Brooms, brush, sweeping.
What comes to mind?
Brooms, brush, sweeping?
What do you see, in your minds eye, when I list these simple words?

Brooms, brush, sweeping?
What do you see?
Perhaps you see your mother, bent over housework?
Perhaps you see a kitchen from a long time ago?
Perhaps you see your own hands, clasping wood or plastic, gripping as you work?
Brooms, brush, sweeping.
What do you see?

According to my faded old dictionary of symbols
the broom, from ancient times, was invested with considerable magic power,
it was a symbol of cleansing
it had to be used with care
in case it drove out the friendly spirits with the dust.
In North Africa folk were forbidden to sweep a house after someone had just died
in case the dead person’s spirit was swept away before it was ready to leave.

Brooms, brush, sweeping.
What do we think of?
Maybe housework and maybe witches and probably women,
women and their work.
But I don’t imagine that many of us think of Christ,
or of god or of heavenly love.
Which is odd really because in today’s story
Jesus is essentially giving us the image of God
as woman
with broom.

The other image that we are given, the image of God as sheperd,
is a much more familiar one
and the Christan art world is littered with image after painting
after stain glass window
after embroidered cloth
after delicate fresco and embossed gold goblet
with the image of Christ as sheperd,
wee baby lamb aloft on his broad shoulders.

But as far as I could discover,
no where in the history of Christian art, is there an image of Christ with a broom.
It is clear that Christian artists and their patrons have ignored this image
and we can only wonder if the reason behind this deliberate dismissal is that the mainstream Christian community,
for over 2000 years
has struggled to come to terms with the concept of a feminian face for God.
And this inability exists in spite of the fact that Christ himself
is clearly inviting us into a space of such imaginings.

Lets look again at the story.
Today we heard a story about a woman who sweeps.
 This woman is searching for something precious. For something lost.
‘I once was lost, but now am found’
This woman knows that this precious ‘something’ is out there,
somewhere
and she is determined to find it.
Clearly Christ wants us to see this woman as the loving God
who will seek out,
sweep out,
hands and knees on the floor out,
the coin that is lost, the coin that has rolled away
the coin that has landed, dusky dark, in a corner somewhere.
The coin of the self, that needs a little help, to find its way home.

Which part of you is feeling a little lost?
Which part of you needs a little help?
Which part of you needs a little sweeping?
A little lifting?
A little rolling out into the light?

Spring is here.
You can smell it.
The light blue sky shines high in the morning.
The magnolia curves and cups the sun.
And here we all are, after the dark.
God is rolling us out with a deft sweep of the broom
into the new life of another season.
Can you feel it?
The possibility?
The hope?
Maybe?
Maybe not?

Which part of you is feeling a little lost?
Which part of you needs a little help?
Which part of you needs a little sweeping?
A little lifting?
A little rolling out into the light?

Lets sit for a few moments in the silence. Lets reflect on the winter past.
Has it been a cold one for you?
Has it been filled with shadows?
Has it been a winter of inner warmth and soft woollen wrapped kindness?
Have there been moments of icy crisp clarity.
Moments when things have felt very clear, like silhouette branches against the sky?
Has it been a winter of hibernation and sleepiness?
Of hiding away?
Lets sit. What is stirring deep inside? What needs awakening?
What needs rediscovery?

Lets sit and listen
And then…
Lets join with God and her broom.
Lets sweep what is lost into the light.