Cleaning up our act

 A warm welcome to our baptism families today. These days, for many Aussie families a morning in church is a good, albeit strange, experience. I reckon church is really for Christians, much like an Elvis convention is for Elvis fans but that doesn't mean a visitor can't get a lot out of it.  We hope and pray that we will all get something out of this morning - something good and even something highly unexpected; something restorative and cleansing even.I had a teacher at high school whose line with year 10 boys was, "Come on fellas, clean up your act". Most of us could do with cleaning up our act. I heard on the radio that the approval rating of US congress is 5%. The people are saying, "Stop peacocking around and approve the money bill - clean up your act!" We want our politicians to speak the plain truth; that's why Clive Palmer got 5% of the vote. You other mob, clean up your act! We wish governments in Syria and Egypt could get it together and govern fairly. Three hundred and fifty thousand (I'm not kidding) mostly innocent people have died over there. Come on, clean up your act!I recently went to Israel and today it dawns on me that I was less than 100km from where people were dying.Outside the old city of Jerusalem where the ancient entry onto the Temple Mount is, archaeologists have found over 300 pools. The idea was that you paid $2.00 to the pool attendant and before going up to the temple you washed. You symbolically cleaned up your act.  The washing wasn't about the outside but the inside. Jesus slammed hypocrites who pretended one thing on the outside when they were putrid on the inside.'Baptism' means 'to wash'. Its an acknowledgement that we can't clean our own insides, our hearts and minds. We need to ‘fess up’, give up and ask for help. We need forgiveness and we need to be forgiving. This is what baptism is about.The really great thing about baptising little people is that they haven't a clue what's going on. When babies are brought for baptism, parents are asking God to begin to work inside their child, to start cleaning up their act before they've even learned any lines.Those people outside the temple all those years ago, washed as a symbol of humility and hope that God would forgive them and accept them; that God would be doing unexpected things - healing, saving things. It is in the same spirit that we are asking for these little ones today. Please God, start a good work in these kids and bring it to fulfilment in your time. And do the same for me. Don't even let there be a sniff of hypocrisy about me!BlessingsMalcolm