The Spring-Clean

It happened every year around the second week of April. The tell-tale signs were tulips pushing through the ground, taking off the storm windows and putting on the screens, and the sound of my mother’s voice, “Get your winter clothes ready to put up in the attic.” And then it would begin, with a grim and determined face my mother would begin a week-long battle with what she perceived to be mountains of accumulated winter dirt in what she called “Spring-Cleaning”. It was a tough week because she was a little more irritable than usual and dinner very often was Spam with cloves or chipped beef on toast. But for all the negatives of spring-cleaning, when it was all over, the whole family agreed it was worth it. Spring breezes gently blew through the open windows, accenting the pleasant detergent smell that saturated the house. It seemed all the stale smells and germs of winter had been blasted away, replaced with a refreshing and invigorating feeling of clean.

In the event of Jesus’ life which we are going to study from the Gospel of Mark this weekend, we’re going to encounter a different type of cleaning – a spiritual cleaning. The day after Palm Sunday, Jesus went to the Temple only to find it more of a farmers’ market than the place to meet the living God. He would have none of it and promptly began to throw the merchants out. For that reason we call this story the “cleansing of the Temple”. But it was more than just getting rid of the commerce, Jesus was teaching us about the importance of worship - pure and right worship. Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple is an opportunity for us to take a healthy, honest look at our worship lives and ask the question, “Jesus, do you need to do some cleaning in my heart?”

Saturday evening worship: 6:00 pm
Sunday morning worship: 10:00 am