March 15, 2009
The Third Sunday in Lent (Year B)
Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22
We have three very powerful lessons this morning, and I think we could have an interesting discussion about any one of them: the Ten Commandments, the lessons from Corinthians about how that which is folly to the world is wisdom to God, and lastly, the gospel, which speaks of Jesus overturning the tables in the temple.
In some ways they are connected, loosely, but connected.
The Ten Commandments were about a covenant between God and God’s people, “I will be your God,” said God, and “to show that you are my people, this is what you will do.” They were not told “if you don’t do this the consequences are . . . . (fill in the blank)!“ Rather it was assumed that the Hebrew people would follow the commandments because it gave them a way of acting, a way of being, a way that set them apart from all others and that identified them as God’s own, the One God, in a time and culture that had many Gods. Dare I even say, the commandments and the law were a form of prayer?
And the lesson from Corinthians played on that identification as God’s own in a way too. By knowing the cross was a way of life and not death the new Christian people had a new identity in God, based not just on rules handed to them from scripture that were not so much laws of governance but descriptions of how to behave if you were one of the People of God. They were a prescription of how to be in relationship with each other and God. These commandments and the laws of Leviticus were like the identification badges we all wear today so freely, at work, at gatherings, and even here. They were a means of identification. But those badges, once the Christian community began to be formed in
But what we learn in the gospel lesson is that the new identification in Christ is not about appearances. It is not enough to follow the letter of the law! Indeed, it was and is possible to live the letter of the law and miss it altogether. And missing the intent of the law is what made Jesus so angry that day. He wanted the badges of identification, those signs of covenant between God and God’s people, to come from the hearts of the people, not from some rote or placating action based on some old rule. Jesus demanded that hearts be changed, that people truly LIVE the intent of the law. He didn’t want or demand something simple and sweet and pastoral. He really challenged them to become new persons, a new people, same old covenant but the next generation because they knew Jesus was called to a deeper understanding of the law.
This angry Jesus is difficult to deal with because most of us want Jesus to be the good guy, the pastoral one, the saving one, the forgiving one, the one who gives the same to the first and to the last, the one who welcomes the prodigal and sinner home with open arms.
But no! The truth is that is not the entirety of who Jesus the man was. Jesus was also the man who recoiled at the money changers in the temple because they were living the letter of the law without honoring it at all. They were changing the coin of the realm into temple coins at a huge profit, a profit so huge that an ever increasing number of people could not afford to purchase the necessary animals for sacrifice, sacrifices they needed to make as signs of the covenant they wanted to keep with God because they knew themselves to be God’s people.
In short the money changers were greedy and self-serving. The whole point of the covenant was to call people to a selfless life, and Jesus was the primary example of how that life was to be lived. When it appeared to him that the people were valuing the making of a shekel over providing a means to allow the people to live their faith by offering the appropriate sacrifices, he went crazy with anger. It was to him as if they declared the whole covenant was null and void.
He called them not to be the model of “good practice” so as to appear to be part of the covenant, but to practice from their heart what God intended for God’s People.
The other thing, I think, that is so overwhelmingly true about Jesus is that while he knew the letter of the law, likely could rattle those ten commandments off in a jiffy, and the history of the People, (he was, after all, raised going to worship and hearing the stories of his People) but all of this was only a foundation for the deep and holy prayer life and the relationship he had with God, a current thing not a dead thing, a living breathing relationship based on intimacy with his Abba. He didn’t linger in the past; he propelled the past into the present, and then used it as a lens to the future. Overturning tables was his way of taking the past compliance and niceties that covenant living had become, a watered down and tamed version of living them, and demanding that the people be transformed into true covenant people who brought the ways of God into the world, this world, at this time, so that the future of all would be different.
He reinterpreted the past so that the future could be in line with the intentions of God for God’s people and all of God’s creation, a precursor to the eternal kingdom which God intends for all of God’s people
This, of course, brings us to today. At the next service we will honor the past of this parish with an early folk Mass and Fr. Wootton will preach and celebrate and we will remember how wonderful it used to be. But the truth is that we cannot and would not go back to that place, not because it was not wonderful and not because it was not life-giving and holy in that moment, but because we live in a different time and place, a place where we are equally God’s own. But as we were handed this day by those who came before us, we are to hand our days forward to those who come after us. We do this by being Christians, as those who came before us were also Christians. We do this by living the intent of the law and not focusing on the letter of it at all.
We do this because the gospel is a living, breathing thing that meets each generation anew. Jesus knew the stories; he knew the commandments. He knew the tenets of the covenant, but he challenged all of the people that day at the temple and therefore all of us, to live those tenets not as a means of some sort of self-insured or assured congratulatory pat on the back, a sort of “we’re in because we are following the commandments and laws or because we know Jesus,” but as a means to informing the heart of how to be transformed by the abundant grace of God. Then by faith trusting God’s assurance that we are God’s own, we are the recipients of the covenant.
May we not be fooled by the folly of the world but treasure the wisdom of the cross. May we be transformed again and again by God’s intention to be in covenant with us. May we never be so obsessed with the letter of the law that we miss its intent altogether. May we hand this precious covenant to those who come after us as it has been handed to us.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd