This stunning painting by Raphael Soyer is currently doing the rounds among Minister-types I know.  It's absolutely stunning.

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.

Nearly half way!

Bathroom scales are the focus today. Along with the phrase 'you have been weighed and found wanting'

Coming from a family where the women have a tendency to be be somewhat generously proportioned, I do have bathroom scales, and they do get used to keep on eye on my weight.  Not, I hope, in an obssessive way, but because I know that I could (and in the past have) put on a lot of weight without even realising it.  The amusing truth is that since I took up Pilates I have gained weight and lost girth as muscle replaces fat.

The point the author makes is that the scales have one simple purpose - to tell us what we weigh. It is up to us what we then do with information.  Do we ignore it, do we become obsessed about it, do we take a responsible attitude to it?

Scales are also an ancient, and continuing, symbol of justice.  Whether Anubis weighs a soul and compares it an ostrich feather, whether it is blind Justice herself, or whether it is the writing on the wall 'Mene, mene tekel upharsin'.  As Christians, judgement is about facing up to reality, to the truth of who and what we are (or are not) and then choosing what we'll do about it.  Confession and absolution are important parts of that - but then it is over to us to live 'better'.

God of justice, who knows, without needing scales, the state of my soul, forgive me where I have messed up, and help me to be or to do what is needful for a more healthy, whole life. Amen.