The Courtyard Swept Twice

My grandmother had a courtyard with red tiles, and she swept it every evening, and I want to tell you about the man next door who swept his twice.

Hers took about four minutes. She did it the way you do a thing you have done ten thousand times, mostly with the wrists, talking to somebody over her shoulder the entire time, and when it was done she leaned the broom against the wall by the door and that was the end of it until tomorrow.

He swept his properly too. Thoroughly, in fact, more thoroughly than she did. And then, about twenty minutes later, he would come back out and sweep it again.

The second sweeping never produced anything. I watched him for years as a boy. Nothing came up. The tiles were clean when he started the second time, because he had cleaned them, and they were clean when he finished, and he would stand there a moment looking at them, and then he would go in.

Nobody in the street ever mentioned it. That is what streets are like.

Here is what I understood much later, when I was old enough to understand anything. The second sweeping was not about the tiles. He knew the tiles were clean. What he did not know, and could not make himself know, was whether the first sweeping had counted. So he did it again, to be sure, and the second one did not settle it either, and the only reason there was not a third is that a man has to sleep.

Now, in that same street, everybody could recite the verse about God being faithful and just to forgive. Everybody. It was on a card in half the kitchens in that town. And the man next door could have said it to you word perfect while he was sweeping his clean courtyard for the second time.

That is you with the broom.

You know the promise. You could recite it. And you go back over the same ground because you cannot make yourself certain that the first time landed, and the second pass never settles it any more than the first one did, and there is no number of passes that would.

The two words in the verse describe God, not the sweeping

Here is the sentence, and I want to move the emphasis off where everybody puts it.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.1 John 1:9

Most people read that verse with the stress on the first clause: if we confess. And so the whole weight lands on the quality of the confessing, which is why a man sweeps twice: he is checking his own work.

But look at what the sentence is actually built to say. The main clause is about God, and it gives two of His attributes as the reason the forgiving happens. Faithful. Just.

Faithful means He does what He said He would do, reliably, whether or not you feel it. Just is the stronger of the two, and it is the one that gets missed. Just means the forgiving is not a favor He might be talked into. It is the legally right outcome, because the price has been settled by Someone else, and a just God does not charge twice for one debt.

You are dealing with a God for whom forgiving you is the just thing, and justice does not vary with how well you asked, and I am not making that comfortable at truth's expense: 1 John 1:9 names both attributes in writing, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than my saying it who can get that under a man holding a broom.

Then the second half, which is the part I most want you to have. And to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Cleanse is His verb, and the object of it is not the thing you named. It is all unrighteousness, which is wider than anything you could have listed, including the parts you did not think to mention and the parts you did not know were there.

You have been cleansed of more than you brought, and the sweeping you keep repeating was never the thing making the tiles clean, which is written into the second clause rather than being my kindness to you, with the Spirit of God able to lean a broom against a wall that argument has never reached.

I want to say clearly, because this category exists to end a certain kind of harm: nobody is asking you to bring it again. Not tonight, not more thoroughly, not in better words. The verse does not ask for a second sweeping and I will not either.

In my family a plate does not get inspected before it is set down. Somebody washed it. That is the end of the matter, and the meal goes on, and to stand at the sink re-checking the plates while everybody is sitting down is a way of being absent from your own table.

This courtyard is clean, and it has been clean since the first sweeping, because Scripture puts the faithfulness and the justice on God's side, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying that out to a man in the dusk with a broom in his hands.