Mold Cleaner
“Mold has colonized in your nasal passages,” my sister-in-law and nurse practitioner, Lexi, told me. I had called her after a night of coughing and sneezing that followed a day cleaning mold from our new (and very old) house. There had been no expense spared on window dressings and wallpaper when it was decorated years ago. Without central air, moisture had left its mark. Everywhere. There was surface mold on the walls and windows. Black mold hid under sinks and toilets. As I had come from the land of suburban model homes and air conditioning, it was a rude awakening, yet a welcomed one— Sean and I grew up in old homes throughout the North East, so it felt familiar to both of us. I knew the old locks, the radiators, the slope in the floor. Cleaning this home was a rite of passage to our new life stage. The mold welcomed us to our ministry.
I began this project wearing goggles, a surgical face mask, and gloves. I was eager to tackle the house! Now I saw flashes of emergency ward nurses shaking their heads at the insufficiency of such a uniform as they signed me up for a lung transplant. I may have also imagined mold cleaner burrowing a hole from my sinus to my brain. Clearly, my anatomical knowledge is vast, but my catastrophizing is vaster! This was not helped by the fact I would go outside for breaks of fresh air yet cleaning fumes were all I could smell. By the end of day two, I was sneezing and coughing and couldn’t stop. Had I mortally infected myself?
“You don’t sound too worried,” I replied. I was, a bit (a lot). I had mold in my face! Both Sean and I had actually prayed (independently), asking if mold-poisoning (or cleaning product poisoning) was going to be a major part of our testimony. It would be quite a right hook if so.
“It’s bad if it is in your lungs, but it is still in your head,” she giggled. Thankfully, I was able to sneeze and cough through it on my own without antihistamines or antibiotics. They would have been the next step.
Cleaning this house has made me reflect on cleaning the soul. Our COVID-changed world is now obsessed with cleaners, disinfectants, and cleanliness. I’ve never had so many wipes and hand-pumps in my life! Jesus’ words stand out to me in a new way. He said to his disciples, “You are clean,” when he took the posture of a slave and washed their feet (John 13:10).
He meant he had cleaned and washed them from sin by the act he was going to do on the cross. Jesus is God Almighty, yet he made himself small for them. He made himself small for everyone he cleaned. He gave up his high-paying job, took our soul in his hands, and washed the grime away. If you have ever felt neglected, unseen, or worthless, Jesus makes you otherwise. We are each priceless to him. His love cleanses us and makes us human again.
We are so valuable and made beautiful, and yet every inch is tainted. Every surface has mold. We set about to eat and we eat too much (or too little). We set about to work and compare ourselves to someone better (or worse). We acquire our possessions yet envy what others have. We set about to host but end up in a fight. I wish I could find a corner in me that was spotless. If every part of a home reflected areas of ourselves, every part has mold. It looks good in pictures, but it’ll make you sick if you live in it. Isn’t that what we are afraid of in relationships? We fear that if someone knew us, we would be rejected. They’d start sneezing, coughing, spewing us out.
The thought of the Son of God cleaning off the mold in my heart made me feel quite humbled and special. And not just me – everyone he made. As I washed and admired the house, I thought how much more valuable the people who lived in it were (and live in it now;). We, male and female, are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:28). He said his creation was “very good” when he made us. He made us to enjoy him and he, us. We are a pearl of great price, a treasure in a field to him, as Jesus’ parables tell.
A year ago, I had the honor of living next to my parents as my father died of brain cancer. My dad was a worker bee—he loved to work, to “get things done,” to make things happen, start new ministries from scratch. Yet cancer and bad hips shrunk his world to where he needed help to do everything. While he was still cognizant, he would apologize frequently because he feared he was a burden to my mom, his primary caregiver, and to all of us. Yet the more vulnerable, needy and weak he got, the more I saw his worth. He was worth caring for when he couldn’t produce, couldn’t work, couldn’t … anything on his own. It reinforced my own inherent value and all of ours as we cared for him. Jesus takes the feet of the sick and elderly and gives them tremendous dignity. He gives it to the caregivers too. He promises life from death. Each time I sat with my dad as he shrunk away, I knew this more.
We are valuable before we can speak, walk, or work; we matter just as much after we can’t speak, walk, or work anymore. We are priceless simply by being made in God’s image. We are valuable with or without accomplishments, rationality, or mobility. What’s more, we are each so deeply loved. Cleaning mold brought that home to me, again (and I need to hear it as much as possible).
One of my favorite church services is the funeral of a homeless man. I have attended them at The Bowery Mission Homeless Shelter in New York and at Shepherd’s Heart, an Anglican church for the poor in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, planted and run by the Rev. Mike and Tina Wurschmidt (also my mentors). Mike will get a call from time to time from the Emergency Ward of the Pittsburgh hospitals. When a John Doe dies homeless, with no identification, family or friends, they call him. He will take him and bury him with the dignity of a child of God. Those who die poor in their addiction matter to the Lord who made them, who loves them. “Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering,” Isaiah says of Jesus (Isaiah 53:3,4). Not only are we made in God’s image, but saved by his suffering. He knows what poverty does to you. He knows what cancer does too. He turned death into the holy ground of our redemption. He meets us in ours, taking the dirtiest part in his hand.
We know our value not when we are at our best but when we are at our worst. That’s when we know who loves us, who sticks with us, who can actually help us with the mold we have. In Jesus, God showed us how much we matter to him. Jesus knew we have hated and rejected him in the privacy of our hearts. He did not flee. He did not reject. He was able to handle us. He knew every inch of us and cleaned us with his own life, his own blood, his own words, “I forgive you.”
The Apostle Paul wrote that Christ loved his church—his valuable, moldy family—and “gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27). Jesus carefully washed every inch of our insides. He found all the nooks and crannies, all the closed closets; he reached beneath the wallpaper, behind the toilet. Jesus is the ultimate cleaner—the sanctifier of our souls. Jesus made us human again by cleansing us from sin. He redeemed every room in us. He made a home and he’ll never sell: we are his home; he is ours (John 14:23). Now when he finds mold, he slaps on the ski goggles, and gives us a taste of the home promised to us. The one where our bodies are made new as our hearts already have been. The King of heaven says, “To me, you’re worth it.” He counts the most.
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