Thursday, March 19, 2009

Sermon

My niece Elyssa suggested I post my sermons - so here is the latest from Sunday

John 2:13-25
13The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. 15Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” 17His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” 19Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21But he was speaking of the temple of his body. 22After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. 23When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing. 24But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people 25and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone.

Everybody knows about this scripture – it is in all the gospels!
People reference for – see Jesus gets angry – - you shouldn’t be selling things in the church – it means you shouldn’t bingo – We do all kinds of things with this text
It is called – the cleansing of the temple – those money changes – who were making all that noise and exploiting people who were coming in to worship God
And it is – get rid of them – but it was more than thatJesus is defining his purpose – he is calling out the purity system It is not about just cleansing – it is about a systemic change.

The purity system in Judaism became a religion that creates a world with sharp social boundaries between the pure and the import,, the righteous and the sinner, the whole and the not whole, the male and the female, the rich and the poor, the Jew and the Gentile
There was exploitation in this system that is evidence in the courtyard to the temple. You could not worship without the “clean and pure sacrificial animal” so the merchants overcharged for those animals
There is self centeredness in this system – as we try to keep ourselves clean. An example of Jesus shining his light on that is the Good Samaritan as we see the religious leaders avoid the beaten traveler who would cause them – not only to be late – but to become unclean
And there is certitude here – the certainty that we know the way and that we are the holy ones and you are not.It’s a closed system – that you have to work your way into it
And so Jesus is doing more than just throwing some merchants out of the temple courtyard – he is beginning his ministry of standing up to the unjust system that was denying people their humanity and preventing people from worshipping together in God’s house

Jesus came to bring in this place of freedom and openness and peace
Where the system of purity defined people by what they did, ate, who they associated with, their acts of worship, Jesus comes and gets dirty in order to bring real cleansing – a new kind of community. God’s community
His disciples remember the words of the Psalmist as they see him:Zeal for your house will consume me. (good news – My devotion to your house, O God, burns in my like a fire) Jesus is saying – this is not the way my father’s house is supposed to be!

When Jesus comes he makes room for the outsider – Jesus eats with all kinds of people and invites them into relationship
When Jesus comes he makes room for the spirit - - heals on the Sabbath, he
When Jesus comes he brings people into the compassionate life – woman at the well, the tax collector, the disciples themselves

It is not a system – it is spirit led and with Jesus as the center of the community

Now the Christian church of 2009 can too easily see this as written about the Jews – but what does it mean to us in this time and this place.
And what I see is that it is about the shadow of the institutional church – and the shadow that is within each of us. And what happens – is that we can all fall into the trap of substituting a system for the work of God’s spirit.
Jesus challenges a religious system so embedded in its own rules and practices that it is no longer open to a fresh revelation from God,
And that is the question for you and for me and for us this morning – are we aware of the systems and habits and rules and practices that prevent us from experiencing and living into the kingdom of God.
Now let me tell you – I struggle with this – all of it.
Because it is the human nature to try to create stability and systems.
So that when 2 or more meet – we want to invite more, we want to find a place to meet, we want to have a designated time, and then start to impose some order to what happens when we meet. Isn’t that how it works?
So we start building churches, furnishing churches, putting together worship service, and deciding what it means to be a member of this community. And the next thing you know – we may be excluding people, getting so organized that there is no room for spontaneity,;Putting our rituals together in such a way that we lose sight of the reverence over the routine
And we get concerned about mistakes in the bulletin, and how full the communion cups are and whether I knew any of the songs, and who was talking during worship and you know…..you know
Now let me tell you – I struggle with this – all of it

It is so easy to major in the minors when it comes to worship –And maybe it is because the Major – the encounter with the Holy One is so Major. So mysterious and so outside our control
And yet we who are here have had moments, haven’t we? Holy moments when the spirit has been experienced, when we felt the nudge, or heard the voice
Or knew – Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place
No wonder we cling to the songs that we remember for our childhood, and want to do worship in a way – that in the past brought us meaning.. It worked once – surely it will work again.

This passage has something for us today – a word of warning that says that institutional religion can so easily lose its way,
That our need for control can close us to God’s real work in the world.
That ritual can become routine, that custom can breed complacency and that good religious people can work against what God wants the church to be.

Jesus saw that and became angry.
He became angry because devotion to God’s house was burning within him
He was ignited by God – as we talk about here
And in his zeal he acted strongly and stood up to the system that had gone astray.

He knew what was possible and he longed to draw all people back to the heart of God – and to a community shaped by compassion and not purity
My father’s house is the center piece of the compassionate life
This call to compassion runs throughout John's Gospel like a stream of living water--
Compassion for the Samaritan woman at the well. She was considered impure by bloodline and behavior.
Compassion for the woman accused of adultery threatened with stoning. She was surely considered impure and the written laws said so.
Compassion for sheep who are not yet part of God's fold. Who are those people in our communities?
Then Jesus says to his friends: "I give you a new commandment that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another."
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples--not by maintaining the boundaries, not by naming some pure and others impure, not by protecting the church from getting dirty, but by this love you have for one another.

I want to end by asking you to reflect on four questions –
1. what are you doing here? Not why are you here? But how open are you to God’s life giving spirit? What is your expectation of meeting the one who loves you?

2. what are we doing here? How are we reaching out to the lonely and the broken, the hungry and the sinful. Are we inviting? Are we welcoming? Are we accepting?

3, What is God doing here? Loving you? Strengthing you? Joining us together? Forming bonds between us’ tearing down walls that divide us? Softening your heart? My heart? What is God doing here?

Finally – what happens when we leave here?
Have we heard the compassionate word spoken to us?
Do we know that no matter how we came in this morning – whatever condition – we have been loved and forgiven?
We come to be in the presence of the one who stood up to systems that were exploitive, self centered and wrong and he paid a price for that
Can we follow him? Can we do the same
Will we continue to bring his compassionate kingdom into this world

2 comments:

Pattie said...

Wow! Awesome sermon! Thanks for sharing that. We heard the same reading in our church Sunday. I loved reading your sermon and combining it with what I heard in church. It expounds on the message. I loved how you preached it.

Tennelina (Caroline) said...

That really resonates with me... these texts about the role of anger and rejection in christianity... the hard stuff-- i like it!