Every twelve years there is a festival in India, the “Maha Kumbh Mela.” It attracts what may be the greatest gathering of people on earth. In 2001 it was expected to draw up to 65 million pilgrims during the forty-three day-celebration-65 million people making long and difficult journeys to be able to plunge once into a cold and muddy river.
Why?
Pretap Garh, a Hindu teacher, answers, “I have come here to get a new life, to wash away the sins I have committed in the last few years.”
Half a world away, the small country of Haiti does not have millions of people, but tens of thousands of Haitians make their own pilgrimage to the 100-foot waterfall of Saut d’Eau. There they strip and submerge themselves in the falling water. Leaving their old clothes in the water, they emerge to put on clean clothes and make their offerings.
Again, why?
“Saut d’Eau is a lot like Mecca to Muslims,” one man explained.
“No matter how much it costs, no matter how long it takes, if you serve the spirits, you need to make the pilgrimage at least once.”
And Mecca to the Muslims? They have no great river, no 100-foot waterfall, but there is that same urge to purify themselves. In the dry and desert surroundings of Mecca, where they must go once in their life if it is at all possible, they have worked out a long and elaborate ritual which must be carefully observed.
Simply—it is to be or to feel clean.
When God created man and woman in innocence, they knew only good. But, disobeying Him, they ate of the fruit of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Ever since then, that knowledge of evil, that feeling that there is something wrong, something unclean, something that needs to be washed away, has haunted the human race.
The Hindu goes to the Ganges “to wash away his sins” and pray to escape the endless cycle of reincarnation. And the Haitians? They, too, feel cleansed by the falling waters that they hope will wash away past sins and promise a better life in the coming year. All around the globe other races and tribes go through their own rituals of cleansing and renewal, their own response to that sense of evil that dwells within. But how hard must one scrub the skin to make the heart and mind clean?
In the Bible we read, “Though thou wash thee...and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity [sin!] is marked before Me.” No amount of bathing—no matter how much soap is used or how pure and clean the water—can wash away the sin inside.
There is only one remedy. In 1 John 1 we find that “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all...and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” The Lord Jesus Christ sacrificed His life shed His blood-on the cross of Calvary to wash away that dreadful stain of sin from everyone who would receive His salvation. Now God can say to us: “Come now, and let us reason together...though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isa. 1:1818Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. (Isaiah 1:18)). Clean at last!