johnson, are you free?” And without missing a beat, Mr. Jim Johnson looked at my father and said, “Well, although Mr. Abraham Lincoln declared it to be so but I’m not so sure.” This is interesting. He laughed at that as well. He appreciated the play on words and he thought it was funny. I don’t think Mr. Jim Johnson was laughing when he said it.
Now, for some reason, I don’t know why, but I rebelled against that conscious racism. I found it all vile, repugnant, abhorrent and illogical. Our next door neighbors were Polish-Americans. The man was a structural engineer. He was brilliant. His kids were incredibly smart. They did very well in school. I found all that somehow dreadfully wrong and so, eventually, as I became an adult I swore that I was going to do whatever I could to fight against what I thought was an evil in American culture. Eventually, and you’ve heard this story before, as I went to seminary, I went to an American Baptist seminary in Brisbane and it’s student population was easily 65% to 70% African-American. The rest was Euro-Americans and Asians and Asian-Americans. During our second year of a three year term we all had to find a church that would take us on as student pastors. We had to get in and do it. And so I decided that I wanted to find an African-American church some where that would take me on as a student pastor.
No small thing, but I had kind of an “in.” My professor of Theology was an African-American man, he was brilliant, and he was pastor of this church. And so I asked him, Dr. Cummings, “What do you think would be the chances of me doing my student internship at your church, Church by the Side of the Road?” And he said, “Sure. I’m glad to have you.” I will never forget the first morning. I walked into Church by the Side of the Road. I was the only minority there and these people graciously welcomed me into their presence even though they might have had a hint of a suspicion….what is a white man wanting to do here in our church with us. I had a beautiful view of the world, what worship can be, and particularly how reality comes to look through the eye of someone that doesn’t look like me. I am proud to tell you, even though pride is not a good thing, that I was the only white student in the seminary’s history that had not served his internship in a white church.
Now, I joined this black Baptist church because I thought it was the right thing to do and it was a beautiful experience. And despite all that, evil did its work and nevertheless I come to you this morning confessing to you all that I am a repentant, grieving racist. That’s how sin does its work brothers and sisters. It slips through the cracks under the door, and through there it seeps in those parts of your soul that aren’t quite right, that you think are whole, but they are not. And it does its nasty little insidious work on you. For instance, I was traveling this week out of the Boise Airport. I’m going through the “Checkpoint Charley” and I’ve got a flight to catch and it’s like…well, better be gettin there…and thank God Boise International Airport is fairly small. So I got to the security line and I carry a medical device with me on board the plane because it’s fairly delicate, but it’s one of these devices that, inevitably, they want to swab down to make sure I’m not stashing explosives in it.
So what happens is I’m used to it. It goes through the x-ray machine and the TSA person at the machine says, “Baggage help” and usually someone is right there and they look at me and they say, “Sir, is this yours?” “Yes.” “Well, let’s go here and check it.” “Yes.” And so they do their thing, they check it out, they give it back to me, I pack it back in its bag, and I go on to the gate. Well this time they were pretty busy. The guy says, “Baggage help” and nobody came, nobody even looked. He said it again, “Baggage help.” No response and I’m looking at my watch and I’m going…lets see, I’ve got maybe 10 minutes before they’re going to call my section on this plane. A third time, “Baggage help.” No response. At that moment a very handsome African-American man looking very official in a white short-sleeved shirt with a badge and his picture on it and brass buttons looking very official came over to where my machine was. But he was kind of looking around a little bit like he doesn’t see my machine.
And now I’m starting to get real antsy about my flight and not making it aboard so I went to him, I think he’s looking for my machine, and I kind of pointed at my machine like this. And when he didn’t respond I went up to him and I said, “Oh, sir, this is mine and I think this is what you’re looking for.” And he kind of looked at me and he looked at the machine and at that moment here comes what he’s waiting for, his dark navy blue blazer with the epaulettes with three stripes on them. He’s putting that on and I look closely and more closely at him and his badge with his picture, I suddenly realized…he’s a pilot. He’s a captain of airplane. So I said to him as he’s putting on his coat, “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were a TSA person” because sometimes the heads of the TSA are not dressed like the rest of them and I thought he was the supervisor. I assumed he was a supervisor. He put on his coat and I said, “Sir, oh, I’m sorry. You don’t work for the TSA. You’re a captain.” And without missing a beat he said to me, “I can’t help you. I wish I could help you. I wish I could help the entire world” and he walked off.
Assumptions, expectations, there’s that subtle message, you have been sent to help me, when in fact it was quite the opposite. So, I got out onto my plane and it’s one of these planes that has propellers, and the propellers, before the plane starts, I’m sitting in the position right behind the wing. And as I look at the propellers, they’re large and they’re dark and they totally obscure the view. I can’t see beyond them, but, you know, once those propellers started up and they started going very fast, all of a sudden I could see right through them. I could see the terminal. I could see everything. The propellers were spinning so quickly that they became completely invisible, offering a very clear, unimpeded view. Nonetheless, it was a view that, had I stepped out of the plane and walked towards that view, it would have cut me to shreds.
First John is famous in that it gives us…..it’s the only book in the Bible that seems to give us an eyewitness account. It is written by someone or passed down by someone who was there. We declare to you what was from the beginning the writer said, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our own hand concerning this word of life. And we declare it to you, we declare it to you what we have seen and heard so that you, also, may have fellowship with us. After Jesus died the early church for some time, for decades in fact, is wrestling with what was he about, anyway? What is this all about? Why did he live and then die and then live again? What just happened here in front of us? So they’re struggling with this death and resurrection thing. And they’re seeking to answer this question, who was this man anyway and why did he come?
And eventually their answer for the ages comes down to this….he saved us from our sins. He has become our laundry detergent. This is the message we have heard from him and proclaimed to you the writer goes on. If we walk in the light as he himself is in the light we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. However, if we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned we make him a liar and his word’s not in us. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But, if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
In other words, the church finally comes down to the realization that Jesus was God’s plan to cleanse us forever. He was the only thing that could do it because he has the power of God, amen? Sin, brothers and sisters, is just an insidious thing. You can’t see it unless it’s obvious like you’re surfing the Web going to porno sites, or stealing or robbing or beating on someone. But often you can’t see it and you can’t sense it and you can’t know it’s there. It has the appearance of beauty and desire and worse, normalcy. Sin isn’t going to look like some outrageous red devil with a tail, horns and a pitchfork. No, because that makes him too obvious. Sin’s work looks like something really beautiful and really every day normal. Commercial aside here, I’ve learned this. If you are talking to an African-American person you might want to think of them as African-American or Black American or Black. If you were ever to walk up to an African-American person and say, “Does it make you feel okay if I refer to you as Negro, colored person, a colored? Do you feel okay about that?” And I guarantee you they will say, “No.”
This is why sin is so darn deadly, brothers and sisters. You think the view is a clear one and you head off in that direction and it cuts you to pieces. If you take away the veneer of temptation, of normalcy, of our well-intentioned white liberal consciousness, you can just see how dirty your laundry is. But thanks be to God that we have the divine detergent that can turn the “Tide” by washing away all our sins leaving behind some “Cheer,” amen? But, that can happen only if we’re willing to be washed with the Blood of the Lamb of God. Aren’t you thankful for that? Can somebody give me an amen.
These words I speak to you this morning I give to you in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.