March 19, 2006
(Third Sunday in Lent)
Whose Rules Are They Anyway?
by The Rev. Canon Linda Yeager, Canon Deacon
Exodus 20:1-17 • Psalm 19:7-14 • Romans
7:13-25 • John 2:13-22
(From
The Lectionary Page)
So, how are your Lenten promises going so far? If you are like me, you may have lowered your expectations just a bit. I am still, however, endeavoring to hold fast to a couple of my Lenten promises. The interesting thing about Lenten disciplines is the fact they we decide for ourselves just what the rules are for ourselves, then we struggle to stay true to the rules we have self-imposed. We are the winner or loser in meeting our own expectations. Somehow that doesn’t seem right, does it?
The children of Israel who were traveling through the wilderness with Moses had the same problem. Though they set some guidelines, they lacked a true authority for their behavior. That’s when God decided to help, so he gave Moses a set of rules to deliver to the people. These rules weren’t the first set of guidelines ever compiled, but they are truly remarkable because they presume a special relationship between God and his people, a partnership we might say that makes the code both precious and important. This set of rules — this list of commandments — not only provides regulations about people’s relationships with other people but also with God. In other words, violation of these laws constituted not only a crime against one’s fellow human beings, but also a crime against God, which was an entirely new thought and development.
It shed a new light on one’s response to the Law. Coveting another’s property or stealing from someone was not only an injury to the offended person, but it also displeased God. It’s hard for us to imagine how unique and revolutionary that reaction was. The Commandments provided the children of Israel a guideline for responding to God’s love and for reflecting that love in their lives. These laws were a gift that enabled these wanderers in the desert to understand behavior in a new way, in a way that combined holiness and justice—God’s holiness and justice for one another. Rather than making life more difficult, these commandments freed the people to live cooperatively and responsively in a way they had never known before.
The psalmist speaks of this Law in our psalm for today. Psalm 19 has been called, by C.S. Lewis, “the greatest poem in the Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world.” Lewis says that in this psalm “The Law is ‘undefiled,’ the Law gives light, it is clean and everlasting, it is ‘sweet.’ No one,” Lewis adds, “can improve on this and nothing can more fully admit us to the old Jewish feeling about the Law; luminous, severe, disinfectant, exultant.” [Lewis, C.S. Reflections on the Psalms. Harcourt: Orlando, 1986. p. 64.] Listen again to the words of the psalmist: “Above all, keep your servant from presumptuous sins; let them not get dominion over me; then shall I be whole and sound, and innocent of a great offense. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.” This is a love poem to a God of love.
Jesus took these commandments, given in love and gave us a Great Commandment. When one of the Pharisees questioned Jesus about which commandment in the law is the greatest, Jesus answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 23:37-39). It is about responding in love to the God of love. In today’s gospel passage we encounter a situation of rules again, a situation where the attitude toward the law is at the crux of the conflict, about whose interests are being served. The time of the Passover was drawing near. Jews came from all over the known world to celebrate. Jesus was an obedient Jew, and he, too, came to the Temple for Passover. He gathered with thousands and thousands of others, many of whom had brought their own animals for sacrifice. These animals had to be flawless, and the Temple inspectors often proclaimed that those animals brought from outside were not flawless, so the visitors would have to purchase animals from the inspectors. And some people who came from great distances were not able to bring their own animals, so they, too, had to purchase Temple animals. In either case, the Temple priests could set their own prices for the animals they sold, and they made a tremendous profit. And there were more profits involved concerning the Temple tax, which every Jew over 19 had to pay. People could not pay with currency that had graven images, which most had, including the image of Caesar, of course, because this was a repudiation of the first commandment. The money changers would change these coins into Jewish shekels at exorbitant rates.
Jesus saw that clearly God’s house was being desecrated. Jesus was also moved by pity for those who were being treated unfairly. The temple officials were paying attention to rules but using them for their own advantage, twisting the rules to work for their own selfish desires. The response was not to God, but to themselves, to their own selfish interests.
And then we have Paul in his letter to the Romans regretting the fact that he can intend to follow the law, that, indeed, the law is good, but, even though he wills himself to follow the law, he is weak. “Wretched man that I am!” he says. “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Paul cries. How many times has this cry risen from the mouths of sincere strugglers on this earthly journey? How many times have you and I wished that we could be better people, have more discipline, be less selfish, have better attitudes?
Whether it is the Ten Commandments or Jesus Great Commandment, love is the answer. A life lived in a loving response to a loving God is what is required of us and, honestly, how most of us want to live. But we know that, like Paul and even like the Temple officials, living that way is easier said than done. Reflecting God’s love is a life-long process, and it begins, interestingly enough, with accepting love. We, like Paul, are unworthy, every one of us. God loves us anyway. For those who have never known the accepting love from earthly parents or from others for whom we care, accepting God’s unconditional love takes time and effort. So, the first step is to acknowledge our selfishness, our materialism, our fear of rejection, our weaknesses and give them to God. Really give them to God. And then know that God loves us anyway.
Have you ever been caught in a tight situation, like a radar trap, and have expected the worst? I remember the story of the man who was just starting out on his vacation when he heard the siren, saw the red lights and pulled over, thinking about the money, time, and harassing from the rest of the family this experience was going to cost him. He slowly opened the car window, expecting the stern ridicule of the state trooper. Instead, he heard the calm voice of the trooper: “I think you might have been going a bit fast for these roads, but welcome to our state. We like to think our visitors will enter and leave safely. I hope you will help. Accept our gift of a new road map, and have a safe vacation.” And the man drove off, more carefully than before and with an improved attitude. A gift of love often receives a loving response.
Once we acknowledge our weaknesses and accept God’s love for us, we are ready to love others who also have weaknesses and aren’t very lovable either. As I said, this is a life-long process. But after studying today’s scripture lessons, I have come to the conclusion that the important thing to keep in mind is that how we live and how we can manage to live with love as a response is a matter of to whom we are responding. If our lives are just an exercise in meeting up to some expectation we have of what we should do or of what others expect us to do or what society expects us to do, we will fail miserably. We will be responding from an extrinsic source and our motivation will lack substance and meaning. But if we strive to live with a thankful love rooted in what we have received from God, we live in grateful love and that is a generous love. That love gives without expecting in return, forgives without expecting forgiveness, listens with a caring heart, and seeks reconciliation.
Remember, I said that this is a life-long process and also that we are loved even with our weaknesses. As we endeavor to grow ever closer to the freedom that this love brings, we practice and we discipline ourselves in cooperation with God’s transforming grace. So, as I continue to hold fast to my Lenten disciplines, perhaps it would serve me well to remember to whom I am responding. It’s not my rules I need to follow; rather, it is a loving response to the one who loves me unconditionally. I may not be able to keep my promises all the way to Easter, but I hope I can take a new road map and go forward carefully and with an improved attitude.
Business as Usual
by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer
I have some treasures displayed on the deep window sills of my office upstairs. Stuff I’ve found, or that my rockhound husband Rick has found. One in particular that I’m very fond of is an oblong rock of what I think is limestone, split keenly in two. You can’t see it really well in this dim light, but what lies within are the fossilized remains of a fern that lived near the Great Lakes however many glaciers ago that was. The outlines of its stem and leaves are clearly etched and embedded in the limestone, evidence of life passed into oblivion ages ago, a small monument to the endurance of the substance of death.
I've been thinking about that fossil all week long, as today's gospel passage has rumbled around in my brain. The so-called Cleansing of the Temple in Jerusalem is one of only a handful of passages that appears in all four of the gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all place the event following Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. John, whose version we heard this evening, takes a different route. John places the event at the very beginning of his gospel and makes it clear that it transpired during the Feast of the Passover.
Passover was a pilgrimage festival. The people were in Jerusalem to worship in the Temple, and the Torah made clear that cattle, sheep and doves were to be used as burnt offerings. It obviously was impractical for the people to bring the animals with them from home, so sacrificial livestock was sold on site. It was a way of empowering the people both to obey the Law, and to enable their right worship. As for changing money, the temple tithes could only be paid in the Jewish coin -- the shekel. Roman coinage bore the images of the emperor, identified as a deity, and therefore could not be used inside the Temple without violating one of the commandments we heard in our first reading. Besides, selling animals and changing money provided a livelihood for a whole host of people who were (and this is important) good people. This kind of system had worked for generations, and if someone were to ask either a native of Jerusalem or from one of the Jewish provinces why the forecourt of the Temple looked like a marketplace during festivals, they would probably blink and say, "Because we've always done it that way."
So why was Jesus getting so worked up? Some commentators suggest that it was the dishonesty of the monopoly of the livestock sellers and money-changers that made him wrathy; that Jesus was indignant with one group of people making money at the hands of people who had no choice but to use their services. Could be. Jesus certainly inveighed against social injustice on more than one occasion. But I suspect that there was more to it than that. I suspect it has more to do with what was embedded, if you will, in the limestone of the people's hearts. The Passover, after all, celebrated God's victory over the status quo, where bondage had been transformed into freedom and the death of slavery had been transformed into the life of the covenant. Passover was about celebrating a God who acts. A living God who delights not in the burnt sacrifice itself but in what the sacrifice points to: hearts laid open to God and to the newness of life God each day offers. What got Jesus worked up was the way in which the institution of the Temple had made absolute things that really were only relative; the favoring of fossil remains over life itself. What got Jesus worked up was the misspent energy of the people that had caused them to lose sight of what worship was all about. What got Jesus worked up was idolatry wearing the mask of Business As Usual.
And so we are invited, on this third Sunday of Lent, to ask ourselves what is embedded in the limestone of our being? I'm not talking about the easy stuff -- the things that are identified in the passage from Exodus. We know that violating the 10 Commandments gets in the way of right relationship with God. I'm talking about something harder. I'm talking about those good things in our lives that block our relationship with God in spirit and in truth. Those things that are so embedded within us that we don't question them, any more than the Temple officials questioned the practice of selling sacrificial livestock and changing money. I'm talking about Business As Usual: those things we devote the best part of our energy to that may be in fact be gifts of God, but which are not themselves God, and which in fact can get in the way of God if they are so fossilized -- so embedded -- within us that we don't even give them a second thought. Maybe it's the way that some of us make our work the focus of our lives. Maybe it's a rugged sort of self-sufficiency we developed years ago and are proud of. Maybe it's something else entirely.
Point is, we worship a Savior who calls us to give a second thought to what is embedded in us, to what perhaps needs to be hurled out of the temple of our hearts to make room for a God who wants US -- not just a carefully portion-controlled piece of us, but ALL of us.
In the name of this God, Amen.
