HOLY WEEK — The week before Easter — is on the horizon. And Holy Week always makes me think about spring cleaning.
We have a little condo where I often stay to break up the commute to Brigham City. I'll be spiffing that up this year — trying to get the bathroom on a par with the restroom at the Gas 'n' Go, washing each slat of the Venetian blinds, emptying dead flies from the light fixtures. I've let things go.
I'm a rather disinterested cleaner. My approach, as mother used to tell me, is to give things "a cat lick and a promise."
Perhaps I'd do better if I tried to see spring cleaning in biblical terms, as a metaphor — a symbol — for ridding the heart of corruption. I could use some cleaning inspiration.
In the Bible, the final week in the life of Jesus was a week of intense "spring cleaning."
I get the impression Jesus was hounded by hypocrites that week — people who claimed to be doing the bidding and will of God when they were really in it for themselves. I suspect that's what annoyed him most at the temple when he "cleansed" the grounds of money-changers and other religious phonies.
That day was a "spring-cleaning" day for the ages.
But it was just the beginning. There was more cleansing to come.
At the Last Supper, Jesus washed the feet of his apostles. When Peter recoiled, Jesus explained — in so many words — that Peter couldn't cleanse himself. Jesus had to do it. He told them, "Ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you."
In my mind, the moment shows the difference between Peter and Pilate — the leader who would "wash his hands" of all involvement with Jesus a few days later. That little gesture has put Pilate's name in the Hall of Shame with Herod and Judas. Like Lady Macbeth, Pilate would never be able to clean the blood off his hands, no matter how often he washed them. Instead of washing his own hands, I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Pilate had extended his hands for Jesus to wash. My guess is the move would have turned Pilate's fate around. We wouldn't be sneering at Pilate today. We'd be celebrating St. Pilate's Day and naming cities and schools after him.
But it never happened.
Pilate didn't realize he could never cleanse himself. Someone else had to do that.
From the Christian point of view, of course, the Bible itself is nothing but a "care and cleaning manual" — a handbook filled with baptisms, washings and bathings. Since disease was viewed as a form of contamination, every healing was something of a bath. The words "cleanse" and "clean" appear more than 50 times in the Bible.
The reason, as every housekeeper knows, is that grime never sleeps. And the cleansing of the temple shows just how determined and forceful we must be just to keep corruption at bay.
In the end, for believers, all that Holy Week cleaning — indeed, all the cleansings and washings in the Bible itself — are simply "shadow versions" of the ultimate cleaning that Jesus would give the world when he "washed" the world in his blood and "cleansed" it of sin. That's the point Christians always try to keep in the front of their minds.
In fact, wouldn't it be interesting if every time Christians washed the car, bathed the baby, did the dishes or dusted the living room they'd remember that ultimate cleansing? It might be enough to ease the drudgery of the never-ending task of cleaning.
I'm going to give it a go when I tackle the smudges in that condo next week.
Anything that softens the hassle of washing Venetian blinds is certainly worth a try.
E-mail: jerjohn@desnews.com