What does it mean to be washed clean? Sometimes the world feels so complex that a good, clean option is inconceivable. Today’s first reading invites me to reflect on one of my particularly complicated roles in the human family—that of consumer.

I used to agonize over all the tiny moral decisions that make up every day. The thought of personal sin, and the interweaving of personal sins into social structures of sin, nearly paralyzed me. I remember on one occasion trying to buy sports socks and walking empty handed out of a store filled with options. None of them could meet ethical standards of care for the environment or care for workers. I simply couldn’t make a decision apart from those concerns. This was not an infrequent occurrence.

After years of indecision I moved in the other direction. I threw up my hands and told myself my little choices don’t really have an impact. I stopped checking information about products at all. During the pandemic I retreated into a degree of consumerism my lifestyle allows. I justified my fairly modest indulgences by comparison with the excess that could be. It’s so easy to make quick decisions when the click of a button delivers the things I want right to my door.

When my parents-in-law moved in with us a few years ago I started seeing our frequent package deliveries through their eyes. What could we possibly need that required multiple deliveries in a week? What impact did this have on me as a person, and on the world around me? I realized that in trying to be free from moral paralysis I had abdicated any responsibility I had as a consumer. In recent days I have been challenged to rebalance the scales.

Lent is a time for introspection, simplicity, and sacrifice. It is a time to ask God to help me turn my heart yet again, and reform me in God’s own ways. In this season I am reminded that a middle ground is more difficult than an extreme. It doesn’t have the gratifying self-righteousness of absolute discipline, or the gratifying luxury of self-indulgence. The middle doesn’t feel “washed clean.” Yet this is where I believe God meets us.

The historical Jesus himself didn’t heal every person in his region, he didn’t resuscitate all the dead. Though free from sin, he had to live his human life in the complexity of a finite world in which not every moral good is possible. If I am to live like Jesus, I have to inhabit the same world. This means taking responsibility for the choices I do have (both in quantity of consumption, and in standards of production), and not allowing the things truly beyond my control to torment me into giving up. Looking ahead to Holy Week I will let Jesus wash my feet, knowing I will go back out into the streets, knowing they will need to be washed again. Lord, wash me clean, help me to put away misdeeds, teach me to do good, and all of this in the beautiful, tragic, complex world in which you yourself learned to live.