The Trash Trail -- FPC sermon excerpt

Landfills, recycling centers, and sewage treatment plants. They are not what you would call “scenic spots.”

But sometimes our spiritual health requires some serious trash-talk.

I grew up near a sewage treatment plant, not far from the city landfill in Bowie, Maryland. These sites were surrounded by woods, where my friends and I liked to play. When we would head out on a summer day, my mother would ask where we were going. We’d say, “The sewage plant.”

Yes, I had a charming childhood.

My point is that I know what these places look like. I know what they smell like. And now, in this season of summer travels to picturesque places, I don’t have any desire to visit them, see them, or smell them. But, at the same time, I know that they are incredibly important destinations for each and every one of us.

Fact is, we need to get rid of our garbage. This is true of both our physical trash and our spiritual refuse. On the spiritual side, Psalm 130 promises to help with the disposal of our iniquities — our sin, evil, vice, wickedness, and injustice. And a book called "Garbage Land" gives us insight into the elimination of our physical filth.

This is a fascinating work by a science writer named Elizabeth Royte. It bears the subtitle "On the Secret Trail of Trash." The book is one woman’s journey along the long and winding road of waste management, with visits to the final destinations of our old computers, soda bottles, leftover food scraps and bodily waste.

This is not a pretty picture. In fact, it stinks.

Tagging along with anthropology students who are performing a dig in a landfill, Royte finds that 40-year-old hot dogs look just like the ones you buy at the grocery store. Seventy-year-old newspapers can still be read. Even Cling Wrap still clings. Decomposition is not as fast or complete as we imagine it to be.

But the fact remains: We need to get rid of our garbage. This is going to be true whether we consume a lot or a little; whether we recycle our bottles or toss them in the trash. Each and every one of us produces waste, and for some of us the garbage is going to be more spiritual than physical.

We are sinners, after all — releasing a steady stream of toxic stew. We spew out gossip and insults, half-truths and lies, selfish manipulations and hurtful actions. Mix in anger and lust and greed, and you’ve got a serious sin management problem.

How can we safely dispose of all this personal, spiritual garbage?

Psalm 130 offers the assurance that God wants to save us: “O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem. It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities” (vv. 7-8). The psalm reminds us that God loves us, and that he has taken decisive action to haul away our trash.