Jesus as washing machine - that's the essence of today's reflection!  Not just the 'Jesus washes whiter' take on soap powder ads of the 1980s, but Jesus as the 'easy' form of salvation!  The author compares the OT sacrificial system with hand washing - hard work and not always entriely successful.  Washing machines, on the other hand, you chuck it in, switch it on and, lo, perfectly clean laundry emerges.

Except when a red sock gets in the whites wash...

Except when you accidentally put you favourite wool jumper in the hot wash and it emerges just about big enough for a doll, and matted, and ruined...

Maybe I'm being mean, stretching the analogy too far... maybe the analogy is too simplistic anyway... maybe somewhere in between.

In Philippians, the apostle tells his readers to "continue to work out their salvation..." not because it isn't assured, but because it's an ongoing process not a one-off event.  My clothes may emerge fresh and clean from the washing machine, but they'll need to go back in again all too soon. Jesus may wash whiter, but the grime of a disordered world still finds its way back.

Cleansing God, just as I need to wash my body and launder my clothes, so I need to cleanse my soul.  Thank you for the twin gifts of confession and absolution, at the heart of which lie your promised forgiveness and salvation. Amen.