Lifting Up Jesus: Sermon for Lent 5B

• Jeremiah 31:31-34
• Hebrews 5:5-10
• John 12:20-33
• Psalm 51:1-13

The events of our gospel reading take place during the holy festival of the Passover in Jerusalem. Passover was the most solemn observance in the Jewish religious calendar. It is a festival centered around community, family, and the shaping of a ragtag bunch of former slaves into a people.

A specific people singled out by God and preserved over and over again from death, even the literal angel of death who swept across the land of their captors, and whose savage reaping finally convinced the Pharaoh of Egypt to, in the words of the famous spiritual “Go Down, Moses,” to “let my people go.” And so Jewish people, as well as Gentile converts and those attracted by the Jewish faith from all over the Mediterranean, if they had the means, would gather in Jerusalem to celebrate in and around the Temple.

We hold this in mind as we look toward next week’s pageantry of Palm Sunday in the Christian calendar, with Jesus triumphantly entering Jerusalem during Passover to shouts of Hosanna and the waving of palm branches—a hero’s welcome. There will be declarations of his rightful claim to be the Messiah, the anointed one appointed by God to liberate the people of Israel, some believe—to with power throw off the oppression of Israel by the Roman empire. Jesus will ride triumphantly into Jerusalem in the name of liberation during the festival which celebrates the liberation of the people of Israel from bondage. That’s what so many of those cheering expected.

But there were two processions parading through the streets of Jerusalem at that moment. As Jesus and his band of followers come in from the east, a much more impressive procession would be entering from the west. The Roman governor would himself put together a huge military display and ride through the streets of Jerusalem with rows of infantry and a powerful show of force of cavalry.

Each year, as the people of Judea started dangerously talking about their freedom and about the power of their God, the Roman authorities would put on their own show of force, reminding the people that they WEREN’T free, that they were still enslaved under the relentless forces of empire.

As Jesus’s followers proclaimed him the heir of King David and dreamt of a return to the glory days of Israel seen through the lens of myth and legend, the Roman governor would remind the people that they could be crushed at a moment’s notice. That he represented someone who also claimed to be God’s son on earth—the Roman emperor. An emperor who represented the oppression, impoverishment, and enslavement by right of conquest. Certainly not a prince of peace—but also representing forces still at loose in our own world today.

In the midst of all this hubbub, we have this little detail that two outsiders approach two of Jesus’s closest disciples and ask to see Jesus. The Gentiles who are in Jerusalem are probably “God-fearers,” people drawn to the worship of the God of the Torah and the Prophets, and they attempt to contact Jesus through the two disciples whose names are—pay attention-- Greek.

Maybe their appearance is a throw-away detail in the story at the time. And yet, I am drawn to these two Gentiles who screw their courage up and approach these two disciples who also have “Greek names” and ask to see the infamous wandering rabbi. Do they get to see him? Or do they get turned away in the hustle and bustle of the festival and all the demands upon the disciples’ and Jesus’s time and attention.

Yesterday, at our Diocese’s Healing in the Heartland gathering, the Rev. Traci Blackmun, our amazing sister in Christ, told a story to underline the importance of being seen. She shared an anecdote about the Zulu Nguni people of Southern Africa. In their culture, when one person greets another, they say, “Sawubona.” This roughly translates in English to “I see you.” The common response is then “Yebo, sawubona,” which means “I see you, seeing me.”

These is not just statements of sensory recognition. These are statements of equality, of valuing each other, of recognizing each other’s humanity, of welcoming someone into our presence. And it reminds us all of how we must move beyond superficialities to truly see each other not based on our differences but by our own common heritage that goes beyond race or nationality. 

And as people of faith, this is our calling: to, as we affirm in our baptismal covenant repeatedly throughout each year, to honor the dignity and worth of every person. To see the face of Christ in each person, and to BE the face of Christ to those who see us. That is the deeply political act that is at the heart of the Gospel. To make Jesus visible in ourselves, and to seek the face of Jesus in others as we remember that we are all created in God’s own image.

I wonder how many times someone has approached us, and asked US to help them see Jesus. 

Oh, I am not talking about directly asking us—that would be too easy. But what about all the people who look upon us as we are going about our days—acquaintances or strangers. They may be able to tell that we claim the identity of Christian. Maybe they see a cross hanging around our neck. Maybe they saw you with an ash cross on your forehead on Ash Wednesday. 

But maybe we didn’t even notice them. Maybe they didn’t ask out loud. But we know that there are people every day who seek the filling of a perhaps nameless hunger within them. In this world that too often denigrates attributes like faith, hope, charity, self-giving, and community, we are surrounded by people who nonetheless yearn for these things, if they could put it into words. They long for connection, for the experience of being loved.

They want to see Jesus. Just like all of us.

Maybe they were the person who was having a bad day near you last week. Maybe they were angry, or close to tears. Maybe it was a dad in a grocery store with a screaming three year old who is screaming because dad didn’t let him eat the strawberries out of the carton before they were washed. Maybe it was the kid with the lip piercing and neck tattoo who made you a smoothie. Maybe it was a person in a nursing facility who never gets visitors. Maybe it’s a refugee who can never return to the only home they’ve ever known but are trying to make a home here, where everything is different and bewildering.

But the thing is, we brush up against people all throughout each day who may not be able to put it into words, and may not even be aware of it, but who are hungry to see Jesus. The Jesus-on-a-cross thing possibly scares them, or confuses them, and makes no sense, so that’s not the Jesus they are ready for right now. We celebrate Christ crucified—but also Christ who is risen. Christ who lives still within all of us.

No, they are looking for the Jesus in us. They are looking for the flash of recognition—for each of us to look at them, to see them as an individual despite our differences. They are looking for a smile, a small kindness, a dropping of pretenses and aloofness and a demonstration of compassion and really seeing people for who they are: beloved children of God, made in God’s very image.

Jesus says, “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” What caused this hour to finally come at this particular point? The world—in the form of some “Greeks,” which means us—has come to Jesus, to experience yet another Epiphany. And now—NOW--Jesus is going to be exalted—lifted up—on the cross and beyond the cross. The cross that, as we have contemplated it this Lent, is a sign of hope, of the victory of love over sin and death. Jesus’s entire life—ministry, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension—was a gift to bring all of the world to God—the world, we remember, that God SO loves. Not just the descendants of Abraham. ALL the world. The world that longs to see Jesus, and know Jesus sees them.

John says Jesus’s language here about being lifted up is to indicate the kind of death he was to die. But we know, from our distance of two thousand years, Jesus’s words also indicate the kind of life that awaited him—and all of us who follow Jesus-- on Easter morning.

The season of Lent is not one that centers on deprivation. It is meant to be a gift of contemplation and renewal—which is why it is held in the spring. It is meant to be a tome of remembering God’s covenant with each of us—that God so loves us that God’s own son calls us to see how to live a God-shaped life of love and commitment to healing and grace as a fully human being.

We all want to see Jesus. And our calling is to see Jesus in each other. To see Jesus, to know we are deeply loved and known by Jesus. And then to lift up Jesus in our own lives, so that the world may see him too. And to exclude no one.

Sawubona.
Yebo, sawubona.

Preached at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO,  March 16-17, 2024.

The World According to God: Sermon for Lent 4B

Today’s gospel brings to mind two distinct memories from my childhood. One is seeing somebody sitting in every end zone on Saturday and Sunday and Monday nights, holding up a sign that said simply “John 3:16.” 

I am sure it inspired many people to either nod their heads knowingly, or maybe to have enough curiosity to finds out what that sign referred to. Nowadays it would be as simple as pulling out your phone and using a search engine. But certainly some people looked up that verse, and were intrigued. Those that were destined to be Episcopalians would then look over the entire section of at least John 3:1-21, knowing that a few words—in this case 27 words—pulled out of an enormous book will lack a certain contextual depth and precision. Those are OUR PEOPLE!

Especially with this famous verse, context is vital. If you just stick with those 27 words, following Jesus is simply a matter of assent, a magical formula like abracadabra, a spiritual get-out-of-jail free card. But it’s not—assent is required, and commitment to not just saying some words, but living and loving like Jesus, who embodied God’s love in human likeness to be a model for our lives.

For many, this verse is a full and complete summary of the gospel. Martin Luther summarized this verse like this: “For the world has me; I am its God.”

But I think the next verse is just as important. “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

God so loved the world, the world God made through speaking God’s wisdom into the world, that God sent God’s beloved Word to be incarnate—to take on human flesh to show us all how to be fully human and fully God’s children. Jesus is the embodiment of God’s wisdom in the world. Wisdom that can be lived in our own human lives-- if only we choose to follow.

That brings me to the second of my childhood memories, in the sweet little Methodist Church in which I was born and baptized, and that we attended until I was five. At Southern Hills Methodist Church, I remember singing this lovely hymn that so engaged my heart’s certainties, because it described the world according to God:

This is my Father's world, and to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres.
This is my Father's world: I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas; His hand the wonders wrought.

This is my Father's world; the birds their carols raise,
The morning light, the lily white, declare their maker's praise.
This is my Father's world, He shines in all that's fair;
In the rustling grass I hear Him pass; He speaks to me everywhere.

This is my Father's world. O let me ne'er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father's world: why should my heart be sad?
The Lord is King; let the heavens ring! God reigns; let the earth be glad! (1)

My own experience even as a very small child resonated so strongly with this hymn. Sharing the same sense of wonder and awe out in nature, delighting in the elephantine clouds slowly processing overhead down to the busy industry of ants moving among the moss on the north side of a tree, a tiny world humming with life beneath our feet, often too small to notice. I knew that God loves this world from clouds to ants to you and me, and made it a source of awe and wonder. I resolved never to lose that wonder—especially when things were hard. The signs of God’s love are shot through creation—and in our yearning hearts.

The message we hear in John’s gospel and in our Psalm is one of wonder and awe and gratitude, yes. But it is also a reminder that the Church goes astray when it puts limits on who God loves and who God does not. Our gospel also makes it clear that merely saying you believe in Jesus as a hedge against condemnation means nothing. Believing in Jesus means following Jesus in embodying that love into the world-- each of us.

Our first reading can lead us down a rabbit hole, with all its talk about God loosing poisonous snakes upon his maddeningly complaining people during the wanderings and discontent in the desert--unless we know the background behind it. The Priestly writers telling of this event is meant to support their belief that God smites and condemns those whose faith falters. Notice that Jesus does not repeat this belief in his referencing to that same event—he only talks about the cure. This aligns with his claim that God seeks always to save and redeem the world we have mangled through our own short-sightedness. Never to condemn it or all the living things who share this planet with us.

Last week we heard Jesus compare his body to the Temple, and we were reminded that God blessed and sanctified us in our bodies, too. In taking on our flesh, our human life, God continues to tear down the walls WE build to separate ourselves from God, and to remind us that God lives and loves within each of us right now, and through Jesus God keeps reaching over those walls and pulling us all over the top and never giving up on us.

In today’s readings, we hear about the blessings of light, of healing, and especially of love.

Light and darkness are important signs or symbols in John’s gospel, which makes sense, because they are important symbols to us. Our gospel today starts in the middle of Jesus’s conversation in the middle of the night, in the darkness, with a Pharisee named Nicodemus. Nicodemus comes in the night also because he lacks true understanding of who Jesus is, but at least he is straining toward the light.

When Nicodemus first approaches Jesus, in verses we don’t get to hear to help us understand the context, it is clear that Nicodemus is drawn to Jesus. Nicodemus is beginning to be drawn to the light of Christ, for at that start of chapter 3, he states: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who is coming from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” As a Pharisee and yet a seeker, Nicodemus is a man torn between two worlds, just as the church members in Ephesus were, and frankly much like many of us are.

Jest before our reading, Jesus tells Nicodemus he must be born again, which Nicodemus rightfully does not understand. Yet thinking about being born to a new life in Christ is a fruitful metaphor. We are born with an abiding hunger for connection, and for meaning even from the time we are infants. Babies want to be embraced, and they want to be fed. God helps this along by making babies helpless and also adorable, which goes a long way toward making up for the smell. With our poor eyesight, as infants we experience the world mostly through out hearts, and our bellies. Babies get anxious when either of these are not full—and I am persuaded that frankly, those feelings of hunger, especially spiritual hunger, remains one of the driving forces in our lives—one that we ignore or misuse at our peril.

Our own hunger for God within us brings us to this point, and calls us to repentance, to change. That change is scary. It means letting go of the familiar. But what will we gain? Only the certainty that we, and this whole world, are beloved by God.

How are our lives changed when we embrace Jesus as Savior? In our epistle, Paul states here that it is the difference between death… and life. We are asked to embrace our brokenness, and allow the light of Christ to wash over it. The world according to God is filled with reconciliation, discernment, self-honesty, and abundant beauty and grace. Paul’s words attest to the abundance of God’s love—abundant beyond our imagining, especially.

And here we see the blessing of healing that runs through all our readings, as well. Living as one of us, and dying as one of us, Christ in particular can reach into the shattered places in our spirits, and restore us from the shadow world in which we have lived into newness of life. Sometimes those wounds we bear were inflicted on us. Yet, other times, our own choices have wounded us. But God is always there.

Eternal life starts right now. It starts with understanding ourselves as living—right now-- in the presence of God. Right where we are. God loved us in this way, that God gave us God’s only Son. And why? So that NO ONE feels hungry, or empty, or lost—so that everyone can have a whole and lasting life. That Son didn’t come into the world to condemn us, but to save us, and remind us of who we are: Beloveds of a God who loves us and longs for us so much that God continually reaches out to us, asking us to align ourselves with God’s economy of abundance, grace, and peace.

The world according to God is one of grace, not condemnation. And as God’s Beloveds, we are called to bear God’s light into the world. The world that God so loves.




(1) Maltbie Davenport Babcock (1858-1901), American clergyman, poet, and hymn writer, “This is My Father’s World.” From the United Methodist Hymnal, 144.

Image: The famous "Big Blue Marble" photograph taken by the Apollo 17 crew on December 7, 1972 as the crew traveled toward the moon. This was the first photo of Earth that showed the southern polar ice cap. Image credit: NASA.

Readings:

Numbers 21:4-9

Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22

Ephesians 2:1-10

John 3:14-21

Preached at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, on March 9-10, 2024, the Fourth Sunday in Lent.

Bearing the Name, Bearing the Cross: Sermon for Lent 2B

What’s in a name?

Shakespeare first famously asked that question in his tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, a tale of two star-crossed lovers whose families were at war with one another in the streets of Verona. The Montagues and the Capulets were openly at each other’s throats—and Juliet Capulet and Romeo Montague fall in love at first sight, despite their families enmity.

In Act II, scene II, the subject of names is the main topic. Juliet sits at her window and muses these famous lines, with Romeo lurking out of sight in the orchard beneath, listening in:

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself.

Of course, it is not Romeo’s given name that is the problem. The problem is his family name—and hers, for their families are at war under the banner of those names. Their names, and the communities each represents, threatens to forbid their love.

Names are important banners we wrap around ourselves, but they are NOT individual. They tie us to other people, to nationalities, to ideologies, to kin and kindred spirits scattered far and wide. Most importantly, most names are shared, and thus they establish boundaries and expectations for entire communities.

In our readings today, the idea of names and their symbols lies under all our readings. Abram, although a wealthy and faithful man, risks having his name die out, for he has no legitimate children. Yet even though he is 99 years old—about which St. Paul made an incredibly ageist crack in our epistle—we see a second covenant in two weeks, as God promises Abram descendants so numerous that his name will never die, and he will be the father of many nations. 

To emphasize this, God reveals a new name for everyone involved in this covenant. The name used here for God, meaning “God Almighty” or “God of the Mountain,” is “El Shaddai” in the original text. Abram, meaning “Father is Exalted,” become Abraham, which means “Father of a Multitude.” Sarai, which means “Princess,” becomes Sarah, meaning “Mother of Nations.”

In our section from Romans, Paul is writing to the followers of Jesus in Rome, although he has never met them. They are struggling with the requirements to form a community of Christ- followers, with those of Abrahamic heritage arguing about whether gentile converts should have to follow Jewish law before admittance to the community—including becoming circumcised, which was also mentioned in the verses omitted in our reading from Genesis. Paul makes a case that, as Jesus is the fulfilment of the Law, and underlying this is the idea that Abraham was the father of nations, plural, that anyone who shares the faith Abraham had in God is therefore a child of Abraham’s promise, through faith alone. In other words, one follows God by faith, not by bloodline --or painful surgical procedures on tender bits of one’s anatomy. Ouch.

In our gospel, Jesus is talking about what it means to be a true disciple and follower of Jesus as the son of God. And it is here that we must remember that each gospel was written for a specific community at a particular time and place. The Markan community was undergoing great persecution and suffering—so these verse that we might draw back from were written to comfort the listeners, to remind them that their suffering was in allegiance with someone who died out of love for them and for the entire world on the cross. The cross, which had been a symbol of shame, is now a symbol of the victory and power of love in action—self-giving love, that seeks to draw all creation into community, bound by self-giving love.

And here we are, two thousand years later. The name we choose to bear as followers of Jesus, is “Christians.” And it is a name that lays a lot of obligations on us—the first of which is to be guided by love, always. Love that is willing to seek another’s good even at our own expense, just as Jesus exemplified in every moment of his ministry.

Sure, we live in a time when, in our context, following Jesus generally is not going to expose us to a torturous death—although that IS certainly true in other parts of the world, even today, and we should never, ever minimize or forget that.

But following Jesus—not just using his name to hammer other people, but instead living open-heartedly according to his precious gospel—certainly will set us at odds with the culture in which we live. And the way Jesus’s name is used by too many people today is 100% in opposition to Jesus’s message. 

Tragically, some people use the name of "Christian" as a weapon against others and to make themselves feel superior, members in a rarified club. And they use the name of Jesus as a club against anyone they consider “less-than.” They use the name of Jesus as an excuse to contemptuously deny the humanity of those they believe don’t measure up—the very poor, outcast, and oppressed with whom Jesus spent most of his time standing in solidarity. And so, they risk tarnishing the holy name and true gospel of Jesus in the public sphere. They forget that taking on the name “Christian” is about serving others, especially those the world around us despises-- rather than serving yourself.

The core of discipleship, of bearing the name of Jesus with integrity, is self-giving compassion and generosity, Jesus reminds us continually, especially in this season of Lent. Tragically, that certainly is not something in line with our own culture, where self-indulgence is raised up as a virtue. It is at this point especially that Jesus makes it quite clear that the gospel is certainly counter-cultural throughout the ages. And it is still counter-cultural now, surrounded by the myth of “rugged individualism,” in which any need for someone else is portrayed in the public American ethos as a failure.

But that is exactly the kind of life we are challenged to lose and lay down if we want to bear the name of Jesus faithfully and call ourselves “Christians.”

It is that life of selfishness and disdain for others that Jesus encourages us to lay down and lose. Losing that life is the only way to open yourself to living in harmony with Jesus and following him as God’s beloved children. Peter is rebuked for thinking in a worldly way, wanting a warrior Messiah. But that is NOT God’s way.

So, we too are asked to look at the life the world encourages us to lead critically. We are currently in a crisis of loneliness and isolation that has NOTHING to do with COVID but everything to do with the myth that our families and communities can survive when greed and contempt for others are worshiped are embraced to rule over us as gods. Suicide rates, addiction, and violence plague our every step in every community, regardless of wealth or zip code. Antisocial behaviors have been normalized and even applauded and laughed about. Cruelty is sport.

It is THIS life Jesus urges us to lay down and lose in order to have life in him and bear his name as Christians faithfully. We gain so much more than we lose!

The cross in Jesus’s time was something shameful, yet for us now it is a sign of faith and hope. The cross has been so transformed by the power of the self-giving love it represents that we now wear it around our necks, hand it over or behind our altars, and regularly make the sign of the cross over ourselves as we are blessed or absolved.

When I became an Episcopalian, I embraced the habit of genuflection, because it reminded me every time I did it that Christ has asked us, as Christians, to take up our cross—a cross of love, service to others, and community—and follow him, as our gospel recounts today. It is a reminder to me that the Holy Trinity is ever near. And it is a sign, as much as the name of Christian, that binds us all together in one family, one community, one faith—all centered on self-giving love in action for others. The cross and what it stands for is NEVER to be used to divide us.

During every Eucharistic prayer, as part of our Catholic, meaning universal, identity, we are all encouraged to make the sign of the cross over ourselves as the Holy Spirit is called down to consecrate US as well as the bread and the wine—to remember that the cross is a sign of the victory of love and the generosity of God to us in feeding us around this altar a meal which makes us one body sharing one name and one ministry, one obligation to each other—the name of Jesus, the sweetest name in the world.

So today, I challenge you and myself, to take up your cross of love and bear it with joy, right now. Realize the gift of renouncing the suffering wrought by the world’s values. Lay down that life with joy, and take up the life of love, faith, and hope in the name of God. Let us commit ourselves, starting this Lent, to follow Jesus in truth, bearing his glorious name in word, but more importantly in deed, as we all seek to be a blessing to the world around us.

Preached at the 505 on February 24 and at the 10:30 Eucharist on February 25 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church- Ellisville, MO.

Readings:

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16

Psalm 22:22-30

Romans 4:13-25

Mark 8:31-38

Amen.

Numbers and Nothingness: Speaking to the Soul, March 4, 2021

We have been watching the rising numbers of vaccinations and the falling numbers of COVID infections in our county with just a small glimmer of hopefulness. We are coming upon nearly the one-year anniversary of when we were suddenly shut down completely from having in-person worship—our last, sparsely attended Eucharist last year was March 15. As that anniversary approaches, I must confess to a feeling of weariness.

Last year, after that crazy Lent and Holy Week, it seemed as though Lent never ended. Some of my churchy friends and I joked that the entirety of 2020 was “the Lentiest Lent we ever Lented.” Little did we know that a year later so little would have changed, and yet so much had. We knew people who got sick, and some of them have yet to fully recover. We knew some who succumbed. Those beloveds were not numbers, either.

The images of candles lit on the steps of the White House and along the reflecting pool of the National Mall testify to the toll and try to help us truly “see” how staggering the losses have been and continue to be. And then on Feb 22, the US posted the grim milestone of 500,000 COVID deaths—20% of the world’s total in a country with supposedly the greatest medical system and only 4% of the world’s population. Unfortunately, we now have learned that in a battle between medicine and the hubris and denial of community spirit in some of us, medicine in some cases hasn’t stood a chance.

The numbers are looking better, but I hate that phrase. They are NOT numbers. They are people—people who have gotten sick with this terrible illness, and had to be hospitalized. They are also people who have managed to avail themselves of the vaccine—which is quite an accomplishment in my state, where the vaccine distribution has been far from precise. In each case, I pray every day for the people that the numbers represent. And finally, this week, I am able to travel to my home state and get the first round of vaccine into my 92-year-old mother’s arm. There’s a real person behind that number for me—a precious person who has had a hard year since her stroke in May.

I am always trying to remind myself of the counter-cultural way Christians are called to look at the world: honoring the divine within creation and within each other in a culture that loves to denigrate, to mock, to dehumanize. As the sixth chapter of the book of the prophet Micah urged us, we are called to “walk humbly with our God” in a culture that hands power to people who never confess any flaws at all, much less the need to confess.

And this Lent has been driving that home to me too. Many of us share my weariness. After this long Lenten season, it can seem overwhelming to adopt the right spirit of penitence and confession. Perhaps, though, we can confess the hubris that has driven us to this point and undoubtedly prolonged the most severe waves of this pandemic.

It is important to be honest about the ways that this pandemic has allowed us to turn inward, to ignore relationships when we cocooned in our homes. Some of us certainly have lost sight of our obligations to others around us, whether friend or stranger. Encouraged by cruelty emanating from the top of society’s pinnacle (the one time it seems “trickle-down” anything has actually worked), some have turned on others with a ferocity that is heart-breaking. We remember those early days when people hoarded toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and milk to the point that grocery stores in our area had to introduce hours for the elder members of our community so that they would not be left with nothing in the mad scramble.

Some of us let friendships wither in our attempt to cope by taking up new hobbies. When confronted with the choice of Netflix-bingeing or picking up the phone or iPad for a call or a FaceTime chat, we chose the anesthetizing soothe of a new TV series. Or it may be something else: we have become short-tempered with our loved ones because we have been unable to have any time to ourselves.

We have been under strain, of course. And there have also been moments of beauty and compassion, of course. But the need for confession and penitence is not about self-abasement, but about opening ourselves to God and to each other after our actions may have harmed relationships—relationships that have become even more precious as we have been forced into isolation. We have to get right the proportion of care we give to others in relation to ourselves.

In his poem, “Having Confessed,” the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967) speaks of the humility the penitent feels. Yet it is also at that moment that we can go the most awry. He includes this beautiful observation:

“ …We must not anticipate
Or awaken for a moment. God cannot catch us
Unless we stay in the unconscious room
Of our hearts. We must be nothing,
Nothing that God may make us something.”

As Kavanagh points out, confession is a beautiful, necessary thing in the spiritual life—a need, rather than an indulgence. But we have to take care when we confess that we do not confess just in order to be “shriven” or “forgiven” by God. We confess and empty ourselves of our self-involvement for those few precious moments so that God can enter in. We must be brave enough to become “nothing, that God may make us something.”

There have been times when many of us have treated others as less-than in our own anxiety and fear of scarcity. Perhaps we bewail these manifold sins. Perhaps we have been so busy that we haven’t stopped to reflect, which is a precious gift of confession and penitence without slipping into solipsism. But we err if we either shun confession, or allow it to make us wallow in misery—in both cases, we continue to close ourself off from God and from others, whether through pride or through shame. It is thus that we have gotten it backwards, and confession helps us to reverse the poles of our existence so that our compass points again to Christ, our true North. As Kavanagh noted, “God must be allowed to surprise us.”

May we not treat those around us as either numbers, or as nothing. May we remember that we ourselves are neither mere number nor nothing to God, who lovingly calls us to return to love and community, again and again. May we thus press forward in treasuring the gifts Lent offers in mindfully calling us back to right-relationship with each other and with creation.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul, March 4, 2021.

Prayer, day 2982

Our praises rise before you,
O God Most High;

Our prayers rise unto You,
O Redeemer, Our Lord Jesus Christ;

Our fears we lay before you,
O Holy and Eternal Abba,
Father and Mother.

Our hopes we breathe in from your Eternal Love,
O Savior;

Our resilience we draw from you,
Abiding Holy Spirit,
who lifts us and prepares us
for our work in your kingdom today.

O Creator,
we turn into your embrace for solace and strength,
and lay before you those needs for whom we pray.

Amen.

Prayer 2981

O God,
you call us to wakefulness
from our dreams,
and from our resistance to your gospel of love:
help us to see
that the ground we stand upon is heaven itself,
holy and sacred to You,
that you call us to stand tall
on the solid rock of love turned outward.
Help us to see hell
as the place where hope is abandoned,
and to reach out our hands and hearts
to those whose hope is foundering.

We are one people,
made in your image:
You who delights in earthworms and whales,
who whispers the melody of rejoicing
into the hearts of sparrows and robins.
May we recover that wonder and joy
and let that light shine forth from within us,
all thanks to You, O Creator.

One in heart, one in fellowship,
may we share one another's burdens,
and lighten each other's load,
all to the glory of your Name, O Holy One.
Blessed One, draw within the shelter of your compassion
all those who call out in need or anxiety,
and draw within your embrace, Lord Christ,
those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Springing-Up: Speaking to the Soul, March 25, 2021

John 12:20-33

Finally the blue sky finally unfurled itself before our wondering eyes—but it sure seems like it has been raining for weeks. And for all that we are told that

April showers
Bring May flowers,

it’s just as true around here that

March rain brings flood
and icy cold mud.

Today, though, we have been rewarded: I have seen the first buds on the redbud tree in our front garden. The redbud is grandchild to the wee, timorous stick brought across two states from Oklahoma in a bucket by my dad, who has been gone these last fifteen years.

These nascent buds are beautiful, though transitory. Those same blossoms must fall to the ground to make way for the heart-shaped leaves that will soon provide a canopy of cool shade. Then, in November those leaves too will die and drift to the ground.

So, also, we are reminded in a recent Lenten gospel that the solitary grain of wheat must fall to the ground and be buried before it can bring forth fruit. Otherwise, it remains a single grain—the original Greek here actually says, “Remains alone.”

Jesus, through his upcoming passion, will also be nailed on a cross, facing death and feeling abandoned and alone.

We know this will happen.

We also know that that cross will then awaken the world to the greatest power on earth—the power of love that does not hold our frailties and sins against us, but calls us to a new life in love. We know that the cross is not the end for Jesus, but just the beginning of victory. This is what is known in religious lingo as “the Paschal mystery.” Dying leads to rising. And around again.

So the image of the grain of wheat says something first of all about Jesus as the Christ, but second of all it says something about us. Christ transforms death through his own death on the cross, and then rises again to bring light and hope into this divided world. We become faithful by dying to our own divisions and fears and embracing love as Jesus spread his arms of love on the cross.

This is what all of scripture and God’s revelation has been trying to get through our thick skulls all along.

Our faith doesn’t tell us how to die.

It tells us how to live.

It doesn’t tell us what to give up.

It tells us what we will gain.

It doesn’t tell us that the world is broken.

It tells us how to make the world better. Hope springs up where love reigns.

Let us begin.

This was first published at the Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul, March 25, 2021.

Making Jesus Visible: Sermon for 5 Lent B

People came from all over for the festival of the Passover. They came to Jerusalem to be reminded of the way that God not just freed but formed a people. The festival of the Passover is the most solemn and community-building days in the Jewish calendar in the Jewish religious calendar. It is a festival centered around community, family, and the shaping of a ragtag bunch of former slaves into a people—a specific people singled out by God and preserved over and over again from death, even the literal angel of death who swept across the land of their captors, and whose savage reaping finally convinced the Pharaoh of Egypt to, in the words of the famous spiritual “Go Down, Moses,” to “let my people go.”

And according to the Christian calendar, we are eagerly awaiting next week’s pageantry, with Jesus triumphantly entering Jerusalem to shouts of Hosanna and declarations of his rightful claim to be the Messiah, the anointed one appointed by God to liberate the captives. Jesus will ride triumphantly into Jerusalem in the name of liberation during the festival which celebrates the liberation of the people of Israel from bondage. That’s often what we ourselves are called to remember. Jesus didn’t come to support the status quo, but to proclaim the power of God—a God who reveals Godself through the life of Jesus.

But there were two processions parading through the streets of Jerusalem at that moment we will celebrate and re-enact next Sunday. As Jesus and his band of followers come in from the east, a much more impressive procession would be entering from the west. The Roman governor would himself put together a huge military display and ride through the streets of Jerusalem with rows of infantry and a powerful show of force of cavalry.

Each year, as the people of Judea started dangerously talking about their freedom and about the power of their God, the Roman authorities would put on their own show of force, reminding the people that they WEREN’T free, that they were still enslaved under the relentless forces of empire. As Jesus’s followers proclaimed him the heir of King David and dreamt of a return to the glory days of Israel seen through the lens of myth and legend, the Roman governor would remind the people that they could be crushed at a moment’s notice. That he represented someone who also claimed to be God’s son on earth—the Roman emperor.

But those Romans aren’t the Gentiles we hear about in today’s gospel. The Gentiles who approach Philip with their homely request are probably “God-fearers,” and they attempt to contact Jesus through the two disciples whose names are Greek. But who ARE these two strangers? What significance do they have at the time in this story? They show up, and then they disappear. One of my Bible-study compatriots asked me that this week, and I didn’t have a good answer for them.

“Sir,’ they say as they approach Philip, ‘we want to see Jesus.”

Don’t we all? How many of us resonate with that request? We want to see Jesus, too.

Maybe their appearance is a throw-away detail in the story at the time. And yet, I keep coming back to these two Gentiles who screw their courage up and approach these two disciples who also have “Greek names” and ask to see the infamous wandering rabbi. Do they get to see him? Or do they get turned away in the hustle and bustle of the festival and all the demands upon the disciples’ and Jesus’s time and attention.

I am haunted by these two unnamed seekers, because I wonder how many times someone has approached us, and asked US to help them see Jesus. Oh, I am not talking about directly asking us—that would be too easy. But what about all the people who look upon us as we are going about our days—acquaintances or strangers. They may be able to tell that we claim the identity of Christian. Maybe they see a cross hanging around our neck. Maybe they saw you with an ash cross on your forehead on Ash Wednesday. Maybe they see the pet-blessing sticker saying “My pet was blessed at St. Martin’s” that I keep hoping eventually all y’all will place on the bumpers of your cars—even those Corvettes and Lexuses that you polish with an old baby diaper like Cameron’s dad in Ferris’s Bueller’s Day Off. But maybe you didn’t even notice them. Maybe they didn’t ask out loud.

Maybe they were the person who was having a bad day near you last week. Maybe they were angry, or close to tears. Maybe it was a dad in a grocery store with a screaming three year old who is screaming because dad didn’t let him eat the strawberries out of the carton before they were washed. Maybe it was the kid with the lip piercing and neck tattoo who made you a smoothie, who had been awakened that morning by having a parent call them ugly and lazy and flick a lighted cigarette at their head and demand they get up and fix step-mom breakfast before a full day of school and work. Maybe they are an ex-convict hoping to get a second chance, not be sneered at for their past.

But the thing is, we brush up against people all throughout each day who may not be able to put it into words, and may not even be aware of it, but who are hungry to see Jesus. The Jesus-on-a-cross thing possibly scares them, or confuses them, and makes no sense, so that’s not the Jesus they are ready for right now.

No, they are looking for the Jesus in us. They are looking for the flash of recognition—for each of us to look at them, to see them as an individual despite our differences. They are looking for a smile, a small kindness, a dropping of pretenses and aloofness and a demonstration of compassion and really seeing people for who they are: beloved children of God, made in God’s very image.

The topic being circled about oh so delicately here in our gospel today is Jesus’s coming crucifixion. When discussing the cross, John’s gospel is different from the other gospels. Jesus’ suffering on the cross is downplayed, in favor of the concept of the cross being a means of glorifying God— witness the “lifted up” reference from last week’s gospel passage from John 3:4-11. All through this gospel, Jesus is a heavenly figure who comes to us to reveal to humanity the true way of faith, and hope, and love, and then will ascend -- be lifted up-- bringing glory to God. In this gospel, Jesus is very clear about his divine origins, so he doesn’t engage in a lot of tap-dancing around his status as the Messiah. This view of Jesus is of one who is in charge.

And now—NOW--Jesus is going to be exalted—lifted up—on the cross and beyond the cross, held up to bring all of the world to see—to see so that the world can not just see, but come to KNOW the amazing healing power of Jesus and his message of hope, healing, community, and redemption. Jesus makes this clear when he says: “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself”. In the gospel of John, this is the point where Jesus moves from his ministry toward his exaltation-- when we come to Jesus. Victory can push through to us at the darkest of times. For John, the crucifixion brings victory, because the cross brings the world to God. We don’t usually think of it this way, but the metaphor of the grain of wheat helps us remember this too. Jesus speaks again in paradox. In order to live we must die. Those who die to themselves will finally have a full life.

The metaphor of the solitary grain of wheat falling to the ground is a homely, pastoral image, one that many of Jesus’s followers could relate to. That single gain must fall to the ground to be buried before it can bring spring to life abundantly and anew; otherwise it remains a single grain—BUT in the original Greek the term actually means “remains alone.” There is a message here for us as well. Unless we are willing to be transformed—to let go of our old life of suspicion, and hardness of heart, and fear, we can have no trust in the love Jesus has for us, and we cannot be true servants of Christ. We have to break through the rocky soil of our own hearts to allow the seed of the promise of God’s love to grow.

And that image is one that often gets all the attention. We can all relate to it if we have ever planted any seeds of watched them sprout—heck, even if we’ve left a bag of potatoes or an onion around for too long out on the counter, we have seen the tendency of plant matter to drive toward regeneration and new life, no matter how removed we are from farming or gardening we ourselves are.

But what I also see being emphasized is the idea of Jesus being made visible throughout this passage, appoint that has been building in our readings steadily in the last few weeks. What I also being insisted upon is that Jesus was never meant to be a “personal savior” only. Too often, having a “personal relationship” with Jesus ends up being just that—a solitary, individualist pursuit, in which the focus ends up on the individual rather than on the community. We see that being addressed her as well in this passage. What Jesus actually says about that single grain of wheat is not that it remains a single grain—that’s our translation choices again running beneath what we ourselves see and hear. No, in the original text we have handed down to us, Jesus says that unless the grain in planted and tended it “remains alone.” Jesus calls us to move beyond our own self-centered ways and embrace our unity with those around us, calling us to be willing to love each other in deed and embrace each other as kindred despite our differences.

As we head toward the passion story of Christ in the next two weeks, we need to open our ears to the multiple meanings of the words in front of us. Because despite Mel Gibson’s incredibly bloody retelling of Jesus’s tortured last week on earth being one meaning of passion, there is another meaning for passion, as theologians Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan point out in their own book on the last week of Jesus’s earthly ministry. They remind us that “passion” is a term for suffering in Christian theology, yes. And especially in some branches of the Christian faith, that suffering is emphasized intensively. But if Jesus’s suffering for us becomes the core of Jesus’s message, the gospel message he embodied the other 32 years and 51 weeks of his earthly ministry to us itself gets overlooked. That’s why we have to remember the multiple meaning of the word “passion,” and remember the energy and the joy that passion can give to all life.(1)

Because a “passion” is also something that is your love, your focus, your reason for being. So Jesus’s passion is not just about Jesus’s suffering on the cross. Jesus’s passion is about us examining the focus of his life, his words, and his example, which was the preaching of repentance so that we would be citizens of the kingdom of God.

Jesus’s passion was in healing those who were sick or isolated, in looking for those he could help, in confronting injustice and oppressing, of which there was plenty, just like there is now. Jesus’s passion was drawing disciples to himself who would themselves share in that work and not be miserly or reluctant about it. Jesus’s passion was that the abundant love of God would be made visible to the entire world—a world awash in suffering, fear, and cruelty already.

We want to see Jesus. And Jesus calls us to make him visible. Jesus asks us to lift him up each and every day. That’s what we are here to do. We are here to show that Jesus is OUR passion, our center, our model, our teacher, our guide.

Let us live our lives so that we DO see Jesus, every day, in ourselves, and in each other.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 online worship from St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Ellisville, MO.

Readings:

• Jeremiah 31:31-34
• Hebrews 5:5-10
• John 12:20-33
• Psalm 51:1-13

Citations:

1) Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Final Days in Jerusalem, preface.

Snakes and Complaints: Sermon for the 4th Sunday in Lent B

Have you ever been around someone who complained all the time? I have. It’s maddening. And the thing is, often grumblers have no sense of perspective. EVERYTHING is a grievance worthy of World War III to the kvetcher. I have known people who love to complain so much that they will complain to the empty air when those around them have stalked off and sworn to listen no more. They grumble just loud enough for their loved ones to still hear the griping, but not so loud that they can’t try to deny it if caught.

They grumble because everything is about THEM, and they have no perspective to see others who are suffering more. Nope, it all about meeeeeee. Gripe, gripe, gripe. Grumble, grumble, grumble. I mean, you don’t have to Pollyanna. But not everything is worthy of complaint. And it’s been one solid year since we were able to be together to worship together and have Eucharist around this altar. So God knows there have been plenty of opportunities to be not just sad, to be not just anxious, but also to grumble. But a little of that is to be expected.

Let’s face it, though, during the Exodus, those Israelites have been acting like petulant, faithless toddlers all through their time in wilderness, and that is an insult to toddlers everywhere. They have complained, and they have complained some more, and they’ve been impatient, and they have been faithless. They’ve made promises and broken them repeatedly.

And the thing is, when all you look for is what is wrong, all that you see is wrong. And the first few times they did it, God patiently tried to assuage them. Hungry? Here, eat the same bread the angels ate, and meanwhile, I’ll just have a few thousand quail drop down in front of you—all you gotta do is pluck ‘em, clean ‘em, and roast ‘em. Thirsty? Moses and Aaron will strike yon rock over there, and fresh water will come a gushing out.

Complaining and the lack of gratitude and perspective that come with it are a deadly poison to the soul. So no wonder then that poisonous snakes rise up among the people. It’s a symbol of the poison they have been loosing into the world rather than marveling at all the good things they do have: Family. Freedom. A return to their homeland. A God who cares for them again and again. In Moses, a leader willing to give up his own comfort for their sakes. And even though they claim that God has sent those snakes among them because God has finally had enough of the constant kvetching, I suspect that they knew that those snakes had sprung up from every disagreeable complaint that had fallen from their lips and gone splat like a lead balloon on the hard, rocky ground at their feet.

And it is often the case that in order to get well, you have to be able to name what made you sick, and evaluate what role you yourself might have played in your illness in the first place. So since their poisonous complaint set loose poisonous snakes among them, the solution is to fasten a visual representation of what is attacking them. In other words, God orders that the Israelites have to look on the image of their own guilt and ingratitude. They have to look upon that poisonous snake, and realize that the real problem was their own poisoned hearts and souls. Admitting that they had set the snakes loose among themselves was the crucial first step to healing and health.

In our gospel, Jesus compares himself to that shiny snake lifted up on a pole, and that sounds just as bewildering a comparison. Jesus is hardly a poisonous reptile. But that bronze or fiery snake was placed on that pole that the people might look upon the symbol of their transgressions, accept their sinful, hateful tendencies, and lift their eyes from their fear, their pettiness, their self-absorption, and their unpleasantness. They looked up at that snake and knew the snakes were actually themselves. And then determine to turn away from death toward life.

Likewise, Jesus is lifted up on a cross—a symbol or torture, a symbol of shame—and we too are called to look upon him , remembering that what put him there was the very worst evil fearful humans could devise, so that we might see him, believe, and live.

But believe what? To believe in the love that Jesus calls us to embrace that we might have eternal life. To remember that Jesus himself is Love Incarnate. And to remember that our own love of evil rather than love of good has put Jesus there. It was said those who lived by a sword would die by a sword—yet, except for overturning some tables and braiding a whip made out of his own frustration, Jesus has actually spent most of his life denying the power of violence and the power of the sword. And yet there he will be-- placed there by all the forces that rule through fear, and violence, and oppression, and exploitation. The living example of love in human flesh that Jesus is absolutely is anathema to the forces of evil and death to which we cling so desperately, because it is all we have known.

We know how to insist on our own way. We insist on our own way out of fear, out of jealousy, out of spite, out of a misguided calculus that says that one is only winning if one has more than all of those people over there. We know how to be vengeful. We know how to scorn others, to put others down based on their ethnicity, their race, their culture, the threat they pose in competition with us for things we have taught to covet because we believe they are scarce. We know how to complain when everything doesn’t suit us, and to let that poison run wild through our relationships with both each other, and worse, with God.

We are human, but that is not an excuse. It’s not that flesh is bad and spirit is good, as many people have twisted Paul’s words we heard this morning. If the material world were fallen and evil, Jesus would have never come to live among us as one of us, and we wouldn’t be eagerly looking forward in a few minutes to taking common things of the earth-- grain and grape, bread, wine, and water-- and together joining in invoking the Holy Spirit to make of these things of earth the Bread of Heaven and Cup of Life, a living memorial of just how much Christ loves us and gives himself for us, and calls us to give ourselves for each other. No, when Paul speaks of the “flesh,” it has to do with about our tendency to be self-centered, even “self-obsessed.” It’s that same self-obsession that caused the Israelites to spout their venom at God, blaming God for their discomfort. As we all are prone to do.

Too often we concentrate on how we are separate from others, and fearfully seek to protect ourselves against the perceived threats that others may pose to us through competition in seeking to fulfill their OWN desires. The problem is, extreme individualism doesn’t make us feel safe, but actually vulnerable and exposed to attack, since everyone else is a potential competitor for what we’ve been told are scarce goods and resources. This, to me, seems to be the ultimate crisis in our modern western society. For every passage like this, Paul also usually provides another passage reminding us that we are part of the Body of Christ and thus part of each other (such as 1 Corinthians 12-13). When we look at THOSE passages, we are reminded that the gospel of Christ is one of abundance: abundant mercy, abundant grace, abundant kindness, abundant healing. And that abundance is found within community, not against it.

All our fear comes naturally. But we have to be taught how to love. And so Jesus is given to us.

Jesus makes it clear in our gospel today that Jesus is God’s gift to us, given to us out of love, so that we might know how to live as fully human, fully beloved humans made in the very image of God. It’s right there in John 3:16-17:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Likewise, Paul affirms “God is rich in mercy,” bearing us “great love” as we benefit from the “riches of God’s grace,” --even when we have stubbornly, fearfully, or selfishly rejected calls to repentance and atonement with God. God claims common cause with us out of love, and calls us to align ourselves with that love that we might have abundant eternal life. That is what “atonement” really means—say it slowly, and you hear it “at-ONE-ment.” Being at one with the love that creates and sustains the world. This requires dedication, determination, and discipline upon our parts—and a willingness to own up to our shortcomings and sins when presented with them. Atonement must never be seen as painful or denigrating, but of lifting up our eyes from our self-centeredness to a life of hope and healing.

So we must affirm that God sends Jesus NOT for judgment, but for love. For mercy. Because justice is such an important concept, central to the very identity of God and God's commandments, it has both an opposite, which comes from ignorance and even hatred, and a companion, which comes from love. The opposite of justice is injustice, and it is a sin, whether a sin of commission, or a sin where we benefit from unjust systems and shrug our shoulders at our alleged powerlessness. The companion of justice is mercy—in which we receive grace and forgiveness where we deserve wrath and punishment. God calls us to not just receive justice and mercy, but to enact it for those around us.

Jesus calls us to repentance not for punishment, but for healing, wholeness, and for joy. For eternal life. Right now. For us all as a community. God so loved the WORLD, we are reminded. And that includes everyone—even those at odds with us, even those we resist calling our neighbor because we like the word “enemy” so much better.

John’s gospel does not speak much about “the kingdom of God/heaven” that we hear of repeatedly in the synoptic gospels. Instead, the term which John most emphasizes is “life.” And in 18 of those instances, the adjective “eternal” comes before that—and he first time we see that pairing is right here in today’s gospel. So eternal life is NOT about what happens to us after we die. Eternal life is about what happens right now. It is a new way of living that brings ultimate peace, ultimate contentment, ultimate joy. We attain those blessings through walking in the way of Jesus, through joyfully taking up our cross of love for Jesus, through being brave enough to lift up love God calls us too rather than the sins to which we cling -- to look upon that love lifted up, and live.

We all take our turns in the wilderness. Do we look only to our own needs, or do we look, and act, for the welfare of those around us? This past year has put us to the test on that. It is only a life lived for others that can bring about the security and hope that we all long for. Anything else sets us at opposition to one another and makes us miserly in our response to God’s great gifts. And that is no life at all.

But love—love that redeems us and claims us as beloved, love that is lifted up to unite us with all creation—that is eternal life right now.

Amen.

Preached at the in-person and online 10:30 am Holy Eucharist, the first on Sunday in exactly a year, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:

• Numbers 21:4-9
• Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
• Ephesians 2:1-10
• John 3:14-21

Images: Michaelangelo Buonarroti, detail from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; Moses strikes the rock at Massah; Georges Roualt, Crucifixion, 1936; Complaint department button from Etsy.

Prayer, day 2865

Lord Jesus,
whose arms are eternally stretched wide to embrace us,
be with us this day, and teach us.
Teach us to embrace your call to repentance and renewal,
that we may be brought before You as little children.
Teach us to embrace this day and its beauty,
rather than worrying about tomorrow.
Teach us to embrace the poor and the outcast,
for we are one in body and spirit.
Teach us to embrace love,
regardless of the cost.
Teach us to embrace obedience,
to empty ourselves so that You may fill us completely.
Teach us to embrace those
who do not understand us or reject us,
and to love them wholeheartedly anyway.
Precious Savior,
place your hand of blessing over those we now name,
drawing them to You in your mercy.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2864

Let all creation sing a song of praise to you, O Love Divine,

for we depend upon your mercy.
Give us discerning hearts, Merciful God,
to do your will in our lives today,
for we are your hands in the world.
Imbue us with the energy we need
to meet today's challenges,
for we know that you are the source of all power.
Blessed Savior, govern our hearts and minds
and help us to persevere,
just as you never give up on us
even when we stumble.
Guide, guard, and protect those for whom we pray this day.

Amen.

Housecleaning for our Souls: Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent B

The pilgrims would travel from all over the known world. Just as spring was beginning to blossom and the flowers in the trees, as the sere, arid brown winter began to give way all around the Mediterranean, thousands would travel with a single destination in mind. By foot, by donkey, by caravan, they would travel the dusty byways and the thief infested highways to be able to gather together as one people once again, if only through just over a week. Many more would board boats from all over the Roman Empire, their destination the port city of Jaffa near what is now Tel Aviv. There they would join the throngs crowding the highways leading into Jerusalem.

Scripture and tradition demanded a full eight-day ceremony, always held between the 14th and 21st days of the month of Nisan, during what for us would be March or April. Such a journey was arduous, perilous, and for many people terribly expensive. They had to travel light to be able to make it there at all. They brought with them only that which they could carry-- it was certainly unsafe, not to mention impractical, to be dragging livestock along with him for the journey.

Yet this was the pinnacle of the religious year -- to commemorate the liberation of the Israelites from slavery and cruel bondage in Egypt at the hand of God. they would recount the series of plagues that had failed to change pharaoh's heart – frogs, boils, rivers of blood, flies, lice, locusts, darkness in the middle of the day. None were compelling enough -- until that terrible night that the Angel of Death himself swept over the land and plucked the first born male of all living creatures and carried them away, never to be seen by their families again in this life. Only then had Pharaoh's heart been turned long enough for the Hebrews to make their escape. Only through Moses’s skill in leading a ragtag fractured people through the howling wastes, Moses who was chosen by God as God's preeminent Prophet and leader, did the Israelites eventually stumble into the freedom of the Sinai Peninsula.

The observation of this deliverance was mandated to be observed every year. And originally it had been held in individual homes. But especially in the last few years, the Temple had become the center of all religious observance, and so people turn their faces toward Jerusalem in order to recount, remember, and renew their covenant to obey the commandments of God in thanksgiving for God delivering the people all those centuries ago, delivering the people and making them a unified people out of a ragtag collection of slaves who had forgotten their homes.

And as the children asked their questions so that the stories could be retold, they were reminded that the only thing that kept the Angel of Death from their own family’s doors was the painting of the doorposts and lintels with the blood of spotless lambs that they had then roasted whole and ate, prepared at any time to flee at a moment's notice should Pharaoh's heart turn.

So as they traveled to Jerusalem, the pilgrims arrived knowing that they would have to purchase animals to sacrifice at the altars. On the first day, they would go to the Court of the Gentiles and exchange their Roman currency that had gotten them thus far, for the shekels minted by the Temple in order to pay the Temple tax and be able to participate in all the rituals. They would then purchase oxen if they were wealthy, and sacrificial lambs, or pigeons, or doves, depending upon how wealthy each family was, and bring them to the priests to be sacrificed. The slaughter was nonstop; the lambs were specifically slaughtered from 3:00 to 5:00 PM. And in all these exchanges profit was made-- profit to the money changers, profit to the sellers of the animals, profit to the Temple authorities themselves whose coffers would soon be filled to the brim with taxes paid by the pilgrims.

It was a neat system. The money changers benefited. The sellers of animals benefited. The priests and scribes benefited. Herod, who had been working on rebuilding the Temple for 42 years, benefited by being seen to be a patron of the Jewish faith , despite his uncertain pedigree and claim to the throne. The Romans benefited, because while the people were engaged in their religious rituals , the chance for unrest in trouble greatly decreased.

Until Jesus walked in. and he stood there looking at the buying and the selling, at the bargaining, at the deal-making, at the monetary burden that often was too high a price to pay for the very poor, who were then excluded from full participation in the religious rites of their faith. Jesus saw the Angel of Death hanging over the very seat of God.

And he decided to do something about it. The Prophet Isaiah had declared that the Temple would be “a house of prayer for all nations and for all people,” but all Jesus saw was the profaning of worship. Instead of adoration, he saw a price of admission. Instead of praise, he saw profit. In place of Hallelujahs, he saw haggling. Instead of offerings, he saw deals being struck and bargains being made.

And here we see a different side of Jesus from the gentle shepherd with the unlined, beatific face. His face hardens, but his actions are deliberate. Carefully, deliberately, probably getting more angry as the whip lengthens, he braids the strands of the cords to make his whip, and as he did so, he planned carefully his line of attack.

Jesus engages in an emphatic protest about the commercialization of the Temple cult in this action, and that criticism is NOT lost on the authorities, who make their living off charging for space to the sellers of animals and were suspected of skimming profit off the top of the Temple tax and the money-changing that was required to convert one’s currency from the Roman coins to the sanctuary shekel to pay the Temple tax. 

Jesus is claiming that the point of worship has been monetized and turned into a transaction rather than a point of transformation. The worship of God has gone sideways because now it is all about checking off boxes of obligations rather than true gratitude and reformation. The stuff that is supposed to enable worship has instead taken up all the oxygen and all the room in the outer courtyard.

Jesus is depicted here not as meek and mild, but as angry, engaging in a violent rebuke of those who are selling religious goods within the boundaries of the pinnacle place of worship in the Judaism of that era. In particular, he is attacking the market forces that had invaded worship of God. The money changers are not doing people favors so that pilgrims can pay the Temple tax in Temple currency; instead they profit, of course, and charge a fee for the transaction. Likewise with the sellers of sacrificial animals; they do not seek just to break even but of course to make a profit. And Jesus's active public rebellion here disrupts the flow of profit an exchange of goods, as well as, undoubtedly, the ability of some pilgrims to perform what they thought were their obligations.

Of course, Jesus doesn’t actually “cleanse” the Temple. He creates a ruckus in it, and unlike with the transfer of some of John’s followers to Jesus early in chapter one or the miracle at the wedding at Cana at the start of chapter 2, this is the first time Jesus acts on his own. Jesus’s actions here are a direct challenge to the idea that worship of God is tied to being in ANY specific building.

The Temple in Jesus’s time and for centuries before had developed into the center of religious life for observant Jews—although it would soon be pulled down, stone by stone, by the Romans not long after Jesus’s own crucifixion. But for all those centuries, the Temple was believed to be where God dwelled among God’s people on earth— the focal point of the nation, and of the national way of life.

Jesus turns this upside down. His cryptic comment that the Temple is actually his body means that Jesus is the place now where God can be found on earth -- the primary point for revelation, above anything made with human influence. This includes even scripture, which is often elevated to an object of worship itself and claim to be inerrant when the compilation of scripture was actually accomplished over a process of hundreds of years of human decisions, sifting, accepting, and rejecting some texts depending upon political agendas in the early centuries of the development of the Christian Church.

As we come up on the year anniversary of worship being shut down in our diocese due to the rising pandemic, I am convinced this story has a lot to say for us. Jesus claims that the primary location for the worship of God is not in any building made by human hands, no matter how beloved. The true Temple is in his body, which has two meanings: the flesh and blood and sinew and spirit that resides within him as the Incarnated One, and also among us as the Church at home, the Church as the Body of Christ. 

Whether we are gathered together or remotely, our worship of God does not depend upon a specific place, or a sanctuary, or an altar, as much as those things a beloved tools. But we cannot be dependent upon them. The true worship of God begins in the heart—the heart that seeks to turn and guide the remainder of one’s life to following in the literal footsteps of Jesus as much as can as humble humans who can be empowered by God’s love and call to do great things.

Jesus continually calls us to sweep out all the clutter and distraction and commercialism that can and do distract us from our call as disciples to worship God and share God’s love and reconciliation with all people. Jesus calls us to clean out and let go of all that prevents us from being more fully alive and present to the God who seeks sanctuary within us and within our congregations.

What tables might Jesus overturn in the Temple of our bodies and our lives? Do we recoil from such an idea in shock and fear? Not to worry—I don’t think that’s what would happen. Instead, I think Jesus actually expects us to overturn the tables of the money changers in our own hearts—the places where we criticize and evaluated everything in the church on the basis of cost and benefit, on the basis of whether an activity specifically benefits myself versus does God’s work in the world.

Time for a little spring cleaning. Hopefully no whips will be involved. Time to embrace all that brings us closer to God, and to each other, regardless of what the marketplace might demand.

No building can serve as the central meeting place between God and humanity. Instead, it is Christ's body itself -- which will be offered up and broken through our own rejection of his gospel of love, even today -- that provides the meeting place between God and humanity. That means each of us, as individuals, are called to likewise cleanse and purify ourselves to be fitting Temples for God's presence, a presence that will then captivate us, bless us, and use us for God's greater glory. That is where real worship is.  It means that all of us, as the big C Church that calls itself Christ's body in the world, can no longer passively sit back, ask God to fix all the problems human action have caused in the world, or trust that the completion of mere ritual alone will fulfill our obligations as children of God.

It's time to clean the house of our souls, and to do so with joy an gladness.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 online worship from St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Ellisville, MO.

Readings:

• Exodus 20:1-17
• 1 Corinthians 1:18-25
• John 2:13-22
• Psalm 19