The cat in the hat came back

I'm not sure if you've read the sequel to the Cat in the Hat, or even if you knew that there was one. But there is, obviously, or I wouldn't be talking about it.  It's the same

story as it was back in the first book, where the nice family who are at the centre of it all have their mother go out for shopping, and the kids are left at home, ostensibly under the supervision of the very capable goldfish.  And then, at the absolute zenith of boredom, the cat in the hat shows up, and deigns to make things just a shade more interesting.  And so he does, this time by eating a cake in the bathtub, living the Canadian dream.  But the cat is scolded, and told to get packing, and so he hops out of the bathtub, pulling the plug, to reveal a pink ring in the tub.  Disaster.

So the rest of the book is an effort to get rid of the pink ring, and an exploration of the age-old wisdom that you can't make something clean without making something else dirty. So, the cat gets clean, obviously, but the tub gets dirty.  So then the cat cleans the tub with mother's new dress.  That makes the tub clean, but makes the dress pink.  And then he uses the drapes to clean the dress which, you guessed it, cleans the dress, but mucks up the drapes.  And the story goes on and on from there, spiralling out of control, further and further down, and as things get clean, other things get dirty.  Out of control, deeper and down.

Now, this story serves as a bit of an illustration for us, particularly when it comes to baptism.  Baptism is something that we as Lutherans hold pretty dear, where we hold fast to the work that God does to wash our sins away.  But that old maxim still holds, you know.  You can't make something clean without making something else dirty.  It's not possible to do that.  And the cat shows that, by washing things away, and yet not being able to get the dirt all the way gone.  The cat had some filth on him, and that filth was washed off of him and onto the tub, then the dirt was removed from the tub to the dress, then the dress to the drapes, then the drapes to the loafers and so on.

But we forget that when it comes to our sins.  We think that our sins, essentially, have no residue.  They don't really exist, they're not a real thing. We commit sins, we shrug

our shoulders, and what we ask God to do is to forget them.  To shrug his shoulders, to say 'oh well,' basically, and to pretend that it didn't happen.  And so what we're asking is for our sins to evaporate, to disappear, and to be as though they never happened.  But all that view of things does, is to give us the notion that our sins really don't count for anything at all.  They're not a major issue, they don't affect anything, and can be easily forgotten.  But that's not how things actually are.  They don't really work like that.

Your sins are like that grime that clung to the cat in the hat, and then to the tub.  Washed away, but then what.  Are they gone, or do they stick around, somewhere else.  And this is where forgiveness and the story of the baptism of Jesus meet head on.

If you're going to understand Jesus in the way that John the Baptist did, as the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, then you'll have to understand what it means to take away those sins.  If Jesus is to take away the sins of the world, then where do they go, because they're a lot like that pink ring in the tub; you're going to have to actually get rid of them somehow.  It's not as simple as just pretending it didn't happen, or that it's not a big deal, because it did, and it is. And if you're asking God to just magic the sins away, then you're not really thinking about what it means to take something away.  You can't just leave a pink ring in the tub then walk away.  It's still there.

Well, here's the deal, unfortunately.  And the deal is that the slime that we bring in doesn't go anywhere.  It sticks around.  It lasts.  It is a wholly persistent problem.  If we try to get rid of it, it won't go anywhere, it just sticks around, and sticks to different things.

Your sinfulness is like that.  It's sticky, and wiping it off of you, well, it doesn't go anywhere now, does it.  You can't make something clean without making something else dirty, and you can't get rid of your sins, and the penalty of death that they carry, without sticking them to something else.  It's the way of things, you know.  And what we expect to happen at the moment of baptism is that our sins would be taken away, but then where do they go.

They do go away, you know.  As far as the east is from the west, they are gone from us, but they do go somewhere.  They go onto Christ.  You know by now that Jesus got baptized, that he went down into the waters of the Jordan and came back up out of it.  Good to know, but the question is why.  If he's without sin, why the baptism.

He didn't get baptized to wash anything off of him, he got baptized to put something on him.  He got baptized to take that pink ring, that dirt, that filth upon himself when he dipped himself down into those waters.  Think of it as the Jordan as the place for all the runoff for all the fonts in the world, past or present.  Wherever someone is

being baptized, the slime of humanity all drains towards that one point.  And when Jesus descends into the waters of baptism, he cleans the water that we'd made dirty. He takes the sins on himself, and walks them out of the waters of baptism leaving clean water behind.  All the dirt, all the shame, all the sin of humanity, borne on his shoulders, and taken by him.  He and us, we exchange burdens.  We take his burden upon us, and learn from him, for his yoke is easy, and his burden is light.  So we take the mantle of his perfection on us, wearing it as though it was ours, and he takes our sins upon himself, and walks them to the cross.

In many ways, one of the more beautiful images in the scriptures is Jesus, right before he is crucified, having his clothes gambled over.  The soldiers can't divide it, so they have to throw dice for it.  One person wins it.  One of the soldiers who crucifies Jesus walks away with the mantle of Christ on him.  And Jesus dies wearing the soldier's sins.  That's the exchange that happens at the baptism of Christ, and our baptisms too.  We go into the water, and our sins are washed away.  He goes into the waters, and the sins cling to him.  And he then walks them all the way to the cross.

Happy, blessed, fulfilling new year, everyone.

PJ.