The Gospel According To Bissell Or The Boom And Mop Christian Series

Life Lessons from Nature (Autumn series)

The Gospel According to Bissell

Broom and Mop Christianity

This is a fun little sermon focusing on how one can be a Broom and Mop Christian.

Scripture: Romans 12:2; Ezekiel 36:25; Psalm 51:10

INTRO:

Grace and peace from God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Today’s sermon is about mops and brooms.

That’s right. You heard correctly. Mops and brooms. What it means to be a mop and broom Christian or more correctly what it means to be a broom and mop Christian.

If you had met my mother, you would have met this woman who not only knew how to clean a house but how to clean a house that you could literally eat off the floor. Every day we would sweep our floors multiple times and often mop at least one of our floors.

My mother would have been considered an OCD or a fanatic when it came to housekeeping. She loved to have her floors, her bathrooms, her cabinets, her cushions, her rugs, her beds, her silverware and everything that could be cleaned – cleaned.

One of my first jobs as a young teenager was to help a couple of ladies clean their houses. My sister had helped them before and was now married and so they thought since I had also been taught by my mom that they would give me a try.

I cleaned their houses for years until I found a better job working at one of our local department stores. I was very familiar with cleaning toilets, scrubbing floors, polishing furniture and vacuuming floors. I knew what it meant to clean and polish a brash bed and how to use a car polisher with some Johnson’s Paste Wax on both the tile floors and the wooden cabinets.

With all that being said did you know that Christianity; following Jesus has a lot of things in common with cleaning?

It has been said: “Sometimes you have to take what life gives you because life is like a mop.”

It has also been said: When something falls on the floor, you don’t say – It’s not my job to clean that up.’ Instead, you say, “Should I use a broom or a mop.”

Brooms and mops.

They have been around for a long time.

And there are all kinds of brooms and mops.

+There are Straw and Corn Brooms.

+There are Plastic Brooms.

+There are Angled brooms, Whisk brooms and Hand brooms.

+There are dust mops and wet mops along with steam mops and sponge mops.

+There are mops made out of cotton and others out of microfiber and still others out of strips of various materials.

The mop and broom business are booming businesses. China makes and sells the most brooms and mops while we import more than 2 billion dollars’ worth of brooms each year. It is a multibillion-dollar business with brooms outselling mops.

So, what in the world would be a Broom and Mop Christian?

It’s a person who is a servant and ready to do some work.

A broom or a mop is made for more than something to lean on. It’s a tool. It’s made to use. It’s made to do work.

So, too is a follower of Jesus.

Listen to Jesus words:

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. – Matthew 16:24

Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” – Matthew 20:28

"For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." – Matthew 25:35-40.

And we could add to those:

"Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God's grace in its various forms. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord." 1 Peter 4:10-11

“You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.” – Galatians 5:13

As followers of Jesus, we are to help one another and that requires work. And sometimes that work is dirty and messy both literally and figuratively.

Some things need a broom.

In our own lives there are times that we mess things up and everything falls apart. There are things that need to be swept up and cleaned up.