We’ve been in a weird time where our culture has required us to separate ourselves from one another. At the same time, we’ve been incredibly focused on cleanliness.
As a hospital chaplain, I wander all over the hospital. During the last 24 hours, I hiked the stairs numerous times, meeting with people on all six floors. It was great for getting my steps in, but it required me to clean my hands over and over and over again. I lost count how many times I had to do so. Sometimes, I had to clean them twice in the same minute.
On top of the hand-cleaning, there are the face masks we’re all supposed to be wearing these days. We don’t want people even breathing on us. If someone coughs, all conversations cease and heads turn in the coughing person’s direction. Often times, that person has to apologize in the face of accusing looks.
When boxes from Amazon arrive, people quarantine them in their garages. When I come back home from the hospital, I leave my shoes in the garage, put my clothes in the wash, and take a shower.
It may have been Benjamin Franklin who wrote, “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” but we’re the one who have devoted ourselves to it.
These last two months have given us this dual preoccupation with cleanliness and separation. And it reminds me of the biblical call to holiness.
I prefer to render the word “holy” simply as “different.” But in this current context, the more common definition of the word as “set apart” applies. “Set apart” emphasizes the separateness we’ve been experiencing. There’s been a gap between us and other people, and the six-foot social distancing gaps we’ve quickly become used to emphasize this.
My family went for a short hike recently. And though we were near each other, sometimes bumping into one another, we and other hikers walked on opposite sides of the trail when we passed by one another. As we did so, we had a sense of us and them. We could be close to one another, but we had to maintain our distance from the others. The gap between us and them was essential.
Until very recently, God’s people have always had a sense of being a separate people. Not just the Old Testament, but the New as well told us to keep ourselves clean.
Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said:
“I will live with them
and walk among the
and I will be their God,
and they will be my people.”c]” data-fn=”#fen-NIV-28915c”>
Therefore,
“Come out from them
and be separate,
says the Lord.
Touch no unclean thing,
and I will receive you” (2 Cor. 6:14-17).
These are difficult words. Hard words. And I think they are easily misunderstood words.
The people of Israel had swung between two poles. On one end, they had become so like the people around them they became indistinguishable from them. Because of that blending, they worshiped the gods of the people around them. The intermarried with the surrounding people. The lost their distinctiveness. And that’s where the Church has been most recently. If we’re honest, there’s very little that distinguishes us from the rest. We look and act like everybody else. Many of us even make this lack of distinctiveness a goal.
On the other end of the spectrum, many among the people of Israel were so focused on themselves that they lost any sense of mission in the world. They existed for themselves and turned their piety inward, forgetting that God had created them as a unique people for the sake of mission to the world. It was only by being different that they could illustrate and call others to a different way of life as they followed the distinctive God of Israel.
This is our call:
As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy” (1 Peter 1:14-16).
Holiness is an expectation. Yahweh is holy and we’re to be holy. Our God is different and we’re to be different.
We’re to separate ourselves from the world to be clean of the things of the world in order to be of use to the world, inviting the world to participate in this good and true and beautiful life God created both us and them for and Jesus saves both us and them to.
There is this difficult balancing work we have to do in order the in the world but not of the world. As Jesus prays for us,
I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified (John 17:14-19).
We are different from the world but sent into it. That is tough. But we’ve got Jesus as our example, our pattern. Like him, we do this as servants, not as masters. We do this not arrogantly, but humbly. We do this not for our sake, but for the sake of others.
So, we keep clean. We wash our hands, our clothes, and especially our hearts. And we keep separate, setting ourselves apart not as a clique of those who think we’re better than the rest, but as those who call people into God’s way of living, which is the best way of living possible.
Yes, we do this for our own sake. But we do it for God’s sake as we join him in his mission of healing the world from a sickness it cannot see but is deadly nonetheless.